Chapter 59

Later,

『Impossible.』

Isaac blinked at the cats, his voice tinged with dejection. “Impossible? No matter what we do?”

『Impossible. 』

『Impossible.』

Their answer was absolute. They looked far too detached, calmly licking their paws, to offer any meaningful solution.

“You claimed the tinderbox was an incredible treasure. Can it not even do that?” Isaac grumbled. “What sort of treasure is it, then?”

The cats’ enormous eyes widened further.

『A curse purchased with a life is sealed by another curse purchased with a life. How could anyone break that? Do you truly believe human lives are so cheap?』

『Exactly! Muddlehead is wicked for treating life so callously!』

『Yes, yes! Muddlehead is wicked for insulting the sanctity of the tinderbox!』

“…Enough. Is there truly no other way?”

『No, no! It could not be broken even if you died and returned to life!』

“Is there truly nothing?”

『We told you, there is nothing!』

Isaac grabbed one of the cats by the scruff, shaking it in frustration. He gained nothing for his trouble but a set of sharp claw marks raked across his forearm. As he clutched his bleeding arm, the cats retreated to a safe distance, huddling together to gossip.

『Our Muddlehead knows so little.』

『A curse staked upon a life means the handsome one is already doomed.』

『It is impressive enough to be cursed twice over. I suppose even that requires a unique sort of talent.』

『His luck is truly abysmal.』

They continued their chattering, utterly indifferent to his plight.

If Alikisa were to sever her contract with that magician, the curse might finally dissipate. Of course, tearing up an established contract invites a catastrophic backlash. Even if she could successfully return the magician’s soul, Alikisa would forfeit every ounce of magical power she had painstakingly hoarded over hundreds of years. Could that vain, grasping creature be mad enough to shatter such a bond?

『It was impossible. 』

『Utterly impossible. 』

『There was no way. None at all.』

The cats shook their heads in unison, dismissing the thought as if it did not warrant even a moment of consideration. Isaac stared at them with a sense of irrational disappointment, his shoulders sagging as he released a long, weary sigh. He turned his head away.

SWOOSH

The prince was fast asleep beneath the shade of a distant tree. He had been safely tucked away in the shadows earlier, but the sun had migrated across the sky, and now its golden rays teased the edge of his cheek. His hair glittered brilliantly in the light.

He is so beautiful.

Yet, that man would never escape his curse as long as he lived, even if, by some miracle, every witch on the continent simply vanished from existence. The tinderbox had been Isaac’s final, flickering hope. Now that he understood it was equally useless, that final glimmer died, leaving his heart to plummet. He had desperately wanted to offer the prince—whose existence was so bleak—some small measure of light, even if he could never tell him why.

The prince was currently confined to his palace. He had slaughtered the Guildmaster of the Magicians’ Guild. More precisely, he was paying the price for killing the king’s personal magician.

When Kaiyan had severed the Guildmaster’s head, the sudden, violent collapse of the contract had caused the king to suffer immense agony, not unlike the affliction that struck Lord Ruorden. The second-ranking magician had managed to stabilize the monarch, but a prince could not simply execute the king’s own contracted magician without royal sanction.

Moreover, the victim had been the Guildmaster himself.

The culprit was the very prince the Guild already considered a thorn in its side.

The Magicians’ Guild wielded influence rivaling the most formidable noble houses, and it was never going to let this matter fade quietly. Its members had risen like an enraged swarm, inundating the court with petitions arguing that mere confinement was a grossly lenient sentence.

Even so, the prince had escaped harsher discipline due to the suspicious circumstances surrounding the Guildmaster’s demise. First, the Guildmaster’s adopted son had manipulated Lord Ruorden to break his oath of loyalty to the royal family before vanishing into thin air. Unilaterally shattering such an oath was high treason. Perhaps seeking to cauterize the wound before the rot spread, the Guild itself had been the first to clamor for the capture of the so-called lawless criminal.

The gesture did little to bolster their standing. The adopted son had vanished without a trace, and no one could pinpoint his current whereabouts. Then there was the condition of the Guildmaster’s corpse, which had decayed far too rapidly for someone who had died so recently, combined with the bizarre magic circle whose logic most high-ranking magicians could not decipher.

Outsiders might remain oblivious to the implications, but quiet, frantic rumors were already circulating within the Guild.

Perhaps a witch was involved.

A thorough investigation might ultimately leave the Guild in an even more precarious position. Finally, though minor in comparison, the examination of the Guildmaster’s private effects had uncovered faint, troubling indications that he might have been tethered to Roverni. Once the Guild realized that digging too deeply might cause the accusations to rebound onto their own heads, they could no longer press for Kaiyan’s punishment with the same fervor.

Thus, for the time being, the situation had been smoothed over with the formality of house arrest.

“Anyone else would have been hounded until their mind was completely worn away,” Isaac muttered to himself, thinking of his own fate after the hunting tournament. Perhaps this was the raw power of status, or perhaps the prince himself was simply too formidable an opponent for them to break.

Kaiyan had received numerous visitors since the incident, but not one had left having accomplished their objective. Most had been driven away without ever seeing his face. Two dignitaries had arrived that very morning to discuss the matter, yet neither had been offered so much as a cup of tea before being unceremoniously sent home.

Meanwhile, the prince had remained sequestered in his study. Only now, after taking his afternoon refreshments outdoors, had he laid down in the garden for a brief nap. Isaac watched the prince, who had accepted the king’s order of confinement without a whisper of resistance.

Though perhaps to say he had accepted it was inaccurate; Kaiyan had simply shown zero reaction, refraining from ever stepping beyond the grounds of Blue Shadow Palace. His confinement, in truth, placed almost no real restrictions on him. The palace grounds were vast, and among the prince’s usual habits, the only thing he could no longer do was venture deep into the forest to hunt.

He rarely left the palace to begin with, making the entire punishment feel nearly meaningless. Nevertheless, Kaiyan had remained almost exclusively inside his study, as though the royal order had specifically shackled him to that room. Isaac stood silently behind him, retrieving books whenever instructed, and soon realized that every volume the prince requested concerned witches, magic, or the raw manipulation of magical power. The study contained as many books on these topics as the library attached to the Magicians’ Research Hall, if not more.

Kaiyan had read nearly every one of them. Perhaps this man knows more about witches than I do, despite me being a witch’s son. He may even know more than the witches themselves.

“…”

Isaac sat slumped, staring vacantly at the prince. He suddenly remembered the book Kaiyan had left open earlier, a bookmark tucked between the pages when he rose for his meal. Isaac had glimpsed a passage describing how to track a specific witch.

When the target is a witch more powerful than the practitioner, magic alone cannot trace her. In such cases, the heart and eye of another witch are required. Upon encountering the witch one wishes to pursue, or a divided fragment of her spirit, cover it with blood drawn from another witch’s heart.

Powder made by drying and grinding the heart may also be used. Cast the spell, and the location of the target witch may then be seen through the eye of the witch whose heart was used…

The words another witch’s heart and eye had been highlighted in red. Kaiyan had remained in the study for days; the fact that he was finally sleeping outside probably meant he had found what he sought. Most likely, he had been searching for a way to track the Roverni’s witch. And that method required—

“Will the next new-moon night finally be the day of my funeral…?”

「What? Is Muddlehead going to die? Then who will bring us the tinderbox?」

「If you intend to die, you must bring us the tinderbox first.」

「Yes, yes. A proper soldier completes his assigned duty before dying.」

“… Oh, you precious little things.”

Isaac abruptly launched himself at the three cats seated in a row several paces away and scooped them all into his arms. He squeezed them tight. Very tight. The cats yowled and clawed furiously at his shoulders and the back of his neck, but he refused to release them until he had thoroughly crushed them against his chest.

Once freed, they scattered in every direction, hissing indignantly.

「He says he wants to die, so why is he trying to kill us?」

「Perhaps he wants to stay with us forever.」

「Alas. I warned him not to fall recklessly for my beauty, yet in the end…」

「It will be useless, though. We are pure-bloods, and you are a half-blood. There is no guarantee that we will go to the same place after death.」

「We shall fall into the warm fires of hell, but unless you commit a respectable number of sins, you probably will not be permitted to join us.」

“I have no desire to join you at all.”

Isaac would have refused even a refreshing heaven if the cats were there, let alone warm hellfire. As that thought crossed his grimacing face, one of the cats spoke again.

「Still, if you truly, desperately wish to spend eternity with us after death, there is a way. Seduce a witch and make a contract surrendering your body and soul, just like that young human magician. Then you will undoubtedly earn a place of your own in hell.」

「But I will not contract with you.」

「I have no need for a human body.」

The cats nodded among themselves and continued chattering. Isaac suddenly thought of something.

“Has the soul of the magician possessed by the Roverni’s witch already crossed into the afterlife? Is only his body left?”

「Not yet. The soul will not cross over until the body dies. But very little of the reason he possessed as a human probably remains. Only the desire he felt most intensely while human will be left.」

「And there will be a great deal of it. His body is overflowing with magic, so that desire will be boiling over too.」

「What did he want so desperately that he made a contract like that?」

Isaac’s heart dropped. The young magician had desperately desired the prince’s suffering. And now, a creature composed of nothing but the obsessive wish for Kaiyan’s pain was hiding somewhere in the world.

“… To track that witch… do you really need another witch’s heart and eye?”

Isaac asked, clinging to a final hope that something else might serve the same purpose.