“Round and round, let’s draw a circle.

Let’s draw a circle to summon the bride who lays the golden eggs.”

The location for the summoning ritual requested by Cassandra Cabesa was the grand banquet hall, the largest in the ducal castle.

It was where the celebratory ball for the duke’s wedding had been held.

The place that had been firmly locked after the guests scattered in dismay when the duchess collapsed during the wedding night.

The sorceress in a black chiffon veil draped to her ankles began chanting the summoning spell as if humming a tune, fluttering the hem of her black silk dress.

Holding an ironwood stick to the floor, the woman began drawing a large round circle as if dancing.

When the large circle, dark arc, black as obsidian was complete, Cassandra stepped inside the circle with a satisfied smile.

“Pointy and pointy, let’s draw a star.

Let’s draw a star to summon the bride who lays the golden eggs.”

The tall and pointed heels, over a hand span, slid quickly across the marble banquet hall floor, clicking and clacking as they traced a black trajectory.

A pentacle, a five-pointed star, was completed inside the circle.

Cassandra slowly walked to the center of the star.

And from where she stood, an ominous black flame began burning over the circle and star that held the ancient dark power.

First from the center of the star to the points of the pentagram.

And the flames that started again from the circle where the points of the pentagram touched spread sideways and began burning over the large circle.

Papapat.

The black flames filling the circle and star shot up roughly vertically, and the candles lit around for the ritual swayed violently.

Shuk. Shuk.

The blackly undulating dark energy pushed the air fiercely like a semicircular wave.

The chandelier decorating the ceiling shook violently, and the crystal ornaments that could not withstand the pressure shattered with a puk! sound, the sparkling pieces breaking like small hail and falling to the floor.

The air tore like paper.

The glass windows facing the central garden shattered as if exploding and fell broken to the flowerbed below the building.

With the black veil flown off by the wind and facing the fierce wind that made it difficult to even stand, Cassandra Cabesa raised both arms into the air.

“Come! O soul!”

The black smoke generated from the circle and star began gathering and coalescing above the bony, skinny hands of the sorceress.

“Come! The soul of the one who took the body of Yuriella Grande!”

The coalescing black smoke took on a round shape and finally formed into a large, translucent orb.

It was a vessel to capture the soul.

Cassandra embraced the black orb too large to hold in her arms and slowly stroked it, a satisfied smile on her lips.

‘Ah. Now it’s time for revenge.’

That foolish duke.

They say love is blind. How anxious must he have been to open the cave door he didn’t open even when he was on the verge of death?

How desperate must his love be to remove all the magical restraints he had tightly bound me with?

To do what to his beloved bride, I wonder.

Once her soul enters this orb, she will never be able to escape, like a pitiful insect fallen into the bug-catching pitcher plant Nepenthes.

Your bride will be the first experimental subject for the black magic I could only write and erase formulas for in my mind while trapped in the cave. Ah, how exciting.

What should I threaten first with your wife’s soul at stake?

Should I tell you to build me a castle larger than the ducal residence?

Should I tell you to live the rest of your life in a cave catching bugs and rats to eat, just like me?

Should I order you to attack the east where my stepbrother struts around, the one who banished me to the north?

No. No. I must personally transform that Samuel into a pig and serve him on the expensive banquet plates of his beloved lovers.

And what else should I do?

Cassandra recalled the bitter wishes she had filled the bug-infested cave walls with for 6 years. The blood-soaked wishes she had written down with fingers from which nails had fallen off and blood flowed.

‘Yes. After fulfilling all my wishes, I must also shatter this orb imprisoning the bride who lays the golden eggs.’

In front of the duke.

I must savor the moment his ice heart shatters to pieces. How delightful it will be.

I will never forget the moment his glacier-like eyes are dyed with shock. Ohohoho!

“Come! My cute sacrifice who lays the golden eggs! To me, right here!”

Cassandra’s fingertips, palms, wrists turned black one by one and vibrated strongly.

And a clear, bright red light slowly began to fill the black orb held in her bony hands.

*

In front of the ducal residence’s main gate, where deep darkness had fallen.

After sending away all the servants and even dismissing the gatekeepers and knights guarding the front gate.

Frost, mounted on the giant black horse Mars, stared motionlessly at the main building of the ducal residence.

Sensing his master’s unprecedented sharpness, Mars also held his breath and waited only for orders, his glossy muscles tightly tensed.

“……!”

Although the lush tree-lined path obscured the view of the tall glass garden beyond, Frost could fully feel the intense dark magic emanating from the main building’s banquet hall.

Twitch. Strength entered Frost’s feet on the stirrups as if he would spur the horse at any moment.

Mars put strength in his front legs, sensing the change in his master, but relaxed at the duke’s hand stroking his neck.

[No one must enter the ducal residence until the summoning is complete.]

Cassandra’s warning bound Frost’s feet.

The protruding knuckles on the large fist tightly gripping the reins were white with tension.

[Don’t even think of sending in ice magic through the front gate to probe inside. The summoning ritual will be interrupted immediately and Her Highness’s soul will be extinguished like foam, forever. Do so if you don’t mind that.]

Frost let out a long sigh and closed his eyes to check again for even the smallest crack in the ice barrier he had placed around the ducal residence.

If Cassandra failed, he would show no mercy in sending her back to the cave.

If she tried to escape and took even one step outside the ducal residence, the sorceress would die pierced by thousands of icicles on the spot.

“Damn it.”

Frost roughly wiped his face with a curse. It was suffocating.

Whether the sorceress’s body was pierced by icicles. Or shattered into pieces while frozen solid.

What good would it be if Yuriella’s soul could not return?

If the body that lost its soul and vitality eventually died, what consolation would such punishment be?

[Ah, Your Grace!]

If he could never again see those red, vivid eyes that held the pouring summer sunlight,

The round eyes that curved softly like a breeze.

[Leave it to me, Your Highness! I’ll do all the embarrassing things! I can do it well!]

The magnificent spirit that would have made him want to entrust his back in a real battlefield,

[Your Grace……?]

If the red lips that exhaled such a sweet scent without knowing it and that breath disappeared forever.

What good would this anxious waiting be, where a minute, a second felt like a hundred years?

An overwhelming sense of powerlessness washed over Frost and he gritted his teeth.

If the sorceress failed.

Must I lose her like this again?

The red blood of his parents, who breathed their last in front of him without him being able to even lay a hand on them despite saving thousands and tens of thousands of lives, was still vivid in his mind and smoldering in his heart.

But there was an excuse then.

He was too young to protect them.

He had defended the vast northern lands, but the precious red-haired knight had lost his life in his own territory.

There was an excuse then too. The place where the one he wanted to protect was too far for him to go.

But now.

When she is this close.

Right there, sleeping in my house……

If I lose her forever again, I won’t be able to make any excuses to myself.

Frost opened his eyes wide, pulled the reins and spurred the horse with all his might.

The black colt, keenly aware that its master had no time to open the gate, tensed all its muscles and leaped mightily.

After nimbly jumping over the tall main gate, it fiercely raced towards the main building.

Frost gritted his teeth, pressed his body close to the horse’s back, and sped up.

Belated regret came rushing in anxiously.

What was I thinking, entrusting my person completely into the hands of that black sorceress Cassandra?

I must have been out of my mind. Bewitched by something.

It was a woman who tried to turn her husband into a pig and sell him at the market. A madwoman who experimented with black magic on the corpses of the dead.

A dangerous person who might pull who knows what kind of dark tricks on Yuriella……

What on earth did I trust in her to carelessly hand over my precious person’s body and call her soul without any precautions?

When Frost reached the front of the ducal residence’s main building, the banquet hall windows facing the central garden shattered and fell with a loud shattering sound.

The wind tearing through the air carried the shattered glass pieces to where he was.

“Yuriella!”

Frost leaped from Mars and rushed straight into the ducal residence.

*

“Ooh. It’s filling up. It’s filling up!”

Cassandra’s eyes glowed with madness as she saw the light filling the large orb in her hand.

“Fill up. Fill up. Fill up with the soul of the one who borrowed Yuriella Grande’s body~!”

As much as the orb filled with the light of the soul, exultation also filled the sorceress’s thin and hardened face.

Yes. I knew an opportunity like this would come someday, somewhere.

I didn’t know it would be today, and that the place would be Ielheim’s ducal residence.

How proud I am of myself for never neglecting black magic training even for a day while trapped in a cave eating bugs and rats in preparation for a moment like this.

What a rewarding fruition this is! Ohohoho…… Huh?

Wait, wait.

Cassandra’s dried blue eyes held a glint of incomprehension.

‘Has there ever been a soul with such a clear light? And red at that……!’

She had touched countless corpses to train in black magic, and had seen countless lost souls hovering around their departed bodies.

Morgues. Battlefields. Even areas where many had died from heavy snow, cold damage, and drought.

The souls she encountered were mostly hazy gray, and rarely white, but this was the first time she had seen this color.

Just what kind of being’s soul is it to have such a vivid red color and flow into the orb like this?

And why does it keep filling up endlessly?

“……Huh?”

Cassandra’s eyes grew as if they would pop out.

The orb filled with red light began to shake violently. It was a ferocious energy that made even Cassandra’s body tremble.

“Wh-wh-what……!”

Cassandra gripped the orb with all her might and gathered dark energy in her hands.

The slimy magical energy flowed from her palms and began to cover the crystal orb, but.

Puh-woong−!

The violently shaking orb burst and Cassandra fell backwards with a thud.

The sorceress tightly shut her eyes against the blindingly intense red light. The flesh under her eyes twitched from the impact.

At the same time, Cassandra’s neck was grabbed by a rough hand and lifted into the air.

‘What on earth is this……?’

The area around her gripped neck burned as if touched by lava, and Cassandra inadvertently let out a groan.

“Open your eyes, sorceress.”

Unlike the heat twisting her neck, the woman’s tone was cool and breezy.

And the woman Cassandra faced as she slowly opened her eyes.

Was not what she had imagined.

The woman flipping her red hair with a sneer was a face Cassandra had never seen before, but she was well acquainted with this scorching fire energy.

How could she forget? The pure and beautiful fire energy that was one of a kind in the world.

At the victory celebration in the imperial palace that her pig-transformed husband had proudly taken her to.

The knight receiving a medal from the emperor had been exuding this exact energy.

“Could it be……”

The owner of the holy sword, the Flame Sword Flamma. The emperor’s pride and the knight known as the Knight of Flames, the Imperial Knight Commander……!

As Cassandra’s eyes filled with shock, the Knight of Flames clicked her tongue nonchalantly.

“I knew it. You summoned me without even knowing who I am?”

“So, So…… Solas Moretti……?”

But…… the emperor’s knight commander was a woman……?

“You thought you could contain my soul in this tiny little orb?”

Solas stepped on and crushed the shattered orb fragments.

The magical tool made by gathering corrupt energy shattered under Solas’s foot. And the black smoke that leaked from the orb was purified the moment it touched Solas’s soul and disappeared without a trace.

Cassandra, having been steeped in black magic for a long time, also began to have her skin melt with a sizzling burnt smell from the neck grabbed by Solas.

“H-how are you h-here, cough cough.”

“What do you mean how? You summoned me.”

Solas squeezed Cassandra’s neck harder.

“Gaaack.”

The sound of air escaping came from Cassandra’s throat.

“Cassandra Cabesa. You dare try to completely skin our duke alive? Do you have a death wish driving you insane?”

“Cough, gaaack……”

Cassandra’s pointy heels pathetically flailed in the air.