The Call of the Soul

Five witches lived in these lands.

The immense power these abnormal beings possessed granted them

endless life spans.

Pushing beyond the limits of any known mage, this quintet of women

came with unthinkable might.

For all those who lived in this world, the witches lurking in the shadows

of history came to symbolize fear and calamity.

You should never meet a witch.

You should never listen to a witch.

You should never try to understand a witch.

The old fairy tales were true.

Witches disturbed the flow of fate. They were even said to have

destroyed entire countries overnight.

It is for that reason that people dubbed the era that followed the Dark

Age…the Age of Witches.

"The Age of Witches, huh? People throw that phrase around a lot, but I'm

not so sure about it. It's scarier than it needs to be."

Farsas was a kingdom situated at the center of the continent.

In its castle, a young man took a moment to look up from the work that

had been laid out on his desk.

He had brown hair, nearly black, and eyes the color of a lightening night

sky. His fine features exuded the nobility of his bloodline, though they were

tinged with childishness at times. The crown prince, twenty years of age

that year, received an appalled look in response.

"Oscar… You should be a little more wary. What do you think witches

even are?" a woman with a breathtakingly beautiful face retorted coolly.

She had long, inky-black hair and eyes of the same color. Her snow-white

skin set off her striking features and gave her the appearance of a painted

doll. She appeared to be younger than the man, but there was a certain sense

of eternity in her gaze.

She was a witch, one of only five in all the land.

The Witch of the Azure Moon, Tinasha, was said to be the strongest of

the five. She presented Oscar—the man who'd formed a contract with her

—a cup of tea she'd brewed herself. He thanked her as he took it.

"Why is the current era known as the Age of Witches in the first place?

Did you do something?" he asked.

"There are five witches. Why are you pinning all the blame on me?

You're wrong, regardless. Although I suppose I can't say I had nothing to

do with it in the beginning," Tinasha said, waving her hand dismissively.

"About three hundred years ago, a country to the northwest called Helginis

locked up the Witch Who Cannot Be Summoned. Helginis mages tried to

weave a huge destruction spell using her as the catalyst."

"What? I've never heard of that," Oscar said. As part of his statesman's

education, he had learned the basics of regional history, but this was his first

time hearing of destruction magic using a witch as a catalyst.

Tinasha made a face, still holding the tea things. "That's because

everyone involved at the time died, except the witches of course. It's not

something that was spoken of openly. And any sort of large-scale

destruction magic, whether it uses humans as catalysts or not, is classified

as a forbidden curse. However, the one they attempted back then was on a

whole different scale. If they'd managed to pull off the spell, it would've no

doubt irreparably altered the entire continent. Naturally, with something so

dire at stake, the other four witches—myself included—refused to stand by

and let the Helginis mages do as they pleased.

"So what happened?"

"We had no choice but to intervene in the situation in Helginis and

release the Witch Who Cannot Be Summoned. Once we did, she destroyed

the entire country in a single night."

"...…"

"From then on, the term Age of Witches started cropping up…," Tinasha

concluded.

"What a mess…," Oscar remarked. Just listening to it was enough to

give him a headache. He rubbed his temples.

Compared with the gruesome era colored by war and betrayal that was

the Dark Age, the Age of Witches was largely peaceful, with only a few

currents of discord. Perhaps that was the natural result of people cowering

in fear of the supremely powerful witches.

Oscar eyed Tinasha, a witch capable of taking on an entire army alone.

"Destroyed a country in one night, huh? That's more than just an old

story?"

"The Dark Age was rife with tales like that," Tinasha said with a smile,

but her dark eyes revealed none of what she was thinking. She realized

Oscar was staring at her and arched one shapely brow. "If you've learned

your history, then you should behave more responsibly. Keep acting

recklessly, and you'll end up dead someday without understanding why."

"You can talk about my death all you want, but I have your protective

barrier on me as long as you're alive, don't I? Doesn't that mean we'll die

at the same time? Shouldn't we just get married?" Oscar grinned.

"Don't lump us together! I'm not marrying you!" Tinasha spat.

The barrier she had cast on Oscar was an extraordinary one that could

protect him from all magical and physical attacks. While it had a few

limitations and blind spots, it afforded every defense that magic could

provide. So long as Tinasha was alive, the barrier on Oscar would remain

intact, making it practically a cheat.

The witch rolled her eyes at the prince. "You need to learn your place.

Here I am trying to break your curse, but it'll all be pointless if you get

yourself killed doing something else."

As heir to his country, Oscar had a heavy burden on his shoulders. When

he was but a child, he'd been cursed to be the end of his line by the Witch

of Silence. The wicked spell cloaked any unborn child of his blood in such

a powerful protective charm that no mother's body could bear it.

Overcoming such a mighty enchantment was quite the high hurdle, but

Oscar had to if his lineage was to survive.

In pursuit of a way to do so, Oscar had completed the trials set by

another witch so that she would break the curse for him. He'd braved the

tower where it was said a witch granted a wish to all who climbed to the

top, and he'd come back with Tinasha as his protector.

Oscar looked up at said mouthy protector. "Even if you don't break the

curse, you're not affected by the Witch of Silence's power, right? Just marry

me and that'll solve everything. When should we hold the wedding?"

"We have a contract for one year! You don't have the right to extend it!

And I'm almost done analyzing the curse!" Tinasha retorted.

"Weren't you the one who went on and on about how difficult it'll be to

undo the spell? You're so studious…," Oscar commented.

"Of course I am. There's no one else around who can do it. If you

understood that, you'd know not to act so rashly. Now behave or I'll curse

you to never leave your desk."

"It'd be too funny if I was cursed by two separate witches," Oscar

remarked before giving up and returning his attention to the stack of

documents before him. Talking to Tinasha was entertaining, but he'd incur

her resentment if he took it too far.

Contrary to the typical idea of what a witch was, Tinasha was so overly

serious that it was adorable. It was no doubt due to that demeanor of hers

that she was helping to break his curse, even though that wasn't specified in

their contract.

Tinasha had lived for so many years that she viewed solitude as natural,

however, and didn't form attachments to people. She was both incredibly

kind and incredibly heartless.

At times, a terrible loneliness filled her eyes…and it made Oscar wish

that she'd just stay with him forever. He wanted no more shadows to cast a

pall over her smiles. Over the past half a year, he had completely fallen for

her.

"There's no need to push yourself to finish the analysis so fast. After

coming down from your tower for the first time in so long, you should

enjoy things for a time," Oscar urged. He wanted Tinasha to think of living

peacefully with humans as something normal for her, and he wished she'd

just while her days away like ordinary people did.

After tidying up the tea things, Tinasha turned back to him. "I want to do

what I can while I can," she stated, as if anticipating the end of the contract.

She smiled, a faraway look in her eyes.

Farsas Castle employed close to fifty court mages. They spent their days

researching and attending to magic-related task requests that came from all

over the castle.

They were all generally excellent mages, even in comparison to mages

from other countries, and reliably took care of most issues even if it

required some time. There were the occasional requests that were beyond

their capabilities, however. Ever since Tinasha had arrived at the castle,

she'd been the one who handled such cases.

"So we've been asked to give our expert opinion on this magic

implement but can't identify exactly what it is…," explained Kav the mage

as he handed a dagger to Tinasha.

At present, there was no one else in the castle's laboratory. A great

number of reagents Kav was using for his own research had been left out on

the lab table. Looking stumped, he awaited the witch's assessment.

The old-looking dagger was encased in a copper sheath. Tinasha pulled

it out and frowned. "You were told this is a magic implement?"

"Yes. Apparently, it was purchased as an antique at a secondhand shop

in town, but it moves on its own and gets hot. That's why we were asked to

look into whether it's ensorcelled… But while I do sense some sort of

power from it, there's no spell laid into the thing and it bears no carved

sigils, either. I'm not sure what to make of it," Kav said.

Tinasha turned the blade over, and sure enough, the dagger's surface was

bereft of etchings.

In order for a mage to imbue an object with a specific magical effect, the

item in question must be given a carved sigil denoting a spell. Looking at

that mark was the usual way of discerning what sort of power the enchanted

object possessed.

This dagger had no such engraving, however, which was why Kav

needed help.

Tinasha's face was pinched as she said, "This isn't a magic implement.

It's the result of a forbidden curse."

"What? A forbidden curse? Wh-what part of it is?" Kav asked

nervously.

"The effect itself isn't particularly potent, but its origin is problematic. A

human soul is sealed inside."

"What?!"

Forbidden curses included things with problematic effects and tricky

spell-casting processes. Anything involving a human sacrifice typically fell

into the latter type.

Tinasha's beautiful features twisted in disgust. "Souls are masses of

power that naturally dissolve if they lose their frames—the body. This soul

has been affixed to the dagger to prevent it from dispersing. But it wasn't

done by a very good mage. And just because a soul is sealed inside doesn't

mean the weapon is imbued with some sort of power. Most likely the soul

will escape in time."

"If that's true, then that means this is…" Kav trailed off as he accepted

the dagger back from the witch. Its time of creation was now clear.

Tinasha picked up on what Kav had left unspoken. "Not much time has

passed since this object was made. We should find and catch whoever did

this. Where is that secondhand shop?" she asked, her dark eyes flashing.

Her gaze was sharp and shone with a cold fury. Kav gulped.

Immediately, Tinasha frowned as she suddenly addressed someone

standing behind Kav in the laboratory doorway. "Absolutely not. I'm not

taking you."

"No, I'm definitely going. I can't just leave this alone after hearing all

that," came a deep, most definitely not childish voice. Kav whirled around

and bowed to the man, who was standing in the doorway with an irritated

look on his face.

When Tinasha caught sight of that expression, she merely threw her

hands up in exasperation.

Kav led Tinasha and Oscar to a secondhand shop situated in a back alley

of the town that encircled the castle.

Light entered through a small window and shone on various curiosities

set out within the dim store. A motley assortment of goods including rusty

bells, ancient horseshoes, keys and locks, kitchen utensils, and decorations

were crammed onto shelves and stuffed into wooden boxes for display.

Oscar gawked with great interest at nearly everything around him, but

Tinasha leaned against the wall with her arms crossed soon after entering.

Seeing that the other two were loath to take the initiative, Kav had no

choice but to address the shop owner. "Excuse me. We've come from the

castle. We're looking for the person who sold this."

The owner was a man in the prime of life. He took one look at the

questionable dagger's scabbard and answered right away. "Oh, that?

Someone traded that to pay off their loans. I've known the guy for about a

decade, but it sounds like he's gotten himself deep in debt this year. He

borrowed money from a bunch of places and brought me this dagger to get

the funds to pay it off. This isn't anything special, but I did him a favor

since I've known him so long."

"What kind of man was this?" Oscar asked, a bronze key in hand. His

voice carried well, and the shop owner glanced over at him but thankfully

didn't seem to suspect he was truly the crown prince.

"Just a regular guy. He's got a wife and two little girls. Several times a

year, he goes around the city selling wares. Oh, I recently found out he had

a younger brother, though."

"A brother?" Oscar inquired.

"Indeed. His brother was the one who came in to sell the daggers. Said

he was holding on to the little things and an IOU."

Tinasha, leaning against the wall, suddenly straightened up. She walked

over to a box of items and pulled out two other daggers from it.

The owner's eyes widened. "You've got a good eye, ma'am. He brought

in those two along with a third—the one you've got. Apparently, it

should've been a set of four, but…"

"…A twenty-five-year-old woman."

"What?"

After unsheathing one of the short blades, Tinasha said something as

though observing what others could not. The owner and Kav gaped at her.

Pulling the other dagger from its sleeve, she said, "A thirty-one-year-old

man."

"Miss Tinasha, what are you…?"

Kav didn't understand, but the shop owner seemed to have realized

something. Stunned, he asked, "How do you know the ages of my friend

and his wife? Can you tell the daggers' former owners just from looking at

them?"

"What? Former owner…?" Kav muttered as he quickly went pale.

What did her words indicate? The first of the three daggers had been

discovered to house a human soul. It was easy to deduce why Tinasha

looked at the daggers sold with it and stated the ages of a couple she

shouldn't have known.

Inside the first dagger was…

Kav stared at the blade in his hand.

Tinasha pointed to it with one pale finger. "A seven-year-old girl."

Realizing that had to be one of the couple's daughters, Kav fought down

a scream with everything he had.

"Our suspect has to be the brother who sold the daggers. When he came

here with the three blades, he must have already killed the mother, father,

and daughter," Oscar reasoned.

He and Tinasha were walking along an alley clustered with small houses

on the outskirts of the Farsas castle city. They'd departed from the castle

rather early in the day, so the sun was still high in the sky.

Oscar and Tinasha had sent Kav—still shell-shocked—back to the castle

and headed to the house of the man who owed money. Consulting the map

the shop owner drew for them, Oscar turned a corner.

"A set of four, huh? Which means the youngest daughter probably got

involved, too," he remarked.

Both of them were enraged at the idea of a three-year-old girl being

made a sacrifice for a forbidden curse.

Tinasha tucked her long black hair behind one ear. "Experiments with

forbidden curses like this one were quite common during the Dark Age.

During that time, lives were treated with even less care than they are now.

Unlike magical ability, which is determined at birth, all souls have a kind of

power to them. It's entirely natural that some stupid people started to think

it could be harnessed and utilized."

"Madness…," Oscar said.

"This sort of thing happened a lot back then. The only thing that came

from those horrible experiments was the conclusion that souls couldn't

really be used for anything. History has proven time and again that those

who use forbidden curses will eventually fall prey to one themselves. There

was nothing to gain by forcing souls into the daggers. Any amount of

research would've made that apparent… That this man would still do

something so depraved suggests he is not of sound mind."

"Someone sane wouldn't have sacrificed people to begin with," said

Oscar, patting Tinasha on the head.

Mages utterly despised forbidden curses, and it seemed this witch was

no exception. In fact, perhaps because Tinasha was such a preeminent

mage, she was even more upset than Kav about this situation.

As Oscar attempted to soothe the displeased witch at his side, he turned

another corner. No sooner had he done so than he came upon the man's

home. It was a rather washed-out little place crammed tightly between its

neighbors.

Oscar stared at the structure. "Those daggers were brought to the antique

shop three days ago, right? Won't that mean there's no one here?"

"Even if their souls were sealed away, their bodies should've remained,"

Tinasha explained.

"I was trying not to put it so bluntly…," Oscar muttered.

"There's no need for you to worry about upsetting me. I lived through

the Dark Age, after all," Tinasha insisted.

Judging from the exterior, the man's house didn't look lived in at all.

They could see a simple kitchen through the glassless windows. Empty

dishes sat atop a wooden table.

"Let's start by taking a look around inside," Oscar decided.

Just as he was about to go in, a man carrying a child popped out from

the yard of a house two doors down. He must have been watching.

"Hey, the people in that house moved out three days ago," he said.

"Oh yeah? Did you see if they had any kids with them?" Oscar asked.

He didn't bother speaking formally to a stranger, which did nothing to hide

his high social status. Tinasha frowned slightly.

The man nodded, rocking the sleeping child against his shoulder. "They

did. Two of them, in fact. The younger one's close with my son, so he

wanted to know where they were going so early in the morning." The

young man patted his child's back.

Oscar and Tinasha exchanged glances. "That must mean something

happened after they left the house," deduced the former.

"In that case, we need to gather more eyewitness reports…," Tinasha

answered, snapping her fingers and pointing inside the house. "Oscar, have

a look around inside the place."

"What about you?"

"I'll wait out here. When we get yelled at for this later, someone will

have to provide an excuse for your recklessness."

"That's true. Lazar's probably dying of a stomachache right about now,"

Oscar remarked.

"And yet you snuck out anyway. Have you no compassion?" chided

Tinasha. She frequently scolded Oscar herself and thus sympathized deeply

with Lazar, Oscar's childhood friend. Before she'd met Oscar, Lazar was

the one who'd had to chase after him whenever he snuck from the safety of

the castle. These days, that job fell to Tinasha. Lazar probably still got just

as many stomachaches, but at least he enjoyed some reduction in hardship.

If Oscar dared to point out such a thing, however, both Tinasha and Lazar

would undoubtedly scold him.

"Well, I'm off, then. Don't follow any strangers," Oscar warned his

beautiful protector.

"If you really think I'd do that, then finish up your tasks quickly…,"

Tinasha replied, waving him off tiredly.

The prince turned toward the seemingly abandoned house. The man with

the child appeared shocked to know that Oscar was about to intrude on

someone else's home. He beat a hasty withdrawal indoors, clearly thinking

this wasn't something he ought to get involved in.

Before the man with the child could retreat out of sight, however, a little

girl poked her face out from the house across the way. She looked at the

child in the man's arms and called in an innocent voice…

"Ayla? Did you cut your hair? Who's that?"

There was a moment of silence.

It was Oscar who responded the swiftest. He rolled to the side and

grabbed the child before the man could escape. A fraction of a moment

later, Tinasha seized the man by his neck with her ivory fingers.

Her nails very nearly cut into the man's flesh. She looked up at him with

dull, coal-black eyes. "It was you."

"Don't kill him, Tinasha," Oscar demanded, the child in his arms

limiting his movements. He'd have to put the child down to stop her, but the

little girl was fast asleep. Upon closer inspection, it was obvious the child's

hair had been crudely cut to make her appear to be a boy.

The man struggled against Tinasha's hold on his throat. With a voice

like the chill hand of death, the witch asked, "What were you doing with

those daggers? Were you experimenting with different spells depending on

the soul?"

"N-no…"

"Then were you practicing? The daughter's soul stuck to the weapon

better than the mother's and the mother's more than the father's. Did you

think the next one would go even better?"

"…Ngh, ah…"

The man's breathing grew faint, and he began thrashing around like a

drowning man. The witch had silently lifted him off the ground, her jetblack hair swaying all around her.

The primal urge to kill was pouring off her in waves, dominating the

surrounding atmosphere. Its ominous presence left not only the man but the

girl who'd exposed him frozen in fear. The only one unaffected was Oscar,

who said, "Are you listening, Tinasha? Don't kill him yet. I want to hear

what he has to say."

"There's no point in letting him live. This man has magic."

"Did you decide to remain outside when you realized that?" Oscar

posed. It'd struck him as strange that Tinasha had been so willing to let him

out of her sight. It was hard to think she'd do that under normal

circumstances. Evidently, she'd suspected the man of being the culprit from

the very beginning.

Tinasha saw that the man was about to pass out and released her grip.

He fell to the ground, coughing violently as he gasped for air. In a hoarse

voice, he admitted, "I—I was trying to make a magic sword…for the

future…"

"Save the cryptic remarks. What do you think you are, some lunatic

from the Dark Age?" Tinasha's mocking retort seemed casual enough, but

her eyes betrayed something darker than the desire to kill. Peering into them

was to stare into an abyss that ran deeper than Tinasha herself.

Sensing a moment of opportunity, Oscar said, "Tinasha, trade places

with me. I don't know how to hold a kid."

"You seem to be managing. Just keep doing what you're doing."

"Trade with me. I'll take over for you," insisted the prince, patting the

witch's head with his free hand.

The warmth from his hand slowly spread through Tinasha, and she

reluctantly received the young girl from him. She cradled the child against

her shoulder.

As she held the sleeping kid, the witch suddenly appeared very kind, not

unlike a regular person.

Resolving the case turned out to be an exercise in frustration.

Oscar frowned as he listened to a report of the culprit's testimony.

"A call for mages? Cuscull… Isn't that the same new country that sent

an envoy to invite Tinasha?"

"It is. It doesn't look like they're doing it openly, but they've proclaimed

themselves open to all capable mages. This man resorted to murder trying

to heed that call," Kav explained, reading out the report and glancing to one

side. His gaze fell to the crown prince's protector. She was sitting on a

couch with her legs crossed.

Despite having been furious and nearly killing the man, Tinasha now

seemed a portrait of placid calm—on the surface anyway. Crossing her

arms, she took over the report. "Though the invitation is for 'capable

mages,' that can mean a great many things. It looks like Cuscull is trying to

collect those who excel at warfare. I don't know what they're planning, but

it doesn't bode well that they're inciting people to commit terrible acts."

"A magic sword, huh? Mass production of such a weapon would not be

good for us," Oscar commented.

"Normal mages cannot produce magic swords. Almost all of them are

fakes, with the exception of Akashia. A considerable amount of magic and

a very complicated spell are both needed to fix a soul to an object. That's

why most cases have historically come about by accident," Tinasha

detailed.

"You're saying it's difficult to intentionally re-create such a process.

Now that the challenge is out there, though, it's likely to cause further

trouble."

While Oscar and Tinasha happened to uncover this one case, that didn't

mean they'd be able to bring in everyone who'd taken up the same offer.

"Idiots are out there doing things like this because they don't know any

better. Not knowing what they're getting themselves into convinces them

it's worth pursuing… This is why, with time, people will repeat the same

cycle of despair," Tinasha snapped back coldly.

A sorrowful shadow fell over her dark eyes. Her words spoke to

countless instances of lost hope witnessed over the many years of her life.

Her gaze grew distant, as if she were reliving far-off memories. When she

noticed Oscar and Kav's eyes on her, she rose to her feet.

Clapping her hands to change the conversation, Tinasha said, "In any

case, keep an eye out for any strange magical incidents and be sure to tell

me about them. I'll deal with any and all occurrences as best I can."

"Yep. Kav, don't go to her directly. Report to me first," Oscar ordered.

"Why do you treat me like some bomb that could go off at any

minute?!" Tinasha cried.

"Well, at least you're aware of how dangerous you are," Oscar quipped.

"You're one to talk!" the witch protested, floating along the ceiling.

Kav was relieved to see her acting like her old self again.

He had to wonder how things would play out, however. What changes

were lurking just beyond the veil of darkness?

Come what may, Kav had a feeling that true despair would be averted,

so long as Oscar had Tinasha by his side.