By Zephyria 
The moment he finished speaking, a disastrous dizziness grabbed my hair tightly along with a strong gravity. Before I could resist, my knees slammed into the ground. Oxygen… I’m short of oxygen… I opened my mouth wide and inhaled, but the lack of breath and the strong dizziness didn’t go away. Beeee, beeee. A stinging tinnitus poured out. Even with both knees on the ground, I couldn’t even keep my balance anymore. My unbalanced body fell to one side in an ugly way.
‘No, Noah, my baby, please…! Please don’t, it’s all this mother’s fault, it’s all my fault, so please put down that scary thing… huh?’
A hallucination-like voice was heard amidst the loud tinnitus. It was the voice of a woman begging in terror. It was too familiar. Of course, it was the Countess’s voice that I had been tired of hearing until my ears rang just a few minutes ago.
Ugh, it was when I was struggling in unbearable pain and barely managed to groan. The hallucination continued.
‘…It’s not Mother’s fault.’
This is… my voice…?
‘Why are you doing this, why… why…? Please, what do you want? Just tell me, my baby. This mother will give you anything, no matter what the cost, so please, come here.’
When I closed my eyes tightly, the hallucination expanded its territory even further, broadcasting a blurry video using the dark retina as a screen. The vision was blurry. It seemed that I in the hallucination was crying until my eyes were swollen. The Countess’s appearance, which was caught in that blurry vision, was also crying with her whole face wet.
The surroundings were dark. I couldn’t tell if it was dawn just before sunrise or evening after sunset. However, what I could say for sure was that everyone in the mansion was deeply asleep without hearing any noise due to the influence of the Magical Artifact that ‘I’ had set up. I don’t know. I just, I just knew everything. Only Mother in her thin chemise had been watching me since the day before because my condition was so strange, and she had followed me. There were reddish marks scattered on her arms and legs, which she had stabbed herself with a paper knife to wake up. ‘I’ burst into tears once more, unable to hide my guilt at the sight of my mother.
Suddenly, my chest felt cold. My bare chest was exposed between the shirts that had been unbuttoned. On top of it was a sharp blade with a blue edge.
It was the only weapon that could twist the order of the world. It was the only tool made by forging the fangs of a Sacred Beast, which I had obtained by deceiving and betraying many people in order to injure a body that was under God’s obsessive protection.
‘Oh my God, God… Noah…! Noah…!’
‘I’m sorry, Mother. This is the only path left for me now.’
‘Ah, no, Noah!’
Hearing my mother’s tearing scream, ‘I’ clenched my teeth. The soft flesh and hard ribs were pierced through with a refreshing sound. It was much more painful than I had expected, but I didn’t stop. Until the heart was finally destroyed and the soul was freed, ‘I’ killed myself, and killed myself, and…
“Heeuk, ugh, keuek, heok!”
The hallucination that had been flowing was forcibly cut off, and my consciousness was pulled back to reality. My whole body ached as if I had been struggling wildly. My jaw was trembling. As I gasped for breath, the ends of my eyes felt cold. Tears that had already cooled were dripping down my temples.
“That’s enough. That’s enough.”
“Heeuh…, heeueuh……”
“You have to breathe, Noah. Noah?”
Before I knew it, Allen was on top of me, pressing down on my struggling limbs.
“Come to think of it, your mother was more obsessed with ‘this body’ than anyone else in this world. So infatuated with the shell that she couldn’t even recognize the contents inside.”
While gently coaxing me in a gentle voice, he wiped away the sweat and tears that had soaked my face with his elegant fingers.
My wet eyelashes were so heavy that it was hard to even open my eyes. I was only half-opening my eyes, and I got goosebumps all over my body at the sight of the white fingers that were flashing in front of me.
“But what can you do, Noah. It’s your share to bear. You used these two hands… you tore open your chest and stabbed your heart in front of your mother. I brought you back to this world and turned back time… but it was impossible to fully restore the mind of a mother who had witnessed her child die right in front of her. After a very important part of her as a human being was already shattered, all I could do was make her move properly.”
Unbelievably, he was still smiling. In a very affectionate and kind tone, as if he was reading a fairy tale book to a child who was fussing in bed.
“You said you would give up ‘this body’. You swore that you would give up all the blessings and rights that I loved you and poured out on you. Of course… you knew very well that your beloved family was included in that.”
“Heeuek, no… nooo……”
I shook my head wildly and sobbed in terror, making my whole body tremble. But I could instinctively tell. That whatever Allen was saying now was not a lie.
“How is it, Noah.”
Could it be that all of this is really… the result of my absurd greed and stubbornness.
“Everything you threw away with the sole intention of abandoning me… do you regret it now?”
He still asked kindly.
“Don’t worry. I still love you this much.”
I couldn’t say anything.
“Just like your Alphas and your family… from the beginning to the end, very perfectly and faithfully.”
Ah. Perhaps my long hell that I have been experiencing so far is a heavy fate that I have woven with my own hands. To the point where even the will to get out of it is an presumptuous greed.
“Noah, are you okay? Your complexion…”
The little bit of cheek fat that I had was even more sunken in the past few days. Carlisle’s expression, who was carefully examining my face, which would look like a patient no matter how you looked at it if it weren’t for the light rouge that I had put on to make me look lively, was full of worry.
“I’m fine. I just had a lot of things to worry about. I guess I’m just relaxing now.”
“……”
“I’m really fine, I’m telling you.”
I had been sick for a few days. Everyone thought that it was because I had received a lot of mental shock, especially since it was right after I had seen the Countess’s unusually strong seizure. Carlisle regretted so much that he had left his seat because he had something to instruct in advance at the Grand Duke’s residence in the capital that day. The Crown Prince, on the other hand, was so eager to bring me into the Imperial Palace as soon as the engagement ceremony was over, regardless of customs, and even Andrew apologized for not managing his mother well and expressed his guilt.
Allen, who had pushed me into this chaos, shamelessly asked, “Are you catching a cold out of season? Should I send you some good medicine?”
My head was all messed up. No matter how much I racked my brains, I couldn’t think of anything more. Rather, the memories that had faintly surfaced were fading away, so I repeated them dozens, hundreds of times to somehow not forget them. I couldn’t help it because my hands wouldn’t move at all if I tried to write them down on paper or leave a record in any way. Allen, who came to disturb my mind under the guise of visiting me, said that it was a world law that even he couldn’t touch, and left with a sneer, telling me to try my best.
There were still facts that I couldn’t digest at all, stuck in my head in various ways, but time didn’t wait for me. I decided to push ahead with the plan I had set, whether I would regret it later or not. …For now, that was the only way I could think of.
“I’m all better now. I’m just saying it was a body ache?”
“Even so, I can’t rest assured. After all, it’s better for me to be with you until the end…”
Carlisle couldn’t take his feet off the ground even after he had finished preparing to leave. I only pushed Carlisle’s back with my palm. He willingly gave in to that insignificant hand movement that didn’t take any strength.
“Why. Are you going to continue to hide as a ghost in the Hamilton mansion like this? Then you’ll become a ghost in the Imperial Palace later?”
“……”
“Don’t worry, nothing will happen. It’s not like I’m leaving forever. It’s just for a very, very short time. Maybe in a few weeks, we’ll be taking naps together in our northern Ducal Palace, living the good life?”
“Noah……”
“I promise. So go quickly, Carlisle.”
I can’t stop. While seeing off the regretful Carlisle with a smiling face until the end, I only repeated my determination in my heart.