The sun was rising when Sae reached the village of Altea. She had a different look than usual because of her transformation magic -- her once white hair were now turned into black, her azure eyes were green and her figure was taller and more formal. The goal was to say she was an investigator from the capital, so that nobody would complain about her questions towards the inhabitants of the village.
"This place hasn't changed much." The now black-haired girl said as she gazed at a place that she had last visited more than thirty years prior. "Nor have I, though." Those were the last words that she pronounced before entering the village. Of course, the first person Sae would've had to talk to was the head of the village to explain why she had arrived there, but at the same time there were people that she needed to talk to: the possible suspects.
Now, while the Ice Mage didn't have any particular idea of who the culprit was, it wasn't impossible for them to live in the village of Altea. Of course there was the possibility that the culprit wasn't even a member of a village or that they hailed from one of the villages that were previously attacked, but the fact Altea was the only place where such a weird death -- if compared to the others, at least -- happened, made the sorcerer believe there was a certain focus on this place.
"Alright. Considering that this is a serial killer, there's a very good chance they are a strong being. Especially considering the fact that no person who died managed to defend theirselves -- until the last. Elia died while fighting back... what changed? Was Elia really that strong?" Sae asked herself in her thoughts, but those were questions that she still couldn't answer.
Still, the first people that she wanted to talk to were Elia's parents and siblings. Because he died in his own house, there was a possibility that the killer already had access to that place, which would reasonably explain why they didn't have to break in.
As the white-haired sorcerer, now a black-haired investigator, kept a list of questions deep inside her mind, slowly she arrived to the place where Elia had died, his house. She nodded to herself and started knocking at the door, not in an insistent way, but with two calm knocks. She imagined his family would still be grieving, so she didn't want to bother them too much.
It was a two meters tall man with a black beard and coal-colored black hair and eyes that opened the door to the infinitely shorter girl. As Sae noticed this, she slowly looked up to meet the face of the stranger.
"My condolences. I am Siara Laye and I'm a Mage at the Academy of Delmasia. I've been sent here to ask some questio--" as Sae was lying through her teeth and creating a fake identity, the door was shut in her face. Confused, she looked at the now-closed door and realized that something was definitely wrong.
"What?" She asked, but the man that had opened the door already couldn't hear her. "Alright, there's definitely something wrong here." The girl announced, realizing she'd have to understand a situation that looked quite strange to her.
While Sae was in the village, Leran couldn't stop reading the book. Already hit by the impact of the new information he had, like the love life of Narion, something that he never knew about, he simply wanted to know more -- he couldn't stop this feeling, this ache inside him. He had been kept without information for far too long.
So, helped by the library to find the next important page of the book, he kept reading.
'While it's natural for demons to be possessive beings, Narion took it to a new level. He wanted to make sure nobody could even be able to see the girl he had fallen in love with. As such he created a spell just to make sure that nobody but him would find her house anymore. One should be happy with such a result, but that was just the beginning for him. To make sure she couldn't run away from him, afraid of his antics, he knew he needed to be stronger than her. So he trained his magic more and more, getting as many resources as possible from his party while doing so. While he was doing that, he kept visiting the girl every day and having conversations that were never boring with her.
Until one day,'
Once again, the page was changed.
'Unaware, the girl asked him: "You said you had a brother, didn't you? Why don't you bring him here one day? I'd love to meet him."
Her intentions were sincere; it wasn't as if she hadn't realized of the existence of the spell blocking her house from being seen, but she thought he was just trying to defend her. Not thinking too much of it, she had asked a question that would ruin the life of the person in question.
"Why do you care about him?" He asked, not showing any strong feeling. "I was just curious." She shrugged it off, then kept continuing at the garden where he'd always met her at. But Narion wasn't convinced at all. Already enraged by her question, he felt nervous and thought that his brother may want to try stealing her from him.
"Why did I even tell her I had a brother?" He asked himself, feeling dizzy. His love still watched him with that same face, as if she couldn't sense his malicious intent. That was what he conceived as the perfection of her soul, something that he swore to protect.'
And just after that another page of the book was opened.
'Narion immediately thought of a plan to dispose of everyone that his love might feel even an inch of affection towards -- so long as they weren't him. As such, his brother had to go as well.'
After reading that, Leran was already in tears. The reason why he was doomed for so long -- why the brother he had been so affectionate towards started hating him so much in the last days he stayed with him, going as far as to declare that Leran was his enemy and getting the whole group against him -- it was all because his brother hopelessly fell for a girl and became so obsessed and possessive that he could not leave her.
The current demon king was still not satisfied, though. As he tried to flip the page, he was stopped by an owl's paw. It was a very familiar paw, one that felt innatural with the white and light blue colors on it.
"Jerome?" Leran asked, tears in his eyes. "W-Where have you been?" He asked, trying to regain his composure but failing miserably.
Jerome laughed harshly to that question, then looked at the demon with his azure eyes and said: "I've been told not to interfere. You need to know the truth. But the remaining part of the book, the reason why Narion, your beloved older brother, decided to invade the human world, that's a story that isn't meant to be explained now. There'll be a time for it." The guardian owl tried to explain, but the demon could only thrash against his strong paws.
"What are you saying? I need to know! This... is the reason I can't trust anyone anymore! This is the reason I changed, I used to be innocent, I used to live for the future, I remember how it felt when I wasn't empty inside!" That was what Leran had exclaimed, screaming and crying, to the wise guardian of the library.
"Maybe you don't just remember when you didn't feel empty inside... maybe you're slowly regaining your trust in others as you met a person who suffers from your same issues, who has your same nightmares, who lives in the same sad, gray, hopeless and dreamless reality that you've lived in for so long?" Jerome said with a calm voice, not looking at all afraid of the consequences of his declaration. He wasn't one bit scared of Leran, after all, because he knew what he really was like inside.
And he had hit right in the mark. "I'll give you a little trivia about this place. Master Saelyne hasn't used any terraforming magic to create it." Jerome explained with a grin on his face, to which Leran could only answer with a confused face after a few seconds.
"What do you mean? The outside..." He tried to mutter, but the guardian owl already had his answer ready. "It's not real. It's illusion magic -- you see what your mind believes should be there." Jerome explained with a wise expression, to which the demon king was even more confused.
"Why are you telling me about this now?" That was the demon's answer, to which Jerome just started flying up in the air, getting back to his usual spot. But before he could reach it, there was one thing left for him to say.
"There are no flowers here."
Leran thought he understood. As he slowly changed his expression towards one that hopes for better things to come, he slowly put his head to work around the last remark the owl had made.
"Sae is unlike the girl in this book. She needs an affection that is different from the twisted one that my brother gives, she needs someone that cares for her enough that she can put her heart into his care while blindly trusting them. And do I feel ready to take such a task?" That was his conclusion, that ended with a question to himself that he didn't know the answer to. But there was no time to think about it because his thoughts were soon stopped.
"By the way, Master has disguised herself and gone alone to the village of Altea to investigate about a psychopath that could quite literally have prepared more than ten traps just for her to remove the biggest possible enemy to their killing spree." Jerome said from the comfort of his nest.
"What?!"
"Yeah, you may want to go. The fastest way to--"
"I know it! I'm going!" Leran exclaimed with a pained expression before running away from the room at full speed. Because of how fast he was going his curly white hair moved in innatural ways, but he couldn't bother with such an infant-like thought when Sae's life was on the line.
"As if she'd ever be in danger." Jerome sighed after he saw the demon king leave. "But he should most definitely not be allowed to enter this place again. There'll only be more pain from now on." The owl thought, then sighed again without any particular expression. What he could not ask out loud, but something he really desired an answer to was: "are you really going to be different, or are you going to slowly go down your brother's path?"
Knowing his opinion wouldn't matter much despite the fact that his Master valued him and her other familiars a lot, he kept his mouth shut. He knew she was way too easy to manipulate despite the age and could think of the worst possible outcomes. At some point, though, his blue and white feathers perked up.
"I'm going to write a book. That'll calm me. There's a lot to write about, after all. Today was eventful."
Those were the last words that the guardian owl said out loud before casually shutting the door to the library with his paws.
