CHAPTER 66
Azra'il - POV
This was supposed to be, by my original calculations, a perfectly ordinary night.
I prepared the tea. I lit an incense stick I'd taken from my inventory. I sat in the meditation position I'd already refined across more lives than I bothered counting, closed my eyes, and began drawing the mana flow through my meridians with that concentration that normally admitted no interruption whatsoever.
Knock knock.
I ignored it.
Knock knock knock.
I kept ignoring it, with the stubbornness of someone who'd already decided, before even opening her eyes, that it was none of her business.
The door opened anyway, because apparently knocking was just a decorative formality in that house.
Eris appeared in pyjamas, a pillow clutched to her chest with both arms, her red hair loose and dishevelled in the way that only happens after someone's already tried to sleep and given up.
"Tell another one."
I opened one eye. "Another what?"
"Another story."
"It's ten at night."
"I know what time it is."
"I was meditating."
"You can meditate later."
I closed the eye again, breathing deeply with the patience of someone calculating, in real time, the cost-benefit of arguing against a determined ten-year-old.
I gave in. Obviously I gave in.
On the first night, I thought it was an exception, an isolated whim, driven by the recent novelty of the sword and some emotional residue from the epic I'd told at the party that still needed room to settle.
By the second night, I already suspected a habit.
By the fifth, I seriously considered building a second door just to pretend I hadn't heard the first knock.
By the seventh, Eris stopped knocking.
She simply walked in.
By then, she'd brought her own "spare" pillow into my room, permanently left in a corner, as if she'd decided, without consulting anyone whatsoever, that it had become an official Boreas household ritual.
〈Eos, this is turning into a worrying pattern.〉
[It is, technically, the most consistent pattern I've recorded in her to date. More consistent even than her sword training.]
〈Should that make me proud or worried?〉
[Both, probably, in proportions I'm still calculating.]
The stories, I must admit, were never exactly made up.
"I wrote this one recently," I'd say, every time, with the most serious expression I could produce.
Eris never questioned it. Why would she? To her, I was simply a strangely talented tutor, with an apparently infinite repertoire of fantastical worlds, improbable mages, and legendary warriors. She had no way of knowing every detail came straight from memory, not imagination; that I wasn't inventing characters, but recalling people I'd known, loved, and lost across lives she'd never have access to.
I told her about my life as a mage in a troublesome guild.
"There was a world where mages organised themselves into guilds," I began. "Each had its own banner, its own rules, and an impressive capacity for destroying entire cities while, technically, trying to save them."
Eris was already glued before I'd even finished the second sentence.
I told her about a Dragon Slayer who ate fire for breakfast with the same enthusiasm other people devoted to toast. About an ice mage who lost his shirt with a frequency that defied any rational explanation. About a gentle, fairly clumsy celestial mage, who used keys to summon spirits and fight alongside them. About a flying blue cat who considered fish the universal answer to any existential crisis.
And then, inevitably, I told her about her.
I never said she'd been my wife.
I didn't need to.
"She had scarlet hair," I said one night, looking at the bedroom ceiling instead of at Eris. "And believed she could solve any problem by changing armour."
"That sounds strange," Eris remarked.
"Most of the time, she was right."
"She changed armour in the middle of battle?"
"In the middle of battle. Without moving from the spot, without hiding behind anything. She'd simply decide the previous armour no longer suited whatever came next, and swap it right there."
"...That's a lie."
I smiled at the corner of my mouth.
"You have no idea what that red-haired warrior could do with nothing but armour, a sword, and an absolutely irresponsible amount of stubbornness."
"Was she the strongest in the guild?"
The question came out fast. Naturally, that was the information Eris considered most important.
"She was among the strongest."
"Among?"
"There were a few monsters in that guild. Some in the figurative sense. Others not so much."
Eris frowned, probably displeased that the redhead still had to share first place with anyone.
"But strength wasn't the most impressive thing about her," I continued.
That recovered her attention.
"She was fair. Not always kind, not always patient, and definitely not good at talking about what she felt. She also had the regrettable habit of turning simple training sessions into near-death experiences."
Eris seemed considerably more interested in that part.
"But she cared about the people in the guild more than she cared about herself. To her, that guild was family. If someone was in danger, she was always the first to step forward and the last to step back."
"And did she win?"
"Almost always."
"And when she didn't win?"
"She got back up."
Eris pressed the pillow against her chest.
"Even hurt?"
"Especially when she was hurt."
She fell silent.
I remembered that tendency far too well. Erza could be bleeding, with broken bones, her magic nearly spent and half her armour destroyed, but all it took was someone she loved standing behind her for her body to apparently forget every sensible reason it had to stay on the ground.
"Was she scared?" Eris asked.
"Quite a lot."
The answer seemed to surprise her.
"Then she wasn't that strong after all!"
I turned my face towards her.
"Courage isn't the absence of fear, Eris. It's feeling fear and still deciding there are people worth staying on your feet for."
She wrinkled her nose, processing that with the obvious suspicion of someone who sensed a lesson had just snuck into her story without permission.
"So she put herself in front of attacks meant for others?"
"Far too often."
"That's idiotic."
"Profoundly."
"But did it work?"
"Also far too often."
Eris stayed quiet for a few seconds, her eyes fixed on some distant point in the room.
"I'd do that too," she finally declared. "If someone in my family were in danger."
There was no hesitation in her voice. No doubt.
Just that fierce, childlike certainty of someone who still didn't fully understand the weight of the promise she'd just made.
"I know," I replied.
Eris turned her face towards me.
"How do you know?"
Because I'd already seen that exact expression on another redhead. Because I knew how certain people turned love into a sword, affection into armour, and fear into something capable of still moving forward even when the whole body begged to retreat.
But none of that could be said.
"Because the two of you are alike."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"I'm like her?"
"In some ways."
"Which ones?"
"Redheaded, loud, violent, stubborn, and dangerously convinced that a sword is a perfectly acceptable tool for solving emotional problems."
Eris hit me with the pillow.
I accepted the blow with dignity.
"You're also both brave," I added, before she could line up a second strike. "And you both care about others more than you'd like to admit."
The pillow stopped halfway.
Eris looked away, muttering something unintelligible.
I counted that as a win.
"Do you like her a lot?" she finally asked. "That character, I mean."
The question landed somewhere deeper than Eris probably intended, and for a second, just one, I considered whether it was worth answering with complete precision.
"I do," I replied, in the end. "She's my favourite character in this whole story."
Eris seemed satisfied with that.
Perhaps also a little pleased at having been compared to her, though she'd certainly rather face a monster alone than admit that out loud. I let it stay that way, keeping the rest, the part no ten-year-old needed to carry, for myself alone.
While the nights turned into that strange, increasingly entrenched ritual, the days followed their own course, a course that, in hindsight, seemed to have actively conspired against any free moment I might have set aside for myself.
The fencing lessons continued, now with the notable difference of Eris using Lièxīn instead of the common training sword, which had transformed the very rhythm of the sparring: she still got it wrong, still took more hits than she'd like to admit from Ghislaine and from me, but the progress, which used to crawl, had begun accelerating in a way even Ghislaine remarked on aloud.
"She's anticipating better," Ghislaine commented, one day, watching Eris recover from a loss of balance that, weeks earlier, would have knocked her flat. "The sword's helping. Or she's learning to trust herself more. Perhaps both."
"Probably both," I agreed, without taking my eyes off the training. "It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins."
Ghislaine, for her part, kept progressing through her own alphabet with that silent, relentless dedication I'd already learned to admire, already mastering complete sentences, even if her handwriting still looked more carved into stone than written on paper.
Between one lesson and another, I still found time, scarce as it was, to help manage the shampoo production, reviewing stock and checking the quality of the bottles Rudeus produced with his own earth magic, refining ordinary clay into the texture and hardness of real porcelain, a process he'd already mastered well enough to produce dozens per afternoon with no noticeable variation between one bottle and the next.
"This batch is more uniform than last week's," I remarked, examining one of the bottles against the window light.
"I'm controlling the magic more precisely now," he replied, with that technical pride that only ever surfaced when the subject involved genuine applied magic. "Less porosity. Less risk of leaking."
"Impressive, for someone who still bumps into furniture with worrying frequency."
"That has nothing to do with the other thing!"
"It has everything to do with it. It's the same part of the brain. Only you use one part to control mana flow with surgical precision, and completely forget to use the other to notice there's a table right in front of you."
Sauros, meanwhile, had developed a new and increasingly desperate obsession.
The first time he asked, it was with almost suspicious politeness. "COULD YOU MAKE A SWORD LIKE ERIS'S FOR ME TOO?" he bellowed, in a tone he probably considered subtle.
"No."
The second time, he offered payment. "NAME YOUR PRICE. GOLD. LAND. A MINOR NOBLE TITLE, IF NEEDED."
"Still no."
The third time, he tried emotional bribery. "IT'S FOR MY FUNERAL. I WON'T BE USING IT FOR LONG ANYWAY, SO IT COSTS YOU NOTHING."
"You're perfectly healthy, Sauros."
"THAT COULD CHANGE AT ANY MOMENT! LIFE IS UNPREDICTABLE!"
"Your argumentative skill is deteriorating with every attempt."
"IS THAT A YES?"
"No."
He grumbled something about "modern youth's ingratitude" and walked off, promising, loudly enough for the whole manor to hear, that he'd try again the following week.
I didn't doubt that promise for a second.
The language lessons with Rudeus continued in parallel, and he absorbed new vocabulary with that mix of genuine enthusiasm and phonetic ineptitude that defined practically everything he did.
Ghislaine occasionally joined us to teach the beastfolk tongue, a system of sounds and inflections that depended as much on tone as on vocabulary itself, and that Rudeus insisted on trying to master too quickly.
During one of those sessions, he tried, with the best intentions in the world, to say something kind about Ghislaine's patience as a teacher.
What came out of his mouth, technically, was an expression that meant, in the beastfolk tongue, something closer to "I really like the way your tail moves when you're pleased."
Ghislaine stopped. Her ears shot up, alert, in a mix of genuine surprise and a silent calculation of exactly how much that deserved a reaction.
"Rudeus," she said, slowly, with a calm that was, on its own, more terrifying than any shout. "Say that again."
"WHAT DID I SAY?"
"Say it again. Word for word."
He repeated it, each syllable coming out shakier than the last, until his own expression shifted midway through the sentence, horror setting in in real time as he finally processed, too late, what his own words meant.
"I DIDN'T MEAN THAT!"
"I know," said Ghislaine, crossing her arms with a calm that only made it all more mortifying. "But the sentence you chose, in my tribe's culture, is the kind of thing you only say after you've already seen the tail moving up close. Fairly close... And without clothes."
"I'VE NEVER SEEN YOUR TAIL LIKE THAT!"
"I know that too," she replied, with no change in her voice. "That's why you're still alive."
I couldn't contain my laughter.
Eris's sword, meanwhile, had become a practically permanent extension of her body.
She took Lièxīn everywhere, to breakfast, to etiquette lessons (which had earned more than one alarmed look from Edna), to the garden, to her own bedroom at night, where I strongly suspected the sword slept closer to her than any conventional pillow.
I was starting to suspect that, if a fire ever broke out in the manor, Little Volcano would save the sword first and only afterwards remember the existence of other people.
It was exactly that habit that led to the conversation I had with Hilda, one afternoon, in the corridor connecting the living room to the winter garden.
"Azra'il." She stopped when she saw me, with that polite smile that always seemed to carry a second purpose beneath the cordiality. "Might I steal a moment?"
"Of course."
"It's about Eris." She hesitated, choosing her words with the care of a mother trying to balance genuine concern and a certain disbelieving wonder. "She's changed a great deal, these past few weeks. She's more... present. More willing to listen. Still explosive, of course, but differently. More directed."
"She's progressing," I confirmed.
"I know she got a special sword from you," Hilda continued, in a tone mixing gratitude and a mildly comical concern. "And I'm glad she has something like that. Truly. But..." She paused, and her smile wavered between diplomacy and the obvious urge to laugh. "The maids told me she takes the sword into the bath."
That, I must admit, caught me by surprise.
"She takes the sword into the bath?"
"Every day, apparently."
I considered the information for a moment, and the only useful thought I managed to extract from it was a fairly technical relief: thank goodness I'd chosen a metal that never rusted. If it had been ordinary steel, Eris would have ruined the blade herself by now, out of sheer excess devotion.
"Well," I finally said, "at least I chose the material well."
"That isn't exactly the concern I expected you to have."
"She sleeps with it too," I continued, ignoring the remark. "I already knew that."
"She brought it to the formal dinner last week, Azra'il. I tried, with every ounce of politeness I could gather, to convince her to leave it in her room. She looked at me as if I'd suggested she abandon a family member."
"That sounds exactly like something she'd do."
Hilda finally laughed, a lighter sound than her initial concern had suggested. "You created a monster."
"I created a girl who finally found something to trust completely," I corrected, unbothered. "The fact that that something happens to be a metre-and-a-half sword is merely an aesthetic detail."
She fell silent for a moment, looking at me with a seriousness that slowly replaced her earlier playful tone.
"Thank you," she said, finally, in a lower, more sincere register than anything she'd said up to then. "Truly. I don't know exactly what you did, but my daughter is happier than I've seen her in years. That's worth more than any sword."
I didn't have a ready answer for that, which, considering my usual repertoire, already said quite a lot on its own.
"She's easy to love," I said, in the end, "once someone bothers to look properly."
Hilda nodded, with a smile that carried more weight than any formal compliment, and walked off down the corridor, leaving me alone with the kind of silence I normally associated with cultivation, meditation, and spiritual productivity.
It was, ironically, the only truly peaceful moment I'd had in days, and I'd only recognise that irony much later that same night.
Because it was only that night, with Eris finally and miraculously too busy playing with Rudeus to knock on my door, that I finally found a free moment.
I went into my room. I closed the door with an almost reverent care, like someone handling a rare, fragile artefact. I lit the incense. I sat in the meditation position. I breathed deeply, letting my shoulders relax for the first time in days.
I closed my eyes.
Finally.
I opened one eye.
I did the maths.
"...Wait."
I closed the eye again, trying to ignore the uncomfortable thought beginning to form.
It didn't work.
〈Eos.〉
[Yes?]
〈When was the last time I actually cultivated?〉
[...]
〈Eos, answer.〉
[Eleven days, six hours, and forty-three minutes.]
I froze for a full second.
〈...Eleven days?〉
[Correct.]
〈HOW DID I GO ELEVEN DAYS WITHOUT CULTIVATING?!〉
[You were busy running a cosmetics company, teaching four different languages, supervising sword training, teaching literacy to a beastwoman, writing and telling stories to an imperious redheaded child, assisting your perverted brother with his own magic training, and preventing said perverted brother from committing crimes of a sexual nature. Should I continue the list, or has the overall picture become sufficiently clear?]
〈It sounds worse when you make it a list.〉
[It does.]
〈You could have warned me sooner, Eos.〉
[I did. On the fourth consecutive night. You replied, and I quote directly: "I'll deal with it later."]
I fell silent, considering the accusation with all the seriousness it deserved, which, unfortunately, was a considerable amount.
I'd originally reincarnated with a single, quiet, selfish goal: to cultivate in peace, free of the distractions and emotional complications that used to hinder my progress in past lives. A simple plan. Clean. Efficient.
Instead, I'd apparently become, with no prior warning whatsoever, a language tutor, the administrator of a small cosmetics industry, a writer and nightly storyteller, an improvised translator, an unsolicited magical consultant, a full-time older sister, the official emotional babysitter of a stubborn redhead, and permanent containment officer for the perverted Chubby-Cheeks.
Cultivation, amid all that, had somehow become the least urgent item on the list.
〈Eos, this is concerning.〉
[Emotionally, yes. Statistically, also yes.]
〈And yet I don't feel particularly bothered by it.〉
[I noticed. That's probably the most interesting data point in this entire analysis.]
I sat there, incense still burning, tea cooling beside me, considering the strange, slightly uncomfortable possibility that perhaps, for the first time across more lives than I could count without stopping to think too hard, I'd found something worth prioritising over my own growth in power.
But I couldn't relax entirely. Not after everything I'd already lived through.
I'd long since lost count of how many times a peace exactly like that, small, domestic, ridiculously comfortable, had been interrupted with no warning by some bored god, some ancient entity with old grievances, or some cosmic tyrant deciding, on some ordinary day, that the universe's balance needed a violent adjustment. No one ever sent word beforehand. They simply appeared, usually at the worst possible moment, and the price of not being ready was never paid by me alone.
And this world, however peaceful it seemed, still hadn't given me any real reason to believe it would be different. Something, someday, would explode right on my doorstep, literally or figuratively, the universe rarely cared about the distinction. I just didn't know when. I never knew when. No amount of lives lived would ever teach me to predict that far enough in advance.
If I wanted to keep it, the absurd routine, the nights with Eris, Rudeus's antics, Ghislaine's impossible patience, the business with Hilda, and my time in general with this family of eccentric nobles, I needed to keep getting stronger. Not out of ambition. Out of practical necessity. Protecting people I cared about demanded more than goodwill; it demanded real power, the kind that isn't built in days of distraction, however well spent those days had been.
〈Eos, resume the cultivation schedule starting tomorrow. Adjusted, but present.〉
[Finally. Suggestion: perhaps warn the Redheaded Beast in advance this time, instead of simply locking the door and expecting her to work out the message on her own.]
〈She won't understand anyway.〉
[Probably not. But at least the attempt will be on record as good faith.]
I put out the incense, finished the now-cold tea regardless, and went to sleep, considering, with a mix of resignation and something much closer to quiet determination, that there were probably more days like that one ahead.