Chapter 2: The Beginning of the End【終わりの始まり】

Selesta’s Perspective

When I returned to the Barriston estate, its gates stood in all the same splendor as the royal castle’s.

An arched gate, vast enough for even a dragon of legend to pass through. Heavy black ironwork, wrought with delicate and elaborate ornamentation. In the gardens beyond, blue and white Luminaria bloomed in quiet abundance.

People liked to whisper that the estate had been built in imitation of the palace’s grandeur.

But to me, it had always inspired a strange discomfort.

…It was too magnificent.

At times, I could not help thinking it looked less like a manor than a cage.

By the time I passed through the gate, the front doors were already open. At the edge of my lowered gaze, I caught sight of long white hair stirring softly in the night wind.

Waiting for me there was Lord Nol Barriston—my adoptive parent, and now the kingdom’s Left Minister.

“Welcome home, Ray. You’ve worked hard.”

His words were gentle. His tone was mild, and there was even a faint smile upon his lips.

And yet, for some reason, my throat tightened.

…What am I being so wary of?

I told myself not to be foolish and answered only, “I have returned.”

I bowed my head deeply and tried to pass him.

That was when it happened.

“…You can undo the transformation now, can’t you?”

A sharp snap of his fingers cut through the air.

At once, the current of magic shifted.

It glimmered faintly beneath my armor, then spread over my body in a soft, familiar tide, reshaping me.

I was used to it.

It was a sensation I had known for years, one I had endured and repeated since childhood. At first I had resisted it. Now it had become so ordinary that it had settled into the fabric of my days.

Without a sound, my hair began to lengthen.

The short silver-white strands spilled over my shoulders. My bangs softened, veiling the corners of my face. The outline of my body changed as well, growing narrower, softer—becoming something more fitting, more proper, more like it ought to be.

…The magic has been undone.

I was no longer Ray.

I had returned to Selesta.

The only thing that never changed was the color of my hair.

As Ray, I was white.

As Selesta, I was white.

If I were to look into a mirror, I would see a face too perfectly arranged, as though it had been sculpted for someone else.

Fine features. Skin pale enough to seem almost translucent.

The maids praised me for my beauty, but I had never cared for it.

…To stand beside someone like Her Majesty, I am far too incomplete.

She is strong. She is beautiful.

She possesses a light vast enough to take in all things without faltering.

I am nothing like her.

I struggle enough merely to bear myself. My heart feels too small, my body too frail, as though both would buckle under the weight of anything greater.

…And yet… even so… she chose me, however imperfectly…

I had believed I was living by my own will.

But I had carried too many insecurities, relied too much on my uncle’s hand, and come this far only by asking to be remade again and again.

When he changes me so easily like this, I begin to lose sight of where I end and the lie begins.

I had tried, over and over, to become stronger.

And yet in the end, my lack of confidence always rose back to the surface, clinging to me like something damp and inescapable.

It left me with the feeling that my heart did not truly belong to me.

That feeling, too, remained stuck fast in the depths of my chest tonight.