Episode 1: A Promise on the Execution Platform

　The winter wind seemed to blow coldly only over the execution platform.

　My hands, bound with rope, felt numb, and the planks beneath my feet creaked with even the slightest shift in my weight. The central square of the royal capital, Alvein, was overcast despite it being midday, and the white breaths of the onlookers seemed terribly far away. But the face I least wanted to see was clearly visible.

　They were children from a relief center.

　The small backs, pushed to the front row, were huddled together, trembling. Mina, the oldest, was trying to cover Leo's sobbing eyes with both hands, but her own cheeks were wet with tears, and she couldn't hide them very well.

　I wanted to say, "Stop." I wanted to scream, "Don't look."

　But my throat felt like it was filled with dry sand and wouldn't move.

　"For the crimes of embezzling relief funds, falsifying accounting records, and attempted illegal transfer of protected children, former infirmary clerk Skyler is hereby executed."

　The narrator's voice carried well. It was a voice that made me realize once again how easily a person can become evil with just the weight of a single sheet of paper.

　"different……"

　My voice was hoarse, and surprisingly weak even to myself.

　That's not true. I wasn't the one who tampered with the books. I wasn't the one who stopped the remittances, nor was I the one who tried to sell the children into servitude. I noticed that the numbers were out of order, so I went and told them, I bowed my head, I sued, and that's how—I was crushed.

　Beyond the crowd, there was a woman wiping the corners of her eyes with a white glove.

　Maribel.

　A philanthropist renowned even in the royal capital. Clad in a pale wisteria-colored cloak, she looked at me with a face that seemed on the verge of collapsing. Yet, her profile was too perfect. It was so beautiful, as if she had even chosen the angle at which she looked sad.

　"How unfortunate... That person never admitted their mistakes until the very end..."

　Even the whispered words to the nearby lady reached my ears on the wind. The voice sounded like it was weeping, yet the end of each sentence was strangely light.

　To the lower right of the scaffold, Treasurer Lafont was stroking his chin. He was making the face of a bewildered official, but his eyes were dry. That man was always like that. He never looked at the person behind the stack of papers. He just dried them up, and then finally said, "There was no other choice."

　"If there was an error in the document, it should have been corrected much sooner."

　"...But you're the one who stopped it."

　The words I finally managed to utter were swallowed up by the commotion.

　At that moment, the murmur of the people suddenly changed to a different color.

　Because a man in black formal attire pushed his way forward through the crowd.

　Duke Elisha Valentiaire.

　He is the royal negotiator, rumored to be the coldest man in the capital. Even though he stands in the sunlight, it is as quiet as night around him. His sharp gray eyes gaze up at the execution platform, and he seems to say something. But the Royal Guard stands in his way, and the executioner raises his arm.

　"It's time."

　Oh no, I won't make it.

　The moment I thought that, my chest grew cold before my feet did.

　I'm going to die. This is the end. The children will be sold off in different directions; Mina will go to a factory, Leo to some farm, and little Yuna, who's always had a fever, might not survive the winter. The teacher's books, the old desk in the orphanage, the burnt soup we shared late at night—it's all gone.

　I couldn't protect it.

　That feeling of regret was the only thing that ultimately pierced my heart sharper than a blade.

Just as the blade was about to fall, a high-pitched sound like shattering glass echoed from the depths of the earth.

　Everyone in the square glanced up at the sky for a moment. But the sound wasn't coming from the sky. It was from underground. Far below the royal palace, in the direction of the midnight library where the records of the nobility and forbidden books lay dormant, came a sound like a cracked bell.

　My vision is blurry.

　Maribel's tears, Lafont's dry eyes, the children's tearful faces—everything crumbled like a painting on the surface of water.

　In the center of that ruined landscape, there was another me.

　She was holding her blood-soaked neck, yet still looking straight at me. It was me reflected in the mirror. I was crying, but my eyes held a look that said I didn't want to end it with just tears.

　The lips move.

　The voice seemed to descend directly into the inside of my head.

　—Next time, don't just end it with crying.

　The execution platform, the square, the winter sky—they all crumbled like shattered glass.

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