The Primordial Witch Takes a Stroll Through the Royal Capital
A continent ruled by swords and magic. The human royal capital, Artemis, is protected from external threats by a guardian contract with witches. Witches cannot be killed by humans or other races—only by fellow witches. But the First Witch, Theresia, is the exception: no witch she created can harm her.
Sierra, the White Witch, is twenty years old. She chose to side with humanity, a stubborn and unyielding guardian. One night, sensing an unfathomable presence approaching the capital, Sierra goes
The Primordial Witch Takes a Stroll Through the Royal Capital - A Cracked Teacup
Morning light slipped in through the gaps in the window, thin and pale.
The chill of night still lingered inside the earthen-walled house, and Shiera's bare feet, freed from the bedding, were cold. She sat up and for a while could not move.
(So I slept here.)
The events of the previous night returned to her slowly. In the house of the one she had pointed her sword at, she had drunk tea, exchanged words, and in the end, stayed the night. Since leaving the Royal Capital, this was the first time she had slept properly under a roof.
Her body was heavy. The wounds from the battle in the Royal Capital were beginning to close, but the fatigue of a long journey had settled deep into her bones. Her white overcoat was still stained with mud and dust. Her long silver hair was tangled and mussed from sleep.
Shiera unconsciously touched the ring finger of her left hand. A silver ring. The proof of succession passed down through the generations of White Witches. Its cold touch pulled her back to reality.
(I am the White Witch.)
(The guardian who protects the Royal Capital.)
(And yet, now, I—)
As if to shake off the thought, Shiera stood.
A faint sound came from within the house. A crackling, popping sound—dry, like something snapping. Then a soft, fragrant smell drifted toward her.
It was the scent of tea.
She looked toward the earthen floor. Arke was sitting before the hearth.
Her back was turned. Thin shoulders. Her dull flaxen hair was tied back in a single knot. The same faded, unbleached clothes as last night. Her sleeves were rolled up, and she was carefully roasting tea leaves in a small iron pan.
Her movements were astonishingly quiet, without a single wasted motion.
The tea leaves in the pan shifted color slightly. The fragrance grew stronger. Arke took the pan off the fire and transferred the leaves to a wooden vessel. Then, at last, she turned around.
"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"
Arke's voice was gentle, just as it had been the night before.
Shiera could not answer right away.
(This woman is the one I pointed my sword at.)
(And yet she speaks to me as naturally as if I were her little sister.)
"...Yeah. No problems."
Shiera answered briefly.
Arke smiled a little.
"I see. You look better than yesterday. Are you hungry? I steamed some potatoes. Help yourself."
"...I'll take some."
Shiera washed her face at the water bucket in the corner of the earthen floor. The water was cold, numbing her fingertips. The drowsiness vanished in an instant.
Then she sat down beside Arke, keeping a small distance between them.
In the hearth on the earthen floor, the fire still smoldered. Steam rose from the iron kettle, wavering white in the morning light.
Arke held out a plate with steamed potatoes. Shiera took it without a word.
The potatoes were fluffy and had a simple taste. A few grains of salt had been sprinkled over them.
"The potatoes from this village are sweet and delicious. The soil must suit them."
Arke said this while biting into a potato herself.
Shiera kept eating in silence.
(Calm down.)
(I came here to find out.)
(Whether this woman can truly kill Theresia.)
When she finished the potato, Arke transferred the roasted tea leaves into a teapot and poured hot water over them.
With a soft hiss, the scent of tea rose.
Arke lined up two teacups on a wooden tray.
The moment Shiera saw those cups, something small creaked deep in her chest.
The same cups Arke had offered her last night. White ceramic with a single thin indigo line traced along the rim. Simple, but the care in their making was evident in how good they felt to hold.
(I accepted this cup.)
(From the hand of the one I pointed my sword at.)
Arke poured tea into the cups.
The amber liquid swayed quietly inside the white vessels.
"Here. It's hot, so be careful."
Shiera wrapped both hands around the cup.
Warmth spread slowly through her palms.
Beyond the steam, Arke picked up her own cup.
"...So, what will you do today?"
Arke said quietly, after taking a sip of tea.
Shiera kept her eyes on her cup and spoke.
"There's something I want to ask."
"All right. What is it?"
"Can you kill Theresia?"
Shiera's voice was hard and direct.
Arke's hand, bringing the cup to her lips, stopped for just a moment.
But immediately, as if nothing had happened, she drank.
"...We talked about that yesterday too. I told you I don't know."
"'I don't know' isn't good enough. You are Theresia's daughter. You should carry the Progenitor's blessing. But the scent of your magic is different from other witches. Decisively different from mine, and from the witches close to Theresia's blood."
Shiera's fingers tightened unconsciously around the cup.
"Why? Why are you the only one who's different? Why are you in this village? Why do you live pretending to be human? Whether you can kill Theresia or not—you actually know, don't you?"
The questions poured out one after another.
Questions that had smoldered deep in her chest ever since she left the Royal Capital.
The true nature of the obsession that had driven her to walk all the way to the frontier, searching for a means to kill.
Arke quietly accepted all of Shiera's questions.
Then, slowly, she set her cup down on the wooden tray.
"...These tea leaves, you see, are harvested from the slope on the south side of the village. Picked in early autumn and roasted like this, the fragrance is at its best. This year there was little rain, so the leaves are small—and because of that, the flavor is deeper."
Shiera frowned.
"What are you saying? Answer my question."
"Yes. That's why I'm talking right now. About the tea leaves."
"I don't care about tea leaves."
"It's not that you don't care. The tea you're drinking right now was brewed from those leaves. The taste of this village's autumn is spreading through your mouth. Is that something you don't care about?"
Arke tilted her head, the gentle smile still on her face.
Shiera bit her lip.
(This woman is deflecting.)
(Tea leaves. The village. She keeps running from the heart of it.)
"...Are you mocking me?"
Shiera's voice dropped low.
"I'm not mocking you. It's just that the answer you want can't come from my mouth. Even if I told you, it wouldn't help you. So instead, I'm talking about what's right here."
"Whether it helps me or not is for me to decide. Not you."
"You're right. That's exactly right."
Arke nodded honestly.
That honesty only stoked Shiera's irritation further.
"Then answer. Why is the scent of your magic different from mine? You are Theresia's daughter just as I am—why are you so utterly alien?"
Shiera looked straight into Arke's eyes.
The gray eyes reflected the morning light, shining sharply.
Arke held Shiera's gaze and was silent for a while.
The hearth fire crackled.
The water in the iron kettle hissed.
"...I suppose you're right. My magic might be a little different from yours. But what does that matter? The scent of a witch's magic changes endlessly depending on where she was raised, what system of magic she uses."
"No. It's not a superficial difference like that. The scent of your magic is fundamentally different. It's like the scent of a different creature altogether. It's unlike any witch I've ever met."
"Hmm. You've met a lot of witches, then?"
"...As the White Witch, I have protected the Royal Capital. I've had no small number of encounters with our kind."
"I see. Then the reason my scent differs from the witches you know must be because I've lived here in this village, imitating humans. Tilling fields, steaming potatoes, roasting tea. If you keep up a life like that for decades, even the scent of your magic changes."
Arke laughed.
"Look, even your overcoat smells more of earth than it did when you were in the Royal Capital. It's the same thing."
Shiera looked down at her overcoat.
Indeed, the white fabric was dulled with mud and dust.
But that wasn't the issue.
"Don't deflect. That's not what I'm asking."
"I'm not deflecting. I'm telling you what I know. The answer you want simply isn't inside me."
"Then why are you in this village? Why does Theresia's daughter live in a frontier place like this, pretending to be human?"
Shiera's voice sharpened.
Arke took a sip of tea.
"...The children of this village are good children. Yesterday they picked nuts and left them in front of the house. Autumn nuts, when you roast them, are faintly sweet. I'll share some with you next time."
"Arke!"
Shiera raised her voice without thinking.
Her grip on the teacup tightened.
Her fingertips went white.
Arke showed no sign of surprise. She looked at Shiera.
"What is it, shouting like that? You'll startle the village children."
"...I didn't come here to play. I came to hear an answer. Can you kill Theresia? Do you have the will to kill her? That's all I want to know."
Shiera kept her voice low, but spoke clearly.
Arke gazed at Shiera's face for a while.
Her eyes were as gentle as ever.
"...You're tired, aren't you."
Arke said softly.
"What?"
"You have dark circles under your eyes. You haven't been sleeping properly since you left the Royal Capital, have you. And your hands—they're trembling. The hands holding that cup are trembling, just slightly. You're more exhausted than you realize. That's why you're so irritable."
Shiera looked at her own hands.
Indeed, the fingertips holding the cup were trembling faintly.
(I'm trembling?)
(From something like this?)
"...Never mind about me."
"I can't do that. You're my little sister. So I worry."
"I am not your little sister."
Shiera shot back reflexively.
"We're connected by blood, aren't we? We were born from the same mother."
"Theresia is not my mother. She is merely the one who gave birth to me. She never raised me, never gave me anything. She simply—gave birth to me."
Shiera's voice rang cold.
"...Perhaps. But to me, Mother is Mother. She gave me many things. This house, these tea utensils, this life in this village. All of it, she gave me."
Arke traced her fingertip along the cup in her hand, as if cherishing it.
"So even if you say you want to kill Mother, I can't really understand that feeling."
"You don't need to understand. I just want to know whether you can kill her."
"...Why do you want to kill Mother so badly? What happened in the Royal Capital?"
Arke's question was quiet and direct.
Shiera tried to answer, and swallowed her words.
(What happened in the Royal Capital.)
(Theresia did nothing.)
(She simply came, watched, and left.)
(And yet the Royal Capital burned, through the conspiracy of the Apostles of the Ash Crown.)
(People died.)
(I couldn't protect them.)
"...It's none of your business."
Shiera spat the words out.
Arke looked a little sad.
"I see. ...But if you're making a face that painful, something must have happened."
"I am not making a painful face."
"You are. Right now, you're making a very painful face. You might not realize it yourself."
Shiera had no words to answer Arke's.
Silence filled the earthen floor.
The hearth fire crackled again.
The tea in the cups had already gone lukewarm.
Shiera gripped her cup tight.
(No.)
(I'm not in pain.)
(I'm angry.)
(At myself, for not being able to reach Theresia.)
(At myself, for not being able to land a single wound, no matter how many times I point my sword at her.)
(At myself, for not being able to protect anything.)
Her fingertips tightened.
The ceramic surface bit into her palm.
"...You call Theresia your mother. With that mouth, tell me you can kill her. Tell me you'll kill her. Then I won't need to point my sword at you. Together, you and I can—"
"Are you telling me to kill Mother?"
Arke cut off Shiera's words.
Her voice was as gentle as ever.
But deep in her eyes, for the first time, something wavered.
"...That's an impossible request. I don't want to kill Mother. I don't know if I even can. And I have no intention of helping you."
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