The Margrave's 10th-Class Ne'er-do-well

༺ 𓆩  Chapter 4 — Flame  𓆪 ༻

「Translator — Creator」

᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃

Isaac opened his eyes to the sound of bustling movement.\

It was Hans.

His face was covered with scabs and wounds.

'There should be nothing there.'

Isaac's room was entirely surrounded by walls of Dimegetrium brick.
It had been built that way so that, even if Isaac suffered a mana explosion, no harm would spread beyond these walls.

And yet…

Shhhh—!!!

When Hans opened the curtains by the window, sunlight came flooding in.

“Ah, you’re awake, Young Master. You’re drenched in cold sweat, and your complexion is pale. Did you sleep poorly?”

“...........”

Isaac said nothing.
He had no idea what he could say.
Was this a dream, or was it real?

His rational mind whispered insistently that it was nothing but a dream — an illusion.
This was simply the brightest moment before sunset.
The last flare of life before death arrived.
A memory of the time he had longed for most, the point to which he had most wished to return.

“Young Master? Are you all right? Did you have a bad dream?”

Hans asked again, worry etched across his face.

“..............”

The clearer Hans's voice became, the sharper his vision grew and the more distinctly he could see his face, the more the specific details matched his memories, the more Isaac's face crumpled.

‘Why? Why, even at the very end, can I not escape the stains of my past?’

He squeezed his eyes shut. Let this dream end quickly. Let him enter eternal rest quickly.
For the nothingness, the complete darkness where he might finally be at peace.

"Are you ill somewhere? Have you caught a cold?"

Isaac flinched.
Hans had touched his forehead with the back of his hand, and the sensation was too real.

“Fortunately, you have no fever.”

“..............”

“His Lordship and the Lady are terribly worried about you. If there’s the slightest problem, you must tell me.”

Isaac stared blankly at Hans.
The scars and bruises on his face — all of them the injuries from Isaac’s mana explosions.
It was around this time.
This was when Hans had cheerfully insisted it was nothing, telling him not to worry.
And then Hans had truly died.

Isaac clenched the bedsheet in his fists.
Even the velvet’s texture felt real to the touch.
It boded ill.
Such vividness meant that the tragedy to come would be just as vivid.

“Hans.”

Afraid that Hans might be hurt again if he stayed near,
Isaac forced his emotions down and spoke coldly.

“Yes, Young Master. If you need anything…”

“Get out.”

He did not want to dream this nightmare to the end.

“Pardon?”

“I said get out! Disappear from my sight. Now!”

Isaac snapped at Hans, who looked confused.
It was a shrill, prickly voice, not yet touched by adolescence.
Anyone else might have taken offense, but Hans simply smiled and nodded.

“Understood.”

As he turned to leave, Hans suddenly stopped mid-step.

“Don’t try to carry everything on your own. Sometimes… you can trust us.”

“...............”

With those words, Hans stepped out and closed the door behind him.
Isaac gave a bitter smile.
He didn’t remember those words.
Perhaps his unconscious mind had conjured them, what he had always longed to hear.

“It’s… too vivid.”

Isaac looked around the room, dazed.
Everything was exactly as it had been.
The bed and coat rack.
The portrait of himself, painted with his father’s affection.
The old hardwood table, the bookshelf and desk, the storage chest, the tall mirror, everything.

“It’s like I’ve gone back in time.”

He let out a sigh.
His grip on reason hadn’t yet slipped.
He wasn’t so far gone that he’d mistake a hallucination for reality.

He had died, that much was certain……
in front of his family’s grave.
His eyelids had grown unbearably heavy, and he could no longer move a single finger.
Darkness had swept in, swift and final.
It had been death.
His first and last encounter with it.
But one that any living being would instinctively recognize for what it was…
a natural end.

“In other words… what’s left is just the ember.”

The fire of life had gone out long ago.
What remained now was just the dying flicker.
Isaac thought.

A breeze blew in through the open window.

It carried the scent of spring.
Before he knew it, Isaac had walked toward it.
Outside lay the garden courtyard, the one his mother had tended with such care.
At its center stood the massive tree that had stood with the Goethe family for over two centuries, budding with new leaves.

‘I used to play in that tree with Jonas…’

A memory surfaced — Jonas, climbing up the tree to return a fallen hatchling to its nest,
only to fall on his rear and burst into tears.
Isaac could see his younger brother’s face clearly, like a picture drawn in light.

Chirp—!!! Chirp—!!!

“............”

Looking closely at the tree, he could see a nest between the branches. He could see baby birds poking their heads out from the nest, crying.

“…Ah.”

Isaac’s lips parted.
A soft sigh slipped out like a groan.
If only this were real.
If only he had truly returned to the past, crossing the vast river of years.
He would accept any pain, no matter how unbearable.
If only it could be so.

“Young Master, it’s dangerous!”

A shout rang out from the courtyard below, his old nurse’s voice.

“..........!”

And then he saw it.
A small boy, grunting with effort as he climbed the tree.
The boy's golden hair glinting in the sunlight stood out particularly.

In this household, at that age, with that hair color, there was only one child. Jonas.

“Oh, big brother!”

Before he knew it, Jonas had settled on a thick tree branch and waved toward Isaac standing at the window.

‘It’s an illusion. A dream. A phantom.’

'The past, gone by.'

'It cannot be undone.'

‘It is already too late.’

‘Clinging to it is meaningless.’

Isaac repeated these words to himself.
But before he knew it, he was already raising his own hand, waving back at Jonas.
It was not his hand that trembled…
it was his soul.

Whether it was God’s joke,
the ferryman of the underworld’s mercy,
an illusion,
a flicker of his life flashing before his eyes,
or the afterlife itself…
none of it mattered in this moment.

Just exchanging a greeting with his little brother from childhood was enough.

It felt as though the half-century of hardship and confinement underground had been repaid all at once.
Like rust dissolving, like mold vanishing, like moss peeled from stone…
the regrets caked thick on his soul were being wiped away, clean.

Jonas climbed down from the tree and disappeared somewhere out of sight.
The shadow of the great tree tilted, little by little, in flickers.
Isaac stayed in that feeling, in that emotion.
He didn’t want to let go.

And when he finally admitted to himself that he had savored it enough…

“O, traveler setting out on your journey. Can you stand alone, solitary before the infinite?”

Isaac quietly murmured the verse he had once written.

For the longest time, meditation had been his primary method of controlling Mana Rampage.
When, even with his eyes closed and breath steady, endless turmoil rose up…
when memories of the past tormented him…
he had taken the passages he liked most from his research journals, woven them into poems, and recited them aloud.

When he did that…
he could know nightmares for what they were.
Dreams for what they were.
Memories for what they were.
The vision before his eyes would fade.
Only himself, and the present, reality, would remain.
And now,
this was his final prayer to accept death.

“A lonely world where only you exist before mana.
You shall awaken to yourself.”

Isaac took a deep breath and continued the verse…

The sunlight is this radiant.
The wind is this fresh.
The room is this warm.
His senses are this sharp.

It was time to leave.
Time to vanish completely into the embrace of comfortable darkness.

"...Let go of thought. Abandon the perspective life has carved. Free yourself from the leash of the past and become you, become yourself."

Now everything would be erased.
All these illusions.
His very existence.
That was what death was meant to be.

So Isaac thought.
Yet—

Chirp—!!!

Chirp—!!!

The chicks were still crying.
The sunlight still shone bright.
The wind was still fresh.

The room still warm.
His senses still painfully clear.

“Why…?”

Isaac blinked several times. He rubbed his eyes. He closed them, counted to ten, and opened them again.

Smack—!!!

He slapped his own cheek.
It hurt.

“…It hurts?”

Isaac rubbed his stinging cheek.
He looked around once more.

‘Where am I?’

He knew, of course. That this was his room. But Isaac wanted to know something more fundamental. He wanted to know where he truly was. Yet his question soon flew from his mind. He lost himself staring at the full-length mirror in the corner of the room.

It was Isaac. That is, it was Isaac, but not the Isaac he knew. Ash-gray hair like his mother's. Eyes blue as frost like his father's. Sharp gaze. A prominent nose. Pale skin.

Not the skin of an old man, a living corpse.
He was thin and tense, almost nervous-looking…
but in the mirror stood a fair-faced boy.

“..............”

Isaac stared at his own widened eyes.
He had completely forgotten.
Even a worn-out, wretched old man had once had a time of his own radiance.

The boy in the mirror stared back with eyes heavy with regret.
And yet, the eyes were unmistakably his own.
A sigh slipped out from his lips.

“Brother!”

Suddenly Jonas was knocking on the door.
But it wasn’t the voice he remembered.
It was high and sweet, still childlike.

“Brother, can I come in? Brother?”

Isaac stared blankly at the door.
The longing to see Jonas clashed with the knowledge that he shouldn’t.
The rational voice in his mind insisted this was nothing but a memory,
while his soul whispered, how can you not reach for what you’ve missed?

“Isaac? Brother?”

Before Isaac could make any decision,
Jonas had already turned the knob and poked his head through the door.

He couldn’t have been more than ten.
The young Jonas looked nothing like the last image Isaac carried of him.
Curly golden hair.
A round, lively face still soft with baby fat.
Eyes sparkling, a bright smile…
and, most of all, an adorable right hand still whole and intact.

“Let’s play knights! Yeah?”

Isaac only stared at Jonas, dumbstruck.
Which one was the dream?
The last winter…
Jonas’s body so light in his arms…
the blunted right wrist…
the snow, the corpses, the ruin, the frozen earth…

— We loved you. Very, very much.

The voice of Jonas as an old man suddenly rose in his mind.

“Brother? Are you crying?”

At Jonas’s question, Isaac turned his head away.

“Leave.”

“Huh?”

“Leave.”

Isaac spoke calmly, but firmly.

“I don’t have time to play with you right now.”

“Brother…”

“I said leave!?”

At Isaac’s raised voice, Jonas flinched, shoulders trembling.

“…Okay. Don’t be mad. …I’ll go.”

Jonas glanced back at the door several times as he walked away,
but Isaac never once looked at him.
He stood rooted to the spot, fists clenched, like a statue.

He wanted to embrace Jonas. To tousle that curly hair. But the uneasy resonance he felt within his body, even the sensation of the vessel breaking felt real.

‘Would there be materials in the estate to make a runestone?’

After a moment of thought, Isaac moved. The method that had consumed a lifetime of research to overcome his peculiar constitution, the method he'd finally succeeded with, circled in his mind.

‘Whether this is a dream or reality doesn't matter. I can’t allow a mana explosion to occur.’

Half a day passed.
In the laboratory annex,
Isaac now held a runestone in one hand.

And in the other…

Fwoom—!!!

Flames ignited.

‘What… is this…truly’

Chills crept down his spine.
This sensation, of mana aligning in structured states, shaping phenomena…
was not something a dream or hallucination could mimic.

Flames fueled by mana danced in the air.
They reflected in Isaac’s icy blue eyes.

He was, unmistakably, standing in reality.
The past had become the present.
And Isaac existed here.

Fwaaaah—!!!

Suddenly, the flames roared upward, as if to devour everything.

“............!?”

At the same time, a strange sensation prickled through his senses.

The single stream of mana flow within him branched into multiple new channels, like tributaries breaking from a river.

It was like using an entirely new muscle for the first time, alien, awkward, but unmistakably real.

END σϝ CHAPTER