TWQA 10

Chapter 10

‘If I had not come here…… I heard that he would have already left for the next place of inspection several days ago. If things had gone as they originally should, he would never have experienced this forest fire.’

Lea bit her lips again and again.

‘Is it because of me?’

Lea thought seriously for a while, then flopped back down.

‘Anyway, I changed the future as soon as I came back. I already knew that everything could change.’

She turned onto her side. Her hair seemed to be sticking to her cheek and tickled her.

‘I thought he would hold me there and ask me all sorts of questions until dawn…….’

She turned to the other side because the position was uncomfortable.

‘It’s not that he didn’t ask. He probably just postponed it. He will definitely call me tomorrow and question me about everything. If he does that, I won’t stay quiet either. Should I tell him to take responsibility because he stole my first kiss? I wonder what kind of expression he’ll make.’

She imagined Karion’s stunned expression and giggled before turning over again.

‘……He looked uncomfortable earlier. Is he all right? I was surprised that he went alone to save one child from the forest village. I thought he was a cold person, but……. Anyway, it’s a relief that he found the child.’

As soon as they returned to the camp, a soldier who came running over explained that it had been a mistake and that the child had never actually gone missing.

Lea was impressed that Karion had not gotten angry and had simply said, “If we found him, that’s enough.”

‘Just like his father. He has compassion for people.’

She continued tossing and turning, and after a long while, she slowly fell asleep.

—Wake up.

“Hm?”

Lea’s eyes flew open.

It was the spirit’s voice.

Sometimes, the spirit sent a clear will to her.

Most of the time, it was a warning.

The spirit’s will sounded similar to a human voice.

—Stop it.

‘Stop what?’

—It will explode.

‘What will explode?’

—Fire.

Lea immediately got up and stepped down from the bed.

‘Did the forest fire grow again?’

She looked outside the window.

People moving around while cleaning up could be seen as shadows in the darkness, but they did not seem to be in a hurry.

She quietly opened the bedroom door.

The hallway was quiet, and there was no one there.

From the far end of the dark hallway, wind blew toward her.

It was showing her the way to come this way.

She followed the wind down the hallway and arrived in front of a certain door.

‘Whose room is this?’

The security around the residence was looser than usual.

Perhaps everyone was distracted by the forest fire, because she had not seen anyone on the way here.

She looked around, carefully opened the door, and quickly entered.

As she looked around the dark bedroom, she heard a faint groan.

She approached the bed where the groan was coming from and was startled.

“Your Highness?”

Karion was breathing roughly with a painful expression on his face.

Lea stood there, not knowing what to do, before sitting on the edge of the bed.

After hesitating several times, she reached out and placed her hand on his forehead.

His hand suddenly grabbed her wrist.

Their eyes met.

After returning to the camp, Karion received the welcome news that the forest fire was weakening because the direction of the wind had changed.

Normally, he would have stayed up all night directing the cleanup.

However, although his body had felt refreshed until he came out of the forest, it gradually began to feel strange.

His body became heavy, and his head throbbed. It seemed that the aftereffects of his attack were finally appearing late.

He decided it would be better to rest until morning and returned to his bedroom.

He was more or less fine until he finished bathing and lay down on the bed.

As time passed, his fever rose, his breath became hot, and his body became limp like soaked cotton.

The symptoms were clearly different from the attacks he called his ‘curse.’

If the attack felt like being thrown into a blazing fire, this time it felt like being slowly placed into boiling water.

‘Is this some kind of illness?’

He had only heard about such an illness before. He had never actually suffered from one.

Except for his chronic illness called a curse, he had never even caught an ordinary cold. He had always been healthy.

He felt ashamed that he had fallen ill with something as trivial as this and tried to sleep.

By the time he felt that ‘something was wrong,’ his mind was hazy and his limbs had lost all strength. He did not even have enough energy to call anyone.

As he lay there almost giving up, he felt an energy slowly boiling deep inside his body.

He had a vague certainty that the energy would eventually swallow him and burn him away.

‘Am I going to die like this?’

He did not particularly have any attachment to life, but he had never wished for such a meaningless death.

‘The princess.’

Why, at a moment like this, was the person flashing through his mind that woman with green eyes?

The wind brushed against his face.

Was he now feeling sensations without substance, beyond the stage of hallucination?

There was no reason for wind to be blowing inside the bedroom…….

His forehead suddenly became cool, and strength returned to his limp body.

He grabbed the wrist of whoever had placed a hand on his forehead.

She was faintly visible.

As his mind became a little clearer, he realized that he was not seeing an illusion.

‘The princess!’

Was this what it felt like to see hope at the end of despair?

In the darkness, she seemed to be glowing.

But he did not want hope.

It was better if it had never existed than to grasp it only to lose it.

So he spoke in a stiff voice.

“What are you doing in my room right now……?”

The moment his hand grabbed her arm, the wind blew.

It was a wind that only she could feel.

Lea suddenly felt as if all sound had disappeared and she had been left alone in a pure white space where nothing existed.

It was a sign that all her senses had entered some extreme realm beyond human limits.

It did not happen through her own will. Whenever the wind spirit needed to tell her something important, it would lead her into this state.

She saw an illusion of fierce flames burning as if they would consume the entire world.

Then she heard Nella’s voice.

⌜You are lucky. You fully awakened the spirit’s power.⌟

⌜What does a complete awakening mean? How do you know about it?⌟

⌜You are still alive, aren’t you?⌟

⌜……What?⌟

Nella already knew many things about ancient spirits that had been forgotten by the world.

She said that the reason spirits had been forgotten in the present age was because the chance of awakening them was so low.

⌜If you do not achieve a complete awakening, a human’s weak body will be caught in the spirit’s rampage and torn apart. Boom. You explode.⌟

‘A spirit’s rampage!’

Lea looked directly into Karion’s silver-gray eyes.

“Your Highness. Answer my question honestly. How long have you been in this condition? Since we saw the forest fire earlier?”

Karion slowly closed his eyes and opened them again.

The reason he was holding her wrist was not to push it away, but to keep it from leaving.

Just making contact with her felt like a small opening had appeared, allowing him to breathe.

“What condition?”

“The energy running wild inside Your Highness’s body right now. I’m asking when that energy started tormenting you.”

Karion stared at Lea.

As expected, this woman knew about his curse.

And he knew the exact answer to her question.

“The autumn of the year I turned ten.”

“Ten? Since you were that young…….”

Lea swallowed the question, ‘How are you still alive?’

“Did these symptoms also appear in the forest earlier?”

“Is the princess a mage?”

“What?”

“When the princess touches me, the curse calms down.”

“……The curse?”

“The curse.”

Karion turned his head after saying that.

But his hand was still holding onto her.

“That isn’t a curse……. Then how does it calm down?”

“I…… can breathe.”

Lea’s green eyes widened as she muttered,

“So that’s why earlier.”

‘Did he kiss me because of that?’

A single picture came together in her mind.

‘The wind’s energy calms the fire energy that is going out of control because it is incomplete.’

She did not know why the power of the spirit, which he had awakened at such a young age, was now going out of control.

But this had not happened in her previous life.

So there was no doubt that the future had changed because she had come here and met him.

If the spirit’s rampage could not be stopped, he would die.

Nella’s voice echoed in her ears.

⌜Lea. The wind spirit represents harmony and flow. It embraces other spirits that clash with each other. It is a gentle power.⌟

‘No.’

She could not let him, his father’s son, die here and now.

He was supposed to live for at least another ten years even if nothing was done.

For him to die early because of her—what a terrible thing that would be.

She would not have the face to meet his father even in death, and there would be no meaning in living this life again.

“Wait!”

Lea shook off the hand holding her wrist and climbed onto the bed, sitting astride his body.

“Excuse me.”

She met his startled silver-gray eyes, then immediately lowered her upper body and pressed her lips against his.

Karion’s body stiffened for a moment, but his hesitation was brief.

He cupped her face in his hands, sucked on her lips, and actively deepened the kiss.