The Wind Calms the Fire - Chapter 10

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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 10
‘If I hadn’t come here… he would have left for his next tour days ago, or so I heard. Without me, he would never have faced this mountain fire.’
Rhea bit down on her lip.
‘Is it because of me?’
She lay in thought for a moment, her expression grave, then flopped back onto the bed.
‘Well, I changed the future the moment I returned. I already knew everything could shift. That was part of the bargain.’
She rolled onto her side, and her hair tickled against her cheek.
‘I thought he’d pin me down till dawn and grill me with a thousand questions…’
The position felt awkward, so she rolled the other way.
‘He didn’t ask—he just put it off. Tomorrow he’ll definitely summon me and interrogate me thoroughly. And when he does, I won’t stay quiet either. Since he stole my lips, he should take responsibility for it. I wonder what face he’ll make.’
She giggled imagining the dazed expression that would cross Carrion’s face, then rolled over again.
‘…Though I noticed something seemed off about him earlier. It was surprising that he went alone to rescue a child from the forest village—I’d taken him for a colder person. But at least the child was found safely.’
A soldier had rushed to the Garrison as soon as they arrived, saying the child wasn’t actually missing—it had been a misunderstanding.
What struck Rhea most was that Carrion hadn’t been annoyed; he’d simply said, “As long as the child is found, that’s enough.”
‘He truly is his father’s son. There’s compassion in him.’
She continued tossing about until, after a long while, sleep finally claimed her.
—Wake up.
“Hm?”
Rhea’s eyes snapped open.
It was the Spirit’s voice.
The Spirit sometimes sent her clear, deliberate messages.
Most of the time they were warnings.
The Spirit’s will sounded like a human voice.
—Stop it.
‘Stop what?’
—It’s breaking open.
‘What’s breaking open?’
—Fire.
Rhea jerked upright and swung out of bed.
‘Has the mountain fire flared up again?’
She looked out the window.
People moving about with cleanup work appeared as shadowy figures in the darkness, but they showed no sign of urgency.
She quietly opened the Bedchamber door.
The corridor was silent and empty.
Wind drifted down from the far end of the dark passage.
It was showing her the way, calling her forward.
She followed the wind down the corridor until she reached a certain door.
‘Whose room is this?’
Security at the Official Residence was lighter than usual.
Everyone was distracted by the mountain fire chaos, and no one had seen her on her way here.
She glanced around, then carefully opened the door and slipped inside.
As she looked around the darkened Bedchamber, a faint groan reached her ears.
Moving toward the bed from which the sound came, she froze.
“Carrion?”
Carrion lay there breathing heavily, his face twisted in pain.
Rhea stood uncertainly for a moment, then sat down on the edge of the bed.
Her hand wavered several times before she finally reached out and pressed her palm to his forehead.
His hand shot up and gripped her wrist.
Their eyes met.
* * *
Upon returning to the Garrison, Carrion had received welcome news: the wind had shifted, and the mountain fire’s strength was weakening.
Normally, he would have stayed up all night overseeing the cleanup efforts.
But even as he left the forest, his body—which had felt sound before—began to deteriorate.
His limbs grew heavy, his head throbbed persistently, and it seemed the aftereffects of the Seizure were catching up with him at last.
He judged that a few hours of rest until morning would be best and withdrew to his Bedchamber.
Until he finished bathing and lay down in bed, he felt more or less fine.
As time passed, fever crept in, his breath grew hot, and his body went limp as a water-logged cloth.
This was distinctly different from the Seizure he called the “Curse.”
If the Seizure felt like being hurled into roaring fire, this felt like being slowly submerged in steadily heating water.
‘Is this just a common fever?’
He had only heard of such an ailment in passing—he had never actually suffered from one.
Apart from the chronic curse, he possessed a constitution so robust that he’d never caught even a common cold.
Mortified by his own weakness, he surrendered to sleep.
By the time he realized something was terribly wrong, his mind had turned to fog and his limbs had gone limp—he hadn’t the strength to call for help.
Nearly resigned to his fate, he lay still and felt it: a force stirring deep within his body, rising slowly like a terrible tide.
He knew with bleak certainty that it would consume him, devour him, burn him to ash.
‘Is this how I die?’
He had no real attachment to life, yet he hadn’t imagined it would end like this—not with such emptiness.
‘The princess.’
Why did this fleeting thought, at the very brink of death, have to be of that woman with green eyes?
A breeze swept across his face.
Had he crossed beyond hallucination into sensing phantom sensations?
There was no wind in a sealed bedchamber—there couldn’t be.
As coolness bloomed across his forehead, the heaviness that had pinned him down suddenly shattered, and strength flooded back into his limbs.
He lunged forward and seized the wrist of whoever’s hand was pressed to his temple.
She swam into focus before him, indistinct but undeniably real.
His mind cleared enough to confirm he wasn’t conjuring phantoms.
‘The princess!’
Was this what hope felt like, emerging from the abyss of despair?
In the darkness, she seemed to shine like light itself.
Yet he did not want this hope.
Better to have never possessed it than to grasp it and let it slip away.
So he spoke with deliberate coldness.
“What exactly are you doing in my chambers?”
The moment his hand closed around her arm, wind erupted—a wind only she could perceive.
Rhea felt herself suddenly severed from all sound, cast adrift in a void of absolute white.
It was a signal that her every sense had breached some extreme threshold beyond human limitation.
The Wind Spirit did not move at her will alone; when knowledge vital enough demanded it, the spirit would draw her into this realm.
She beheld a vision of violent flame scorching the world, burning with apocalyptic fury.
And then she heard Nela’s voice.
“Fortune favors you. A complete awakening of spirit power—how rare.”
“What does complete awakening mean? How could you possibly know?”
“Because you’re still alive.”
“…I beg your pardon?”
Nela already knew much of the ancient spirits long forgotten by the world.
She had explained that these spirits faded into obscurity because of their abominably low awakening rate.
“Without complete awakening, a human’s fragile body gets torn to shreds in a spirit rampage. Boom—you explode.”
‘Spirit rampage!’
Rhea’s eyes met Carrion’s silver-grey gaze.
“Your Highness. Answer me honestly. How long have you been in this state? Since we saw the mountain fire in the forest?”
Carrion closed his eyes slowly, then opened them again.
He was holding her wrist not to push her away, but to prevent her from leaving.
Merely through contact with her, small cracks seemed to open in the wall of his suffering.
“What state?”
“The power raging through your body right now. When did it start tormenting you?”
Carrion studied her intently.
This woman knows of my curse.
And he knew the precise answer to her question.
“Autumn, the year I turned ten.”
“Ten years old? You’ve been suffering since childhood…”
Rhea swallowed back the question that clawed at her lips: ‘How are you even still alive?’
“Did this attack happen again in the forest earlier?”
“Are you a sorceress, princess?”
“Pardon?”
“When your hand touches me, the curse subsides.”
“…A curse?”
“A curse.”
With that, Carrion turned his head away.
Yet his hand remained fastened around hers.
“That isn’t a curse—it’s something else. How exactly does it subside when I touch you?”
“I… I can breathe.”
Rhea’s green eyes widened as she murmured the words.
“So that’s why.”
‘He kissed me.’
A picture began forming in her mind, piece by piece, until the full image crystallized.
‘The Wind Spirit Power is calming the Fire Spirit Power that runs rampant because it’s incomplete.’
She couldn’t fathom why the Spirit power that had awakened in her childhood was now spiraling out of control.
But this had never happened in her previous life, so the altered future must be the result of her coming here and meeting him.
If she couldn’t stop the Spirit Rampage, he would die.
Nela’s voice echoed in her ears.
“Rhea. The Wind Spirit represents harmony and flow. It embraces other Spirits that clash with one another. It’s a gentle force.”
‘I can’t let this happen.’
She couldn’t let him—his son—die here, not now.
Without her interference, he would have lived at least another ten years.
For him to meet an early death because of her—what a cruel twist of fate.
Even in death, she’d have no face to show him, and this life would hold no meaning worth living.
“Wait!”
Rhea wrenched her wrist free from his grip, climbed onto the bed, and straddled him.
“Forgive me.”
She met his startled silver eyes and bent down at once, pressing her lips against his.
Carrion’s body went rigid for a moment, but his hesitation was brief.
He cupped her face and drew her lips in, kissing her with urgent intensity.

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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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