97

“Please sit.”

“Thank you for your hospitality.”

Aileen sat opposite Hamel.

After a year, she looked very different from the woman he had seen before. The Aileen he remembered from the Rengbaster domain had been thin and fragile, worn down by months of suffering under the stigma of wealth. Back then she had seemed on the verge of death; now she appeared healthy—she had put on weight and her steps had a new strength.

Yet something about her was off. Her whole bearing felt precarious. Her formal gestures and fixed smile looked like a mask, an effort that seemed beyond her.

“I am late in my greetings to my benefactor.”

“…No. I am not someone worthy of being called a benefactor.”

“If it weren’t for you, neither I nor Rengbaster would be in this world anymore—how can you say otherwise?”

Aileen met Hamel’s eyes without wavering, and he flinched at the steadiness of that gaze. He bowed his head in return and nodded quietly.

“I can only thank you for saying that.”

“It’s simply the truth. Thank you for saving me and the domain that day.”

Aileen bowed gracefully, and Hamel found himself bowing too.

After a short silence she lifted her head. “I have been continually told of your heroic deeds.”

“…The stories are a bit exaggerated.”

“Are they?”

She tilted her head and then counted off her accomplishments on her fingers: defeating a super-class demon in the Rengbaster domain, driving out the demons of Haidern and becoming its lord, recruiting the persecuted druid clan in Sorn, rescuing Lonelybirch from the demons’ grasp, and stopping tens of thousands of barbarians marching on Sturnhelm.

When she finished she looked him in the eye and asked, “Which of these is exaggerated?”

Hamel hesitated. None of it could reasonably be called an exaggeration—if anything, the tales left out the old gods, the evil gods, and the dragon. Those details had clearly been controlled. He nodded.

“There’s nothing in particular.”

“As expected… you’re a remarkable person.”

Her eyes brightened and she straightened, placing both hands on her knees.

Hamel felt his attention narrow—so now to the main point. He watched her closely as her lips parted.

“Have you ever heard the name Marvas?”

The name hit him like a cold stone. How could she know that name, and why ask it? Questions flared in his mind, but he kept his face composed. The silence between them grew louder than any answer.

“You know of him.”

“Yes, I know.”

Hamel admitted it. Aileen’s eyes widened—she had not expected such an easy admission.

The atmosphere shifted. Hamel’s voice went cool. “I should be the one asking. What do you know about him, and how much do you know?”

“Sir Hamel… you are truly different from how you appear.”

Aileen let out a small exclamation. The humble woman who had bowed earlier vanished; in her place sat an interrogator with a sharp gaze.

“Answer me.”

Hamel’s demand was unyielding. Aileen flinched; his resolve wrapped around her like a warning. She had not intended to reveal everything, but she had no choice. She gave a hollow smile.

“Very well. I will tell you everything.”

She raised her hands and began.

The night the mysterious man came to her room, Aileen wandered the silent mansion until dawn. Only one thing drew her attention: a bleeding corpse.

Corpse after corpse—stable master, butler, cook, guards—and even her father, the head of the household. All of them were dead.

How? No—more importantly, why? She could not accept it. The stigma that had tormented her was gone. Weren’t the hard times over? Shouldn’t there be only happiness now?

Her mind shut down. She sat stunned in the empty mansion and could not move even as maggots crawled over her father’s body. If the village chief hadn’t come days later, she likely would have died right there. She had already broken; even when awake she felt like she was drifting through a dream. She performed her duties as lord out of obligation, ate and slept when required—that was all. Desire and will had vanished.

Then a group arrived: the order’s heresy inquisitors. They suggested the massacre might be the work of evil-god worshipers.

“Evil god… worshipers?” Aileen’s childhood tales returned to her in a cold tremor.

“Yes. The mark you mentioned on the household head is definitely that of the evil god Marvas. Furthermore, those capable of such brutal deeds are only these scoundrels.”

“Why would they…”

“What reason could those bastards have? They simply follow an evil god.”

They do it to instill fear in humans, to praise their god’s name—often for no reason beyond devotion. To worshipers of an evil god, human life is as worthless as a fly.

All her family had to die for such a petty cause.

Aileen’s repressed scream burst out. Once it began, her cries poured from her like a dam breaking. The inquisitors watched with awkward expressions but offered little comfort. One tapped her shoulder.

“We are pursuing them as well. If we find anything, we will inform you.”

She couldn’t reply then, but something began to grow in the empty place inside her: hatred. A terrible, consuming hatred that seemed ready to burn everything away. This, she realized, was her reason to live.

I will kill them.

Every single one—leaving none alive. The evil god and all its followers. Veins stood out at her temples, her eyes reddened, and her fingernails bit into her palms. Still she rehearsed the vow endlessly.

“…And that is how it happened,” she finished calmly.

Hamel remained silent, watching.

“Since then I’ve been tracking the evil-god worshipers. I’ve gathered information and hired mercenaries to catch them.”

She glanced toward the mansion’s exterior, where the group that had escorted her to Haidern waited. Devil hunters, perhaps—civilians who made their living hunting demons. They weren’t of the order like him, and their training couldn’t match Exorcist priests, but many had spent their lives fighting demons and a few were truly skilled. Hiring such fighters was expensive; Rengbaster’s coffers would soon be drained.

Hamel set aside that worry and focused on her words. Leaving aside how the inquisitors knew about the evil gods, their claim matched the evidence: the mark on her father had been Marvas’s. A brief pang of guilt touched him—what if he had not brought Daniel? Would the mansion still have been spared? It was a meaningless what-if about the past, but he could not stop himself from thinking it.

“Do you still seek revenge?” he asked.

She smiled without answering—the same hardened mask he had seen when he first met her. He saw his former self in her: a specter consumed by vengeance, physically present but not truly there. Aileen’s life had frozen on that night.

After a pause she spoke slowly. “The reason I asked if you knew Marvas is because of the proposal I’m about to make.”

“A proposal?”

She nodded. “Yes. According to my recent intelligence, evil-god worshipers’ activity has been detected at the eastern edge—at Solmer. In the worst case, the lord of that place is suspected to be behind it.”

Hamel could not bring himself to say ‘surely not.’ Even an upper-tier demon like Vinea had once puppeteered the lord of Lonelybirch.

Aileen’s eyes shone. “So here’s my proposal. Will you help me capture the evil-god worshipers? I will give you all the honor and spoils gained from taking them.”

He considered it. He, too, had been deeply entangled with evil-god cultists, and if they preyed on the powerless, it was right to act. But her intelligence was vague—too little detail to move on alone. His priority was to pursue the half-demons.

Finally he decided. “I will send a letter to the bishop of the Lettria diocese.”

Instead of directly joining her, he would request the order’s intervention. If he informed Bishop Arcen, sufficient measures would be taken; the order would press the lord of Solmer.

“That will suffice.”

Aileen nodded. Disappointment flickered across her face for a moment, then she rose to leave. At the doorway she paused and turned back.

“By any chance… has anyone with brown hair wearing a hood visited since that day?”

Hamel blinked at the odd question. Brown hair and a hood were hardly distinctive. Seeing his puzzled look, she shook her head, relieved. “Then it’s good you haven’t seen him. Lord Daniel is all right, isn’t he?”

“Yes. As you saw earlier, he’s fine. But why do you ask?”

“It’s… nothing.”

Her answer trailed off; she turned away with a guilty expression.

“Then, until next time.”

“Yes. May divine guidance be with your path.”

A moment later Hamel watched Aileen’s party disappear beyond the mansion windows.

Brown hair. Hood. And… Daniel.

The memory of Daniel’s story from a year ago surfaced—the brown-haired Exorcist priest who had killed his family. Could there be a connection? Hamel thought of the suspicious brown-haired man he had met in Snowglom who read his fortune and told him to go north. The threads seemed distant—he must have met a thousand brown-haired men on his travels, and the priest in Daniel’s tale was a figure from nearly twenty years ago—but an uneasy feeling lingered.

Hamel kept turning the thought over in his mind.