Chapter 183 : Chapter 183

Ilis stood on the tree trunk, looking into the distance.

Those memories surged up like a tide.

They were not her own memories. They were things etched into her blood, things passed down through countless generations of elves. She had never seen that glorious age with her own eyes, but she knew it had once existed.

She knew how powerful her people had once been.

And she also knew how much of her people—

Was left now.

Elves were proficient in all ordinary magic. But what they were always closest to was nature itself—those trees, those vines, every plant growing from the soil. Next came light and wind, two elements that, like them, were light, free, and unbound. After that came Life Magic, the power to heal and to purify, because elves were the children of nature.

Later, humans learned these things.

They took Life Magic, Light Element Magic, and Water Element Magic, kneaded them together, and shaped an entirely new school—

Holy Magic.

The Church used it to heal, to purify, and to drive out all things unclean. They packaged it as a gift from the gods, a sacred power that only the clergy could wield.

But if one traced it back to its source, those so-called miracles were nothing more than leftovers from what the elves had long since mastered.

Humans were always like this.

They picked up what others had already used, wiped it clean, gave it a new name, and then called it their own.

And what the elves knew reached far beyond that.

According to legend, they had also mastered an even more mysterious magic—

Time Magic.

A magic that could turn back time, that could make a single instant eternal. It was a domain that even the greatest human archmages could not begin to approach, existing only in a few fragmented lines preserved in ancient texts.

And there was another kind of magic, one with no name at all.

Only the oldest records mentioned it once, in a lost script. Later, that script vanished, and with it, the name of the magic itself. All that remained was a single sentence, carved into some weathered stone tablet that was on the verge of falling apart:

“They grasp the laws by which all things move.”

Ilis stood there, sunlight falling across her.

The scattered light danced over her face like countless tiny golden insects. Her lashes turned pale gold in that light, and those violet eyes reflected it like two pools of melted amethyst.

She thought, I learned all of it.

When she had been very, very young, when the elders of her people were still alive, beneath that great tree that had already begun to wither, within those ancient songs no one else could understand—

She had learned all of it.

But then what?

Then the elders died.

The great tree withered away.

No one sang the old songs anymore.

Only she remained, still remembering those things.

Some things die together with the last person who remembers them.

But what if the last person was you?

Could you bring them back to life?

Could you make that vanished race live once more, inside your own body?

Ilis lowered her eyes.

The sunlight still fell. The wind still blew. The Sea of Trees still whispered in rustling waves. Those trunks still waited for her, those branches still bore her weight, those winds still gently pushed her onward.

The whole forest was still telling her the same thing:

You are back.

You have finally come back.

And yet, suddenly, she felt tired.

Not the kind of fatigue that came from her body.

It rose from somewhere much deeper, like a tide, like nightfall, like those ancient songs no one had heard in ages.

She took a deep breath and lifted her head, looking toward some distant point.

There was nothing there but those silver-gray trees, one pressed close against the next, stretching endlessly into the unseen distance.

Ilis lowered her gaze again.

For this exploration of the ruins, the Royal Princess had sent only her.

That had always been the most important part of their covenant—help Cecilia obtain that thing. As for what exactly that thing was, the Royal Princess had never said, and Ilis had never asked. She only had to go in, find it, and bring it back out.

A covenant was a covenant.

It was not about asking why. It was only about asking what had to be done.

She took another deep breath, leaned back against the tree trunk, and closed her eyes.

Suddenly, the image of that night flashed through her mind.

The outskirts of Saint Roland Magic Academy.

It was late, the moon hidden behind clouds, with only a few points of starlight filtering down.

Iruya was running through the woods at full speed, stumbling, her breathing ragged like a broken bellows.

Her night-clothes were torn.

Several gashes ran from her left shoulder all the way down to her waist, exposing pale skin beneath, along with the wounds that were still seeping blood. The worst cut was below her ribs. It was not deep, but it hurt terribly, and every step felt as though someone were gouging at her flesh with a knife.

She clenched her teeth and did not dare stop.

That person—that Ryan Velt—had been far stronger than she had imagined.

She had thought she could steal that white crystal, and even if she were discovered, she had believed she could still escape unharmed.

In the end, she had not even lasted thirty exchanges.

His movements had been too fast, so fast that she could not even make out their trajectory. All she could do was dodge desperately, flee desperately.

She could not use those spells.

She could not expose her identity.

The warning from the Great Elder before her departure had remained lodged in her heart the entire time.

So all she could do was run.

Run out of the dormitory district.

Run through that small grove.

Run toward the academy’s outer wall.

As long as she got over it—

As long as she left this place—

She vaulted up onto the wall.

Her foot slipped.

In that instant, she felt the brick beneath her shift ever so slightly, no more than the faintest movement, like an old wall finally failing under too much weight. Her body tipped backward. Her arms flailed wildly in the air, trying to catch hold of something.

She caught nothing.

She fell.

Her back slammed into something hard, so hard it made her curl in on herself in pain. Then came the rolling, tumbling down a slope, gravel, dead branches, and unidentifiable debris striking her body over and over, as though someone were scraping her flesh with a blunt knife.

She tried to get up.

Her body would not listen.

Her vision darkened more and more.

In the last thread of consciousness she had left, she saw the night sky above her. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, shining coldly down on her.

Then she could see nothing at all.

The last thing a person sees before death is often the thing they remember for the rest of their life.

Iruya thought that, for her, it would probably be that moon.

She did not know how much time passed before she opened her eyes again.

The first thing she felt was softness beneath her.

Not earth.

Not gravel.

Not dead leaves.

Real softness.

As if she were lying on a cloud.

As if she were lying in her mother’s arms.

That was the first sensation Iruya became aware of when she woke.

Instinctively, she moved her fingers, and her fingertips brushed against something cool and smooth, like silk. That touch crawled up her arm along her nerves, and her whole body stiffened for a moment.

Then she opened her eyes.

Her vision slowly cleared.

The first thing she saw was an unfamiliar ceiling.

Very high.

Higher than the ceiling of any room she had ever seen.

Its base was pure white, overlaid with golden patterns—true, painstakingly painted totems, circle after circle, so intricate that they looked like some ancient spell inscribed across the roof itself.

At the center hung a crystal chandelier.

Every crystal had been cut into a perfect polyhedron, large and small pieces layered together like a cluster of stars hanging upside down. Light passed through those faceted edges and broke into countless soft halos, spilling across the room and bathing everything in a faint golden glow.