Chapter 595 - 411: Unspoken Past (4)
"Lady Teresa, why did you become a wizard?" Malin asked the lady before him in a gentle tone. To help someone, you must first understand what makes them worthy of your help. Malin looked at the lady, hoping his sincerity would elicit a genuine response.
"...I, it’s a long story. Are you really willing to listen to such a tale from a Dark Wizard?" Lady Teresa’s response was tinged with apprehension, doubt, and a sense of reminiscence and longing.
"Go ahead." Malin smiled, hoping the story could touch everyone’s heart.
Lady Teresa also smiled and began to recount her past.
She came from the Northern Kingdom. There, she was the youngest daughter of a minor Noble family. Because of her talent in Spell Formation, her father, after much deliberation, decided to send her to the Mage Tower, which waived the fees for such an apprentice—In the North, the Mage Towers had the advantage.
It was there she met her future husband, also from a noble family in the Northern Kingdom and the youngest son. Their similar backgrounds, statuses, and positions allowed them to quickly acknowledge each other’s presence among the apprentices.
Until the age of fourteen, their love was as pure and beautiful as described in all the romance novels. That all changed when he was injured by a Curse—a venture into an underground ruin left the young man wounded by a rusty broken blade; the wound never healed but instead began to fester and worsen.
They started seeking cures, but even the Church was powerless. The Church believed it was the nature of the broken blade that caused it. So, Teresa found the blade, but the Church couldn’t determine the poison or the source of the Curse on the blade.
In the end, his family chose to give up—spending too much gold on an incurable younger son was unbearable for a Baron’s family.
The Mage Tower was also unable to help them. So, the young man chose to take his own life, but he didn’t succeed, because Lady Teresa proposed to him.
The couple, who had decided to unite, eventually became wizards. With their foundation as Mages, they thoroughly understood the limitations and dangers of wizards. After circumventing these, the man lived for over a decade, until finally, unable to bear the pain and feeling his will crumbling, and to prevent himself from becoming completely deformed, he begged Lady Teresa to end his life.