Memoirs of a Wicked Magician - Chapter 134

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 134
Caliona lost track of where fantasy ended and reality began.
The convulsive power had stilled like a lie, which suggested she’d truly received Belkiers’s aid, yet nowhere in the room did she find a trace of him.
“Do you want to live?”
It was then that a rough, murky voice, as though laced with tinnitus, echoed from within the broken mirror.
The moment her ancient nightmare spoke again, Caliona’s spine went rigid.
In truth, today it wasn’t only others whose shame had been displayed in the Ruins’s mirror.
Caliona too harbored secrets from her past that she would never reveal to another soul, even if it killed her.
She had lied to Liriope, claiming she didn’t remember clearly—but the memory of the day she lost her parents still haunted her sleep with relentless persistence.
Caliona pleading for mercy. Liriope hidden in the wardrobe behind her. And her parents collapsed on the floor with a black beast before her eyes.
In truth, that event had meant far more to Caliona than merely witnessing her family’s death.
Even now, confronted by the nightmare in the mirror, a crushing wave of shame and self-loathing seized her breath.
“Then shall I give you a chance?”
Caliona’s nightmare always ended here. Before the creature’s voice could say more, she would always force herself awake.
If this had been an ordinary dream like the others, she could have strangled herself free from the nightmare. But Caliona, for the first time in years, did not look away from what lay before her.
“Very well. I shall give you a choice.”
And so the terrible hell she had longed to forget eternally was repeated once more.
“Between you and your younger sister—I shall spare one of you.”
The demon whispered into Caliona’s ear with a voice dripping with laughter.
“So, will you choose for yourself?”
Ah, in that moment, Caliona had only wanted to live.
And so, and so…….
The beast laughed with delight and dragged her sister from the wardrobe. Moments later, her sister’s blood splattered across Caliona’s cheek, burning like molten metal.
‘This is a dream.’
No, it was not a dream.
‘Shadows cannot speak, so my answer too……is not real.’
But you know that isn’t the truth, don’t you?
Mercifully, the capricious Shadow had not killed both sisters and had let them live.
It seemed the Shadow, laughing as it watched the vacant-eyed Caliona, had even restored her blood-drenched sister to her original state out of a whim.
But even so, what had happened did not cease to exist.
“I……I will die for Liri someday…….”
Caliona muttered the words to no one, her eyes bloodshot.
“I will. I must…….”
As she repeated the same words again and again, the Ruin’s Core clutched in her hand felt as though it might crumble within her grip.
Caliona was so repulsed and nauseated by her own depravity, faced in childhood, that she could not lift her head. She had turned away from it all this time, but no matter how much revulsion she felt, someday she would have to confront the truth.
The Shadow that had killed her parents, wounded her sister, and left an indelible stain of guilt within her.
It had surely said something else to her that day.
‘Remember what that was.’
Caliona had already abandoned her responsibility and duty once, disappointing her dead parents and betraying her sister.
So at the very least, she had to fully recall the truth of that day.
“Good. My heart has changed. Both you and your sibling—I shall let you live for now. But shall we make another promise instead?”
And finally, in the moment she forcibly dredged up a fragment of memory buried deep within the depths of her unconscious mind.
“Come find me later, you and your sister together.”
Shock widened Caliona’s eyes, black light flickering within them.
“Yes……toward the Northern End where the Unfading Star rises.”
Ah, yes……that was it.
Despite all her desperate efforts to never recall the past, the moment she did remember it, she could not fathom how she had managed to live in ignorance all this time.
The belated realization struck like lightning upon her crown.
A silent scream echoed within her cramped throat.
A foolish fact she had never questioned even once.
She had thought she had entered this cursed place of her own free will, bringing her sister along, but it had all been an illusion.
That demon had led her here.
Three years ago, the sisters’ arrival at the Northern Magic Tower had been no accident whatsoever.
* * *
It was a time when most mages were preoccupied with the aftermath of the Flood Period.
In the 80th Floor Corridor, where desolate air hung thick, a black hem rippled like waves.
Footsteps from heeled shoes fell upon the stairs, yet each step followed like a ghost’s movement, making not the slightest sound.
The quiet footfalls stopped before a corridor lined with portraits.
A place where the Magic Tower’s successive heirs gazed with timeless, taxidermied serenity.
The most recent portrait still held Belkiers—the son of Seraphina, the Magic Tower Master—in the image of his youth.
If one turned her head slightly to the left, one could see Seraphina herself as a girl, undoubtedly more youthful than she was now.
The woman gazing upon it had a face devoid of emotion, utterly expressionless. But soon a smile of low temperature traced across her golden eyes.
Belkiers resembled her very much.
Not only in appearance, but also in his childish temperament and tastes from his youth, and especially in the fact that it was this boy who had caught his eye.
‘It makes sense that he resembles me so closely, given that I am his source.’
Long ago, Seraphina too had known such a person.
Someone who would capture her gaze in a moment, wherever and whenever, leaving her with a strange feeling.
Someone who had painted diverse colors onto her withered, grayscale world, making even the meaningless morning sunlight feel like an ethereal golden dream.
When that person smiled, the very air around them seemed to grow sweet.
Yet now that person had slipped from her grasp and become nothing more than an old memory, a remnant of the past.
Just as she had advised Belkiers, if there was something one did not wish to lose, it must be carefully hidden from all eyes.
Otherwise, one should never give anyone a foothold to begin with, making oneself so completely one’s own that no one would dare covet what one possessed.
In her ignorant youth, Seraphina had failed to grasp this principle and had lost what she cherished.
The loss, the anger, and the regret she had tasted for the first time then.
It is only natural for one who has lost something precious to harbor vengeance against the one who took it.
And it is hardly surprising to wish to inflict the same pain and despair upon the thief as one has endured—to make them know what it is to have their own treasures stolen from them.
Seraphina slowly lifted her hand, brushing across the empty wall between the portraits.
Tracing the mark where a portrait had once hung—one that had appeared beside her when she was the Magic Tower’s heir.
— Seraphina. The Southern Magic Tower has reached out again. This time the Southern Magic Tower Master himself is asking whether you will arrive. What shall we do?
Seraphina’s hand fell from the wall only when she heard the voice calling to her at her ear.
A meeting between the world’s two sole 8th-rank mages had originally been scheduled for this afternoon. The promised time had long since passed, yet Seraphina showed no sign of hurry.
Seraphina turned her body and slowly left the corridor. But her destination was not the appointed place with Calix, the Southern Magic Tower Master.
“The Flood Period has left me fatigued. Tell Calix we shall not meet,” she said.
She had already cancelled their meetings this way several times, and grievances from the other Tower certainly grew fierce, yet she did not care in the slightest.
“Rather, I should go to meet them. I believe a guest will be arriving soon.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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