Echi slipped out of the training hall and into the garden. Though it was the first garden she had seen in fifteen years, she remembered every corner of it. The sight moved her so deeply that tears pricked her eyes.
'If it weren't for this wretched thing, I could actually enjoy this feeling.'
She stared at the black pattern etched into her palm. Weaving between the tall cypress trees, she went deeper until no one could follow, then leapt into the branches overhead.
She pushed off the ground, twisted through the air, planted a foot against a trunk, then another against a branch. Three jumps, and she was perched near the very top. She settled onto a thick bough and looked down at her hand.
"...Vel. Answer me."
[Address me by my proper name. This form is ValderGiosa!]
A slurred, lurching voice rang through her soul. She had hoped it wouldn't respond. Echi grimaced at the familiar presence of the demonic sword - she had no affection for it whatsoever.
"What's with that pathetic tone?"
[Hmph. I'm having a difficult time here. Time has reversed. I'm going to sleep.]
"Don't you dare sleep. If time reversed, why are you still bonded to me?"
[Various… things have...]
"Explain before you sleep! Hey! You useless demonic sword!"
The sword's slurred voice faded into silence.
Echi grabbed her palm and cursed under her breath, then stretched her hand out with a jerk. At her will, the sword slid free from the black pattern.
The Giosa series used their master's soul as a sheath - a Giosa could be drawn from empty hands at any moment, just like this. Under normal circumstances it would be an advantage, but to Echi it felt more like a curse. The fact that she couldn't simply discard it only made it worse.
"Wake up, Vel."
She gripped the black hilt and tapped the flat of the blade. She poked the glyph, swung the sword aimlessly, and finally gathered mana into her palm with the vague intention of beating the sword awake.
"Huh...?"
The mana she was trying to shape into a blade scattered apart before it could form. A sharp pain lanced through her body - as if every muscle was wringing itself dry. Echi doubled over with a groan, then quickly understood the reason.
"My body... was this weak?"
It was inevitable. She had moved as if she still inhabited her old, honed form, but this body had never been trained. Even without a mana core, the mind that had surpassed a Master's level had been driving mana through it by force alone.
She took stock of herself. This was a body that had never lifted anything heavier than a teacup. A few moments of exertion had already left the soles of her feet aching, her muscles screaming, and her untrained body running a fever from the mana forced through it.
She was, in every literal sense, back to being a young noblewoman raised in comfort.
'I'll need to form a core first.'
Whatever the circumstances, strength was better than weakness.
She settled into position and closed her eyes, turning her focus inward.
It didn't take long. She drew in the ambient mana and gathered it through her body, letting it pool naturally at her solar plexus. A core took shape, new, and thin from lack of accumulated mana, but clear and solid.
Most knights who reached the level of Master had spent a lifetime unable to form one. Echi had done it in ten minutes, distracted.
'The youngest Master on record was Commander Yurien - twenty-three years old. And the uproar that caused. But today is March 17th, 1629, which makes me...twenty. A Master at twenty. I'll have to hide it for now.'
Then something struck her.
"March 17th, 1629..."
The date Lancel had given her. A date she could never forget. Echi pressed her face into her hands with a low groan.
March 17th, fifteen years ago, was the night she had received the demonic sword. Which meant she had been sent back to the very same morning - the worst dawn of her life.
In the small hours of March 17th, 1629, she had woken from bed, unable to sleep, and decided to warm a glass of milk.
Back then, Echinacea had been a girl who couldn't even do that much herself. She had pulled the cord by her bedside to wake Nora, her personal maid.
Nora had gone to fetch the milk and never came back. Unable to wait, Echi had left her room with just a shawl thrown over her nightgown and gone down to the kitchen herself.
She had opened the kitchen door calling Nora's name - and found Nora holding a sword.
She could no longer recall exactly how she had survived the attack.
What remained in her memory was fragments: the dark kitchen, the pale outlines of things lit by moonlight from the window, her blurring vision, someone screaming, and the transparent blade catching the light.
What she remembered clearly was the outcome. Nora stumbled trying to stab her, and Echi had caught the sword Nora dropped. The feel of that black, cold, smooth handle had never left her.
The moment she gripped it, something slithered up through her body. Guided by that sensation, she had driven the blade into Nora, who lunged at her again. That was Echi's first kill.
She didn't want to think about what had followed.
By the morning after that terrible dawn, no one in the mansion had been left alive - except her.
But this morning was different. The gardener was trimming the garden as usual. Lancel was in the training yard with a family knight.
"It changed...how did it change?"
Echi pressed her fingers to her forehead. This was a completely different morning than the one before her return. Yet the demonic sword was still in her hand. What had happened in those early hours?
'Nora. I have to check on Nora.'
The first person she had killed. Her heart lurched. She dropped from the branch, the pain across her body dissolving as soon as the newly formed core fed mana through her limbs.
She went straight to the kitchen. It sat at the edge of the mansion's ground floor, with a back door that opened to the yard for daily deliveries. It was morning - a delivery man and one of the maids were talking at that door. The maid who spotted Echi's approach went wide-eyed.
"Miss? At this early hour...Oh my goodness! You're in your nightclothes!"
"Nora? Where is Nora?"
"Nora?"
The moment between the maid's tilted head and her opened mouth felt interminable to Echi.
"Nora's just over there. Nora! The young miss is calling for you!"
The maid who had been talking to the cook came running over, surprise written across her freckled face.
"Miss! You're up already?"
"...Nora."
"Heavens, those clothes - and no shoes! Come inside this instant. You, look away!"
Nora seized Echi by the arm and threw a sharp glare at the delivery man. He sulkily lifted his hat to cover his face as Nora dragged Echi indoors. She marched her straight to the washroom and began scolding her without pause.
"If you're going to wake early, you call for me - why were you wandering around like that? You gave me a fright! What if you cut your feet on something? Are you feeling ill? You couldn't sleep again until dawn? If something is wrong, you tell me, and I'll send for Mrs. Smith..."
It was a voice she hadn't heard in a very long time. The same voice that had fallen silent, bleeding, run through by a transparent blade - and now it was alive, breathing, scolding her without missing a beat.
Echi listened as if in a trance, then caught on something Nora had said.
"Nora, wait. Did I ring for you last night?"
"Don't you remember? You couldn't sleep, so you asked me to bring you warm milk."
The same situation as before. Her heart nearly stopped. She swallowed and asked again.
"And then?"
"What do you mean, 'and then'?"
"What happened after?"
"I brought it to you...? You drank it and went back to sleep, didn't you? Were you up all night anyway? Lack of sleep is the enemy of your complexion!"
Nora frowned and studied Echi's face, visibly relieved to find the skin she had tended so carefully still smooth and flawless. Echi stared at her, stunned.
"You brought the milk. I drank it..and went to sleep?"
"Yes. Don't you remember?"
"...Nora, did you notice anything unusual? In the kitchen, or anywhere?"
"Something unusual? Like what...ah."
Nora tilted her head, then seemed to recall something and nodded.
"There was a long package in the kitchen that I'd never seen before. No name, nothing written on it. I unwrapped it to check what was inside but it was empty."
"An empty package? Why was that in the kitchen?"
"Exactly what I thought. I assumed someone hadn't cleared away the wrapping after a delivery of bread or groceries, but when I asked in the kitchen, no one had ordered anything like it. I'm going to bring it to the butler."
The empty package had originally held the demonic sword. Echi understood that the moment she heard it. This time, the sword had already been absorbed into her - so Nora hadn't found anything inside.
This morning had diverged from the one she remembered.
'I asked to be sent to a past where no one died. It should have been just before I killed Nora — before the early hours of this dawn. So why did I wake up with it already morning? And why is this wretched sword still with me instead of sitting inside that package?'
"...Do you still have that package?"
"Yes, right here."
Nora rustled through her apron and drew out a folded length of paper. Echi reached for it immediately.
"Give it to me."
"What?"
"I'll take care of it."
"Yes..."
Nora handed it over with a puzzled tilt of her head. Echi spread it out and measured the length. Long enough to wrap a sword. She folded it back up.
Someone had brought a demonic sword into Count Roaz's kitchen. Who? And why?
There was no reason to target her - Echinacea herself had never known she had any talent with a sword. She had never so much as picked one up before that night. It made no sense for anyone to have brought a sword specifically for her to find.
Then what was the reason? She had to find out.
'I don't know who you are...but I will not forgive you.'