Reid, once a renowned archmage of the empire, is now 42 and living in secluded retirement in the remote village of Kazami. His glory days are behind him, and he's treated with mild pity by the village youth. When rumors of an imperial invasion from the east threaten the borderlands, the village girls dismiss his concerns. Witnessing ominous signs, Reid resolves to protect his fragile peace.
The problem is his declined body and magic. He turns to a forbidden art: 'Mana Fusion,' a technique that
The Gray Wizard Rises Again - Traces of the Horn and Old Hatred—The Unstable Triangle of Three
The plateau before dawn held almost no sound at all.
The eastern ridge line was dark, and only the outline of the Blue Peak Mountains was carved out against the starlight. There was wind. The usual east wind, but tonight it carried moisture. Raid walked the village perimeter, thinking about what that moisture meant.
—Three days ago, Aira had said "I hate them" in front of the campfire.
Raid still hadn't fully digested those words. He hadn't denied them or affirmed them. He'd only replied, "I see." Whether that had been the right response, he still didn't know. But—he was certain of one thing: it had been right not to press her further. Human hatred chooses which fingers it allows to touch it.
He turned back along the patrol route at the village edge. He passed by the herb-processing shed and was reaching the east fence for inspection when it happened.
Something was in the shadow of a rock.
More precisely—someone had collapsed there.
Raid stopped. Instinctively he ran mana through his circuits. The blue scar on his left arm grew faintly warm. A battlefield-trained alertness—his body judged friend or foe before his mind did. But the heat subsided quickly. Not an enemy. A human—no, something close to human. A small figure.
He approached.
Silver hair reflected the starlight, gleaming.
A short bob silhouette. A small body lying face-down. The cloth around her flank was dark. Blood. Around her ankle, rope burn—marks where cord had bitten into the skin, scraping it red.
Raid crouched and touched her shoulder.
"Hey."
A faint sound came back. Not words. She was conscious. Barely.
An arrow wound in her side—the broken shaft was still lodged in place. The angle was sharp. Shot while running, or hit while hiding behind cover. He could tell it was a wound taken during flight.
When he saw the girl's face, Raid paused for a single beat.
In the center of her forehead, there was a horn-like trace, remaining like a pattern.
A demon.
Whether that confirmation changed anything—it didn't. The decision to carry her into the shed had been made before he'd seen her forehead. The depth of the wound and her fading consciousness had decided it.
He lifted the girl. Light. Far lighter than he'd expected.
He lit only the minimum in the shed. He moved the spellbooks to the side of the desk and laid the girl on top. Carefully he pulled the arrow from her side—there was resistance. Deep. But it had missed the vital points. The rope burns on her ankle were only abrasions.
He began treatment.
He pressed the wound and wrapped cloth around it. In the process, he had to roll up the hem of her shirt.
Heat transferred to his fingertips.
Demon body temperature was higher than human—he knew that as fact. But feeling it in his palm, the warmth was like a heated stone—quiet and certain. The softness was no different from human skin. Only the temperature was different.
During the Third Border Campaign—the last great war in which the Empire and the Eastern demons had clashed for three years—Raid had known that same heat. When he'd checked the hand of a demon who'd died on the battlefield. Even then, the body heat that reached his palm had been no different from a human's.
"Demons die at the same temperature as humans."
In a voice too low to call a murmur, Raid whispered it. Not to anyone. Just as if confirming.
He rewrapped the bandage. Adjusting so the pressure was even. His fingertips, touching the wound, inevitably felt the resilience of the girl's skin. Young. Sixteen or seventeen, in human terms. When he imagined where this child had been fleeing from when she took this wound, something dull settled deep in his chest.
He finished the treatment and pulled a blanket over her.
He drew up a chair and sat before the spellbooks.
He didn't think he'd sleep. He didn't sleep. Until the eastern sky began to pale, Raid simply counted the girl's breaths.
When morning light came through the shed window, there was a knock at the door.
"Raid-san, I have a report."
Just from the voice, he knew she was back from patrol. Raid stood and opened the door.
Aira entered. Morning dew glistened on the shoulders of her leather armor. She held a report in her hand, green eyes facing straight ahead—and in the next instant, they caught the bulge under the blanket.
One second. She stopped.
Two seconds.
Her right hand moved reflexively to the hilt of her sword. Before her fingers could touch it, Raid's hand stopped her.
"Wait."
"...Who is that?"
Her voice was calm. But that calmness was the calmness of suppressing emotion, not the calmness of being composed. Her green eyes went back and forth between the blanket, Raid, and the blanket.
Then the blanket stirred.
Silver short bob emerged. The odd-colored eyes looked first at the ceiling. Then at Raid. Then at Aira.
Lilia opened her mouth.
"Mister, is there an Empire person here?"
The room fell into a strange stillness.
Aira didn't move, her hand still on her sword hilt. Raid didn't move a single eyebrow. Only Lilia looked between the two with a blank expression.
After a breath, Aira spoke with careful propriety.
"I am a knight. Not a mister."
Lilia immediately shifted her gaze, looked at Raid, then back at Aira.
"Got it. Mister, and Armor Person."
Raid quietly looked away.
Aira's eyebrow twitched faintly.
The amicable atmosphere lasted ten seconds.
The moment Aira recognized the horn trace on Lilia's forehead, all expression vanished from her face.
"A demon."
"That's right."
"I demand her restraint and handover. Under imperial law, unauthorized presence of a demon—"
"I picked her up half-dead. Wounds from fleeing."
"Regardless, there are procedures."
Lilia tugged at Raid's sleeve.
Soundlessly, just with her fingertips. Looking up at him, saying nothing. Her eyes alone asked the question in place of words—Am I going to be caught again?
That clinging gesture made Aira's face harden another degree.
Before noon, they sat at the back table of the Red Tile Inn.
The inn-and-tavern <Red Tile Inn> was quiet during the day. The smell of mutton stew drifted from the kitchen, and Toba, without a word, placed two cups of water in front of Raid and Aira and retreated to the back.
Raid and Aira faced each other.
"My position regarding that child has not changed."
"I know."
"If you know—"
"Knowing and agreeing are different things."
Aira let out a short breath. She set the report on the table and aligned its edges with her fingertips. A meticulous gesture.
The argument continued calmly. Aira spoke based on imperial law and military regulation. Raid responded with the state of the wounds, the manner of her flight, and individual judgment gleaned from thirty years of battlefield experience. They were speaking the same language, yet their foundations were fundamentally different.
After a while, Aira said quietly.
"In a farming village near the East Corridor Fort, twelve civilians were killed by demons last year."
Raid paused a moment.
"I killed the same number of demons in that campaign."
Silence fell.
It wasn't a heavy kind of silence. It was just that both statements carried the same weight, canceling each other out—that kind of quiet.
Aira looked at the grain of the table. Then she cupped the water cup in both hands and raised her eyes.
"...My closest friend was caught in a demon spell during the eastern defense and died. She was sixteen."
Her voice didn't change. It was a tone that stated fact. An emotionless disclosure, offered as information. But Raid could tell something was clinging to the underside of that quietness.
She didn't continue further. Aira didn't continue either.
Raid didn't press.
Beyond the kitchen, Toba stirred something in a pot. A regular, steady sound. That sound filled the silence between them just right.
Afternoon sunlight streamed into the shed.
Lilia, pressing on her bandage, said "It's tight." The cloth's pressure didn't match the swelling of the wound. Raid checked and decided to rewrap it.
That was when Aira came back to deliver a report—pure coincidence.
The door opened.
The first thing Aira's gaze caught was the white skin of Lilia's flank. The cloth had loosened, and bare skin was almost visible beneath the wound. Beside her, Raid was on one knee.
Aira froze completely.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
(It's nothing. It's treatment. A treatment scene.)
While telling herself that, Aira felt a subtle heat gathering in her cheeks. Her green eyes wavered faintly. Unable to direct them anywhere, she kept her expression rigid.
Lilia looked at Aira.
"Armor Person, you helping too?"
"Unnecessary."
It was an instant reply. Only her voice was as usual. She set the report on the desk—with a force closer to slamming than setting—and walked straight outside.
The door closed.
Near the village entrance, a young soldier of the advance party spotted Aira and called out.
"Vice-Captain, is something wrong?"
Aira took a breath.
"—Nothing unusual."
The soldier tilted his head. He felt the Vice-Captain's face was slightly redder than usual, but he didn't possess the nerve to point it out.
"...Ah, understood."
Aira passed by the soldier and decided to make a full round of the village perimeter.
Inside the shed, Raid rewrapped the bandage and glanced once at the door Aira had exited through.
As he was finishing, Lilia said.
"Mister, your mana circuits feel kind of weird."
Raid's hand stopped.
Lilia's dual-colored eyes—one pale purple, the other faint amber—were looking straight at Raid. A child's purity and a demon's innate biological sensitivity dwelled in those eyes simultaneously. Demons possessed three to four times the internal mana density of humans. That perceptiveness could detect circuit abnormalities at a level even a skilled mage couldn't hide.
"Kind of weird"—the words sounded to Raid precisely, too precisely, accurate.
"...Can you keep it a secret?"
Lilia didn't answer. She just looked at Raid's face. That silence was her answer. Not "I can't" or "I won't"—but "I don't know how to handle this."
Raid tried to continue speaking, then stopped.
No matter what he said, it felt like it wouldn't get through those eyes. Calculations and scheming changed shape in front of this child.
As dusk began to dye the plateau, Raid headed for the watchtower.
A wooden observation post at four hundred twenty meters elevation—Aira was already there, in front of the fence below it. She was looking at the eastern sky. She didn't turn around.
The two stood side by side, looking in the same direction.
The ridge of the Blue Peak Mountains was stained red by the setting sun. But that red was mixed with something more than the color of sunset. It was evidence that the Akatsume tide was moving beyond the Gyocho Pass. Sixty kilometers east to the Windwatch village.
A quiet time passed.
Aira spoke first.
"My thoughts on that child's treatment have not changed."
"I know."
The red in the eastern sky spread slowly. Wind blew. Moist wind. The plateau's characteristic wind, always from the east.
"...My friend didn't hate demons."
A beat of silence.
"I hate them."
Raid, still facing east, said.
"I see."
The same words as before the campfire. The same low tone. Not pressing, not denying, not comforting—just that, and nothing more.
This time, Aira noticed. She knew it was the same response as the night before. Knowing that, she felt just a little—truly just a little—saved by that answer. She didn't let that feeling show on her face. She didn't put it into words either. She just quietly accepted it somewhere inside.
After a while, Aira tried to lift her hand from the wooden fence.
She tried to let go—but her tired body had left its weight against the fence, and her hand wouldn't move. Naturally, accidentally, Aira's hand stayed there.
It was no more than three centimeters from Raid's hand.
Neither moved.
The red in the east slowly dissolved into the darkness of night. Th
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