The one who knocks on the door is just a visitor, nothing more.
It was December. On the floor where dying embers burned shadows.
I desperately wanted tomorrow to come and tried to forget his death and the sadness that came from it by reading books.
The man who would forever be nameless in this place.
I left the door wide open for any visitors who might be standing outside.
There was nothing there but darkness, nothing.
I stared into that darkness for a long time. Puzzling, fearing, doubting, and dreaming dreams no one had ever dared to dream.
I whispered, "Vikir!" and only the words came back as an echo, "Vikir!"
Only these words, nothing else.
As I closed the door, every soul in me on fire, I heard a knock, loud and clear.
Just the wind, nothing.
I opened the door, and a raven, flapping its wings in a loud flutter, puddleduck! I stepped inside.
Up, perched, and that was it.
I smiled sadly and spoke to the solemn bird.
Its head is shorn and naked, but it is not a coward. Tell me your old and noble name, dreadful raven that wanders the dark shores.
And the crow said, "Nevermore."
I spoke again.
Prophet, wicked one! Tell me, whether in life or in death I shall ever meet again that noble and radiant man whom the gods have named Vikir!
And the crow said, "Nevermore."
I was enraged.
That fiend must go back. To the netherworld of night. Without leaving behind a single black feather, the mark of a liar.
And the crow said, "Nevermore."
So the crow never flew, but sat still, still, still.
Its eyes are like the eyes of a demon dreaming fiendishly, and the light of the lantern beneath it casts evil shadows.
There is no escape for my soul from those shadows cast upon the floor...
...for ever.
-Morg Camus from 『The Raven, Diary of a December』-
*Quote from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Jackdaw"
* * *
Camus closed the diary.
Tucking the journal that contained all her memories under her arm, she set out for the city.
Her destination was the most famous place in the entire Imperial Capital, the Colosseo Academy.
The Academy's gates were wide open for the Halloween festival, which allowed outsiders to enter.
The gates of the Colosseo are so high that you have to raise your chin as high as you can to see through them.
The enormous crowd inside, the lights.
For a moment, Camus followed their movements with wistful eyes.
'If I had lived a normal life, would I be here now?'
Good men and women her own age, or perhaps slightly older, bustled about.
Men and women, arm in arm, holding hands, or on the verge of holding hands, were building or decorating booths, doing business, or just enjoying themselves as guests.
If Camus had grown up normally, she would have been the prodigy of her family by now, growing up to be beautiful, and gaining early admission to the Academy.
She would have cried and laughed with her classmates, created a festival bar, peddled her wares in the streets, and cooked in the kitchen.
And her cousin Rose, who probably entered the academy with her or a year or two later, would be smiling shyly next to her.
Also next to her, ....
"'He' is a good at cooking, so he probably cooked in the kitchen, and then I would take it and serve it to the guests. ...No, he's handsome, so I'd have to ask him out, and I'd have a hard time because there would be a lot of girls clinging to him. But then again, I wasn't the kind of girl who could get away with anything."
Camus smiled bitterly.
Beside her, Rose, who had become Lich, nodded.
Then.
Turning an alley, Camus stopped short at a large mirror in the street.
She wore a raggedy cloak and a ghoulish skull mask.
Her reflection was a ghastly sight, no match for the pretty schoolgirls crying, laughing, and enjoying themselves at the festival.
"...."
Camus looked away from the mirror for a moment.
Boom.
The moment she looked away, the mirror shattered into hundreds of pieces.
A life of normal birth, normal growth, normal entrance into a good school, normal rise to a high position, normal relationship with a good man, normal marriage, normal children, normal growing old, normal closing her eyes in the love and respect of everyone.
You can't expect that kind of life anymore.
The life of the gossipy girls at the academy is now a completely different story. A life that would never apply to her.
Camus thought so.
And then.
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
At the night market that night, amidst the fireworks and cherry blossoms. Camus met the love of her life.
The one she'd been hoping for. The face she'd never seen, not even in her dreams.
Vikir. Vikir Van Baskerville.
He was at the school festival bar.
"...! ...! ...!"
Camus doubted her eyes.
But no matter how hard she squinted, that face definitely belonged to Vikir.
"...He, did he have a sister?"
No way.
I had researched my potential husband's family history.
There are no women in his family. No daughters are born.
Daughters have been scarce in this family ever since the disappearance of their only daughter, Penelope, a long time ago, as if a curse had been placed on them.
Camus walked forward as if mesmerized.
She was about to meet the girl. Or at least get a clue.
Her faint hopes were becoming concrete certainties, pointing the way forward.
Just then, she approached a festival bar with a sign that read, "Newspaper Department Ryukeion."
[...Who are you, hanging out at someone else's place of business?]
A familiar outfit. The Night Hound stops me in my tracks. Only this time, it was someone else.
You again.
Camus was furious.
The clues she'd barely gotten, the hopes she'd barely gotten, kept getting in the way.
She had come here to see the man she had loved for so long, and she was prepared to stop at nothing.
"Get out of the way."
There would be no second mercy.
* * *
And now time has passed again.
… Paat!
Geronto brought the crippled Camus back to the lair and healed her using the Life Vessel.
Despite the massive amount of Highly Concentrated Mana Potion flowing into her body, she barely recovered.
However.
"...Puha! I almost missed it for real this time."
She barely managed to cling to her consciousness after being sent to death's door and back.
As soon as she woke up, she checked her body.
"My body has become a rag. But whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as you have time, you can treat anything."
More importantly, Vikir was alive.
"...Yes. He was alive. That's why I couldn't meet him. Stupid, why did I think he was dead?"
I can't stop laughing, even through my bloodied, battered body. I can't stop the corners of my mouth from turning up.
"And then I checked his heart at the end, and he couldn't kill me after all, because he has a heart!"
Camus can't fully fathom Vikir's mind, but Camus can intuit that Vikir crossed a threshold when he was torn between killing her and not killing her.
It was at that point that Camus took another look at her body.
Most of the wounds on her body were the result of Seere's rampage, and none of Vikir's wounds were on her limbs.
None of them were fatal, and even those were healing quickly.
Camus looked at Rose beside her.
"Didn't Vikir try to kill me at the end, when I was running away?"
Nodded.
Suddenly, Rose's memory came back to Camus.
"...It worked."
Camus smiles wryly.
When she had first met Vikir as a night hound, she could have killed him, but a strange intuition had kept her from doing so.
It was the same with Vikir.
He let the unconscious Camus go, which meant he trusted her and Rose.
The possibility that Camus could not only come back to life on her own, but that she could eventually break free of the demon's grip.
"...So then, how should we live up to my husband's expectations?"
Camus's eyes suddenly calmed down.
With her eyes closed, she could see into the depths of her mind, into the abyss.
There was a high, steep cliff.
A peak jutted out from the edge of the cliff, and there was someone clinging to the edge.
[Ouch! Help! Somebody help me!].
It was Seere.
Her connection to Camus had been severed by Vikir, and she was pushed to the very bottom of her consciousness.
She was reduced to the size of an infant.
Camus had regained nearly 99.99% control of her body, and the parts of her body that had been rendered half-dead were fully restored thanks to Seere's efforts to repair the damage.
Most of Seere's consciousness had been extinguished by Vikir, so very little of Seere's consciousness remained in Camus's mind.
In terms of juice, it was about the amount of juice that would remain on the surface of a glass after it had been poured into it and drained.
It would be an exaggeration to say there was none.
Camus asked.
"Why aren't you completely annihilated?"
[That's because... you broke the 12 hour contract, and that penalty kept me alive a little bit].
During the fight with Vikir, Camus had violated Seere's privileges.
As a result, Seree is currently acting with a little bit of life in her body.
"Hmph~"
Camus stood on the cliff and stroked her chin.
Then the sulking Seere grabbed onto Camus's toes and begged.
[Please, please don't let me go, after all we've been through together!]
She did. Camus spoke in a cold tone.
"A fearless brat who relied on her talent and her will."
[...e?]
"Hohoho-there's a guy you really want to meet again? What kind of fool risks her life for that?"
[Uh, uhhh...…]
"If I had a face like this and a body like this, I would never have lived like that, I'd have gotten stronger by beating young males and draining his blood. Ah, life is really difficult in this world."
[Hic!]
The things Camus was saying now were the same lines she had said to Vikir when Seere was in 100% control of her body.
Seere swallowed hard.
Camus spoke to her in a cold voice.
"Listen, don't judge people by your standards. He's not one of those fishy males, he's the real deal. Do you understand?"
[Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!]
"Yeah. He's a man worth risking your life for."
Camus regained full control of her body.
Seere's insignificant share, at best, would be enough to make her itch like a mosquito bite for about a second, once a day.
Camus. She was once again the master of her own life.
A master who has complete control over her body and soul. The queen of Red and Black Mountain.
"Get down."
In her consciousness, her command is absolute.
Seere cried out in her diminished form.
[...hiing].
And just like that, Seere had surrendered all of her power and strength to Camus.
It was the moment when a bilateral contract turned into a one-sided master-servant relationship.
The black mage gained demonic powers.
Camos smirked as she held the ever-smaller Seere on her fingertips.
"Your prophecy was correct, for you did lead me to him after all."
Vikir had come to Camus in the course of a demon hunter's search for a demon, but the prophecy had been fulfilled anyway.
Climbing gingerly onto Camus's finger, Seere looked up and asked.
[Hey, what are we going to do now?]
"Well. Should we open the gate?"
[Zee, seriously!? Are you really going to do that?]
"You're kidding. Am I crazy?"
Seere visibly frowns at Camus's words.
Camus smiles brightly.
"The world can't end now. As long as he's alive and I am alive."
[...So what are you going to do now?]
"I'm going to heal my broken body for a while. Someone's been messing with it."
[Meh, sorry, I didn't mean to do that....]
Under Camus's gaze, Seere completely shrank.
She was sweating so profusely that it was like looking at a piece of butter thrown onto a hot pan.
Camus was really starting to think about what to do next.
"There are many things I need to prepare to be a good bride, and I'll start one by one as I recover."
[Bri, bride? Get married?]
"Then I have to do it. After all this trouble, what if I meet him again and he's already gone?"
[You love him that much?]
Seere asked in disbelief, and Camus nodded emphatically.
"Yes. I love him so much."
So much so that I want to be next to him, even if he's dead.
Or that she wanted to be next to him even if she was dead.
A man who has to kill a woman to prevent the end of the world. And a woman who doesn't care if the world ends as long as she can be with him.
In the end, they come to a dramatic conclusion. One where no one has to be unhappy, and everyone can be happy.
"For now, I must return to Morg. Highsis, Midsis, and Lowsis, those thundering sisters, must be thrilled that I'm gone. I must go get them back in line."
I can already see how happy my sisters will be to see me.
Only then was Camus able to smile with a playful smile appropriate for his age.
"I'll say hi to my mom, and visit my uncle... and again."
Suddenly, her expression grew heavy.
Morg Snake.
She had to announce his death to the world.
What a noble and holy sacrifice he had made, and he needed to be given a funeral worthy of it.
"First and foremost, it is imperative that I carry on my master's work."
It was necessary to take full control of the Dark Hall, which had fallen into disarray during Snake's long absence.
Representative. Camus had formed the idea in her mind that she would succeed her master as head of the Dark Hall.
The death of Snake, who had ruled the Dark Hall for decades, would trigger another election of Representative and a nasty power struggle.
Into the mix would come Camus, who has been in hiding for the past few years due to her training.
Once again, she is a black mage with demonic powers.
A being who has fully absorbed the power of Seere, the Great Demon King of Bones and Corpses, who can kill livestock and bring them back to life.
"Once I've completely conquered the Dark Hall, I'll become a Representative and rise to the same rank as Uncle Adolf."
It would be quite a task, but Camus was confident.
In fact, no matter what I do, it will be much easier than bringing the dead back to life.
And then again....
Camus looked up.
In the distance, far, far away, she could see the night sky of the Imperial Capital.
The place with the sharp spire and high walls is the 'Colosseo Academy.'
Finally, Camus's mouth opened.
"When I get in, I'll be in class 21."
A junior one grade lower.
But she was confident nonetheless.
"The day I come back, I'll be...."
Camus's eyes glowed black.
She looked to Vikir in the distance, her voice full of confidence.
"You are mine."
It was a possessive desire so strong that even the Demon King Seere shivered for a moment.