Leonhart led her toward the armory and asked,
“Do you really like guns that much?”
“I do. It’s my main weapon, and what I’m best at. Besides, I just enjoy handling them.”
“Your main weapon, you say… That’s quite unusual. Most people only keep them for hunting or personal defense, not actual warfare.”
“…What?” The words slipped out sharper than Rita intended. “People don’t use guns in battle? Why on earth not?”
“They’re clumsy and prone to backfiring. The rate of fire is abysmal, the accuracy is unreliable, and they break easily. In real engagements, people rely on bows. They can be enchanted with wind magic, and archers can lob volleys overhead without endangering the knights and infantry clashing on the front line.”
Listening to him, Rita cast her mind back across her childhood memories. Come to think of it, she had never seen the castle guards or the family knights carry firearms—only swords and bows.
‘Right. Gunpowder weapons never truly advanced here. People don’t even treat them as proper armaments.’
She had not expected the pinnacle of magitech engineering that was a magic gun, but she had at least hoped for something serviceable. Apparently, even that was wishful thinking.
Bracing herself for disappointment, she stepped into the storage room behind Leonhart, only to sigh in defeat the moment she laid eyes on the collection.
‘Matchlocks… and antique revolvers?’
Even by lenient standards, these were ornamental artifacts rather than instruments of war. Several sported intricate engravings along the barrels, clearly fashioned as mantelpiece curiosities.
‘No wonder enchanted bows outperform them.’
Leonhart drew open a glass display case.
“Pick whichever one suits you.”
Rita made up her mind without hesitation. Ignoring the unwieldy long muskets altogether, she weighed a few small revolvers in her hand before picking the lightest one among them. Her present body was far too fragile compared to Rita Pascal’s; anything heavier would be unmanageable.
“I’ll take this one.”
“Understood. I will fetch the powder and shot—”
“No need.”
The foundation of magic gunnery lay in shaping magic bullets out of Od and firing them directly, bypassing powder entirely. Physical rounds served only as an auxiliary measure, and since nothing in this room was tailored for magitech anyway, carrying them would be pointless.
‘Even so, it feels reassuring to hold a grip again. How many days has it been since I last felt one?’
Leonhart caught the faint smile playing on her lips as she studied the empty cylinder, and a twinge of sorrow pinched his chest. He murmured,
“Do you feel safer now, Lili?”
“Yes. Thank you, Leon.”
He suppressed a heavy sigh. It broke his heart that a mere weapon could bring his little sister such relief. Worse still, that she placed her faith in a diminutive handgun—a trinket, by his reckoning.
‘Just what kind of world did she endure for this to pass as a weapon? Were there no knights to wield aura? Is that why her struggle against those demonic beasts was so desperate?’
He would have to show her what true martial might looked like, so she would never again feel the need to cling to such toys for protection.
‘Perhaps I should bring her along to observe the knights’ sparring drills tomorrow.’
While Leonhart made that quiet resolve, Lilietta was arriving at a conclusion of her own.
‘Since this world has no concept of Od, magic gunnery will be devastating here. Their armor won’t stop my shots, and ordinary aura won’t hold up either. For safety’s sake, I must restrict myself to minimal charges. It would be catastrophic if a simple warning shot ended up blowing someone apart.’
***
That very night, Lilietta suffered a violent seizure.
Perhaps holding a firearm again had unlocked the door, or perhaps the lurking anxiety from earlier had gnawed away at her defenses. Whatever the spark, her slumber dragged her straight back to the first time she took a human life.
The sheer weight of that recollection threw her into convulsions.
The winter she turned fourteen. A thunderous discharge cut through the air, followed by a raw, ragged shriek. A jet of hot, brilliant crimson geysered upward, so starkly different from the dark, foul gore of demonic beasts.
She had not meant to shoot him. She had never wanted to kill anyone. She only—
Yet once a bullet leaves the muzzle, there is no calling it back.
The magic bullet tore through the man, and he crumpled into the dirt. Blood poured like a fountain from one of his shattered eyes, and Gide Pascal looked back toward her in utter disbelief. And then—
BOOM!
An explosion erupted. Sheets of flame roared toward the sky amid screaming and chaotic cries. A horde of figures swarmed inside. Adults who had been their allies until yesterday—no, until moments ago—were now leveling their weapons at her and Gide.
“Damn it all! I knew those Pascal brats were monsters!”
“Kill the freaks!”
Through the crimson veil blinding half his face, Gide’s shoulders shuddered. Behind him, their former comrades swung greatswords overhead. A heavy club lashed toward his skull. A finger tightened on a trigger.
Reflex took the reins, and Rita swung her barrel toward them. She was faster than any of them. The gunshot roared like a thunderclap.
The man who used to slip her extra rations, insisting that growing children needed full bellies, fell dead to her lead. The man who had patiently taught her how to strip and clean a magic gun collapsed as his skull burst apart.
She had never wanted to slaughter them. But had she hesitated—
A tossed grenade bounced right between her boots. Gide lunged, tackling her down and throwing his weight over her.
BOOM!
The blast was deafening, powerful enough to shred an eardrum. In truth, it ruptured hers on the spot. She could feel the warm stickiness of blood trickling from her ear.
“Rita, run. We have to run!”
His desperate whisper barely filtered through the mangled ruin of her hearing.
Rita bolted awake.
The bedroom was wrapped in silence, yet the thunder of detonations kept reverberating inside her skull. An auditory phantom, a trick of the mind—she knew this, yet it felt terrifyingly real.
Was it truly an illusion? What if this was not her home at all? What if she was still stranded on the front line, and this peaceful room was the dream?
The explosions pounded endlessly, merging with a shrill, piercing whine. Her vision spun. Her chest seized up, choking the air from her throat. Despite the bedroom’s grandeur, the walls felt as though they were rushing inward to crush her.
She had to escape this room immediately.
Crawling toward the door on trembling limbs, she spilled out into the hallway and threw open a wide casement window. A gust of crisp night air bathed her face, and her fevered thoughts began to clear as she gazed down at the quiet, darkened courtyard.
This was not that hell. There were no flames. No shrieks.
Yet the explosions still thundered in her mind. Her pulse hammered out of control, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Rita sank into a corner of the corridor, clasping both hands tightly over her ears.
‘Rita… do you hear the bombs again?’
‘Sit beside me. I’ll wind the music box.’
She remembered her comrade pressing their shoulders together, opening that scuffed little box they had scavenged from the rubble. A chipped angel figurine had spun slowly inside, reflected against a web of cracked mirrors.
The tinny, scratchy melody. The rhythm of another soul’s breath alongside hers. The quiet salvation found in someone who shared the exact same scars.
She clung desperately to that memory until her racing pulse began to settle. Gradually, the haze over her vision dissipated, and the fire in her lungs went cold.
Even so, the distant, muffled echoes of artillery refused to leave her. She knew they were mere phantoms, yet the sound lingered like an unshakable curse.
‘I need to find… a music box.’
Curling tightly into herself, she buried her face against her knees.
***
Richard returned to Birch Castle well past midnight.
Having vanished from the estate the previous day, he knew nothing of the pillar of light that had surged from the woodland lake, nor that Lilietta had regained her childhood memories.
The instant he crossed the threshold, the head butler escorted him straight into his elder brother’s presence.
“Lili has remembered the past.”
In that brief encounter, Richard learned the full measure of what had transpired while he was away—the reality of her survival and all that followed.
“Do you still intend to call her an impostor?”
Richard found no words to answer. The image of the girl he had confronted burned anew in his mind.
‘She looked so much like Lili that my mind completely stopped working.’
Even through the fog of liquor, the memory of his disgraceful conduct remained excruciatingly vivid. He had wept and begged forgiveness before a girl he suspected of being a fraud. The sheer mortification had driven him out into the night to drown himself in more drink.
‘And now you tell me she is real?’
The true Lilietta had returned to them?
Still trapped in a daze, Richard drifted aimlessly down the grand hallway. Jubilation and guilt, relief and self-hatred, hope and dread twisted together in his chest until he could barely draw a breath.
‘I am utter scum.’
The night she went missing, he had turned his back on her. When she miraculously returned a decade later, he had failed to recognize her and screamed at her face. Unable to distinguish kin from stranger, he had collapsed into self-pity and broken down before her.
Now that her identity was undeniable, terror took hold of him.
For ten endless years, he had prayed for her safe return, swearing he would trade anything if only she came home. Yet now that his prayer had been answered, he was completely at a loss.
What if she hated him? What if she looked him in the eye and said it was his fault she had been lost that night? She would have every right. God knew he blamed himself.
Even so, if those words were ever spoken by her own lips…
‘I would shatter.’
It would make him want to die on the spot. The mere prospect chilled him to the marrow.
‘How pathetic can I get…?’
Wracked with bitter self-loathing, Richard stumbled down the passage. By the time his senses flickered back, he found himself outside Lilietta’s quarters. It was hardly the first time his drunken feet had carried him here, so the destination came as no surprise.
‘I can’t collapse here again. I should turn back.’
He swayed on his heels to leave, but his instincts suddenly flared. Even with alcohol dulling his senses, the reflexes of an elite knight remained razor-sharp. He felt the presence of someone lurking in the dark.
Richard whipped his head toward the shadowy corner.