Even memories she would rather forget - losing them would strip the reversal of its meaning. She had to keep her memories while freeing herself from the cursed sword. And as long as that sword remained, the happy life she was after was impossible.
Two things, then: a place where she could securely seal the cursed sword so it couldn't fall into other hands, and a place where she could obtain a different Giosa. On the whole continent, she knew of only one location where both were possible.
The city of Azenka. The Celestial Knights Order.
So she would have to go back there in the end. The land she had destroyed. The land Yurien had protected. The land where she had killed him. With a long exhale, Echi realized something and went still.
"Vel."
[Please don't shorten my name like that. It's undignified.]
"You said Giosa owners retain their memories through a time reversal. Does that apply to all of them?"
[Yes. Why?]
"...So every Giosa owner from before the reversal - they all remember everything?"
The Giosa owners she had killed numbered four. The vice-commander Baron, cut down while trying to shield the citizens of Azenka. Teresa, killed while she tried to hold Dietrich back.
Dietrich, hunted through the night and finally murdered. And Yurien - who hadn't even had the chance to close his eyes.
Were they all remembering? The thought parched her throat. Her hands and feet went cold.
[That, I can't say for certain.]
"You have to be sure."
[I'm telling you I don't know! The ego must be awakened for the memories to be preserved. How would I know whether any of them have awakened their Giosa's consciousness?]
"...What if they have?"
[Then they would remember everything.]
ValderGiosa answered without inflection. Echi stared at nothing, her face as bloodless as wax. Her limp hands clenched the bedsheets.
"Is there any way to check?"
[I genuinely don't know! Awakening conditions are different for every Giosa!]
"Then think of something. Right now."
Echi's gaze darkened. ValderGiosa trembled slightly - it knew precisely how relentless she could be when she fixed on something. It protested in earnest.
[I really don't know! Giosas don't hold reunions! The conditions for awakening vary, and some of them wake up and then simply pretend to be ordinary swords without saying a word - how could I possibly know which ones have?]
If the demonic sword was this insistent, it truly didn't know. The strength went out of Echi's hands.
She sank back against the bed.
'So it's uncertain whether the other Giosa owners remember. Then I have to operate on the assumption that they do.'
A groan escaped her. The Giosa owners would have no knowledge of events after their own deaths, but their memories up to that point gave them more than enough reason to want her dead. Still, if she stayed within the Roaz estate, their worlds would barely overlap. They were too different in station and circumstance.
The problem was that to find a replacement for the cursed sword, she needed access to the Giosa Hall in the Celestial Knights headquarters which was exactly where all four of them were stationed.
Even if they confronted her, she was capable of defending herself. But she had her family now, barely won back.
If she were forced to fight, the Celestial Knights - or the Empire itself - would not spare the Roaz household.
She absolutely could not let them discover that she was the cursed sword's master. There was no reason they would trust her again; the last time they had shown mercy, she had repaid it with annihilation.
'But Yurien... Would he trust me?'
The thought arrived before she could stop it, and she shook her head sharply. She remembered the look in his eyes in the last moment before their swords met.
His sky-blue eyes, cracked like broken glass. A blade of pain drove through her chest.
'What are you thinking, Echinacea. After betraying him the way you did, do you honestly believe he would trust you again? Even if he drove his sword through you the moment he recognized you, you would have no excuse. None at all.'
Echi exhaled something hollow. She felt something dark and clinging trying to creep up around her ankles.
She bit down on her lower lip and shook it off.
She had been shaped by years of a single purpose - overcoming the cursed sword, gathering Giosa, setting a goal, and moving toward it.
Her first objective now was to find a Giosa to replace this one.
After that, she would deal with the sword itself. To do that, she needed to enter the Giosa Hall, which sat in the most heavily guarded depths of the Celestial Knights headquarters.
The Hall had only three conditions under which it opened.
First: when a Giosa of unclear ownership was discovered and needed to be sealed.
Second: when an existing Giosa owner died or retired and returned their sword.
Third: when a formal Celestial Knight was granted the chance to claim a Giosa.
The third condition was one of the great reasons why master-level knights from across the continent still aspired to join the Celestial Order - even though they could command respect anywhere they went.
Becoming a formal Celestial Knight meant an opportunity to acquire a Giosa. Few would actually become Giosa owners through that chance, but the opportunity itself was open to all.
'Of the three options, the first and third are possible. But the first is obviously out of the question.'
The Giosa of unclear ownership was the ValderGiosa, currently embedded in her soul. It could never be brought forward. Even setting aside the Giosa owners with their potential memories, revealing that she possessed a cursed sword was catastrophically dangerous.
Having a masterless cursed sword was one thing - but she was its master. Concealing ownership was not a realistic option.
And the moment she relinquished ownership, she would lose everything she remembered.
'Breaking into the Giosa Hall... is not a simple task. Even if I succeeded, I would have the Celestial Knights as enemies for life. In the end, there is only one path.'
If she became a formal Celestial Knight, she could obtain a Giosa through legitimate means. After acquiring a second Giosa, she could release ValderGiosa and report it as a newly discovered masterless cursed sword.
The Celestial Knights would seal it more thoroughly than anyone.
'Right. Become a Celestial Knight without revealing I am the cursed sword's master, enter the Giosa Hall, and claim any Giosa from the collection I built before the reversal. That's the only way. Since I gathered them myself, I know what I'm working with.'
Becoming a Celestial Knight wasn't what worried her. The problem was the Giosa owners and whether they remembered the erased timeline.
Echi turned a cold look on ValderGiosa and stood.
She positioned herself before the full-length mirror and studied her reflection.
During the years she had been consumed by the cursed sword, she had always been a girl with black hair and black eyes. Not a natural darkness - there had been a strange shimmer to it that made her origin impossible to read. Her body, covered in grime and soaked in blood and sweat, barely resembled a human being. Her clothing had been rags, her hair tangled from being seized and yanked.
She had changed so completely that even her own family would have struggled to identify her. A sharp observer might have managed it - but she had never given anyone that chance.
As a result, no one had connected her to Echinacea Roaz, daughter of Count Roaz of the Kyrier Empire. The survivors were few enough that her true appearance had never been recorded. Not even the Giosa owners had known her name. Officially, the identity of the demon wielding the cursed sword remained unknown.
Her current self, by contrast, had uncommon pink hair that was impossible to forget after a single glance, and was unmistakably an aristocrat.
'It can work. I can hide it.'
She just had to be Echinacea Roaz, noble daughter. There was no thread connecting that woman to a blood-soaked demon with a cursed sword.
And even in the worst case - even if every Giosa owner remembered everything - she simply needed to avoid anything that might remind them of her former self.
'No looking disheveled. No bare face if I can help it, and makeup when I can manage it. I'll look too different from what they remember.'
Her swordsmanship would also need a different face. She was more capable now than she had been then - she had overcome her demonic abilities rather than merely wielding them - and she could manage the adjustment.
But a knight couldn't always dress as a noble lady or wear full makeup. And if someone noticed she seemed genuinely uncomfortable whenever she wasn't, that in itself would be suspicious.
She didn't want to risk her bare face being seen. Wearing a mask in public was out of the question.
Standing out entirely was unavoidable from the start. She might have blended in during her cadet years, but the moment she set records as a knight, all eyes would fix on her - the same way they once had for Yurien.
And she had no intention of spending three years trying to stay invisible.
Three years was already too long.
Disguising herself as a man was another option she rejected immediately - she had a legitimate identity, and constructing a false one would only invite more suspicion. Her figure and face were markedly feminine besides, her chest too substantial to bind convincingly.
No matter how she turned the problem, the best option was the most obvious one - to simply be seen everywhere in extravagant clothing and give people a natural reason to expect it.
'I'll be a difficult woman. I loathe getting dirty, loathe sweating, loathe appearing before others without being properly dressed, and I absolutely refuse to wear anything as shabby as training clothes.'
It was not a difficult role to play. She had genuinely enjoyed dressing up before the cursed sword swallowed her life, and Echinacea Roaz had, in fact, been known as exactly this kind of demanding, high-maintenance noble lady.
All she needed to do was abandon the practical instinct to dress appropriately for the situation. That would be inconvenient when it came to handling a sword & but inconvenient was manageable.
'Since I'll always need gloves because of the pattern...I can simply say I wear them to protect my hands.'
That excuse would never fly in an ordinary knight order. But in the Celestial Knights, it would. As long as she upheld the basic duties of a knight and the obligations of the Order, no one would meddle in the particulars. The knights came from diverse nations and were each master-level by definition - discipline on personal matters was loose.
There should be no issue becoming a knight for the sole reason of her clothing. Her actual skill was the thing she would need to conceal - it was exceptional enough that she would have to deliberately underperform.
She was confident that, dressed in a full petticoat and high heels, she could hold her own against a Giosa owner. Without using ValderGiosa, of course. Since her body was not yet re-trained to its former level, if the opponent happened to be Yurien - or if she faced more than two Giosa owners at once - she would have to use it. But that was the result of ability honed through years of exhausting her demonic talent.
It would be plausible to claim that a sheltered noble girl had simply taught herself swordsmanship in private. If anyone doubted that self-study could produce such results, she could insist she was a prodigy.
That wouldn't even be a lie.
So: a peculiar, prodigiously gifted knight who showed up in ballgowns, full makeup, and high heels.
It was so absurd it seemed like something out of a terrible romance novel - which was precisely what she liked about it. It would be very difficult to connect a figure that laughable with the demon of the cursed sword.
'All right. People will curse me, but they won't suspect me. Being mocked is rather charming compared to what I used to hear.'