May You Honor Your Soul

Chapter 1 - Avenge Constance

21st October, Year 2024 of the Kingdom Malamesh

A ball of great extravagance was held in the imperial palace of the Murdine royal family. 

Children of proper age was allowed for the first time to celebrate their debutante ball at the same time. Both boys and girls alike. 

Various nobles, disregarding ranks, all chuckled and giggled at the cuteness of children.

It was the time to celebrate a momentous occasion.

<The Defeat of Constance the Great Witch> 

Constance was a woman with long beautiful snow-white hair. An aura of majesty and elegance which every person who've encountered her turned towards every single time. It did not matter if Constance came to a shop every hour everyday.

Everyone would still be smitten.

However there had come a news of seeing someone who looked like Constance in the Eldritch Woods, known for only letting the most powerful and dangerously unruly beings inside.

Human nature could be so eerie.

No matter how you adore and cherish something, as soon as something does not line up with how they knew about it... human beings would immediately question it.

Maybe it's because you adore and cherish it, that you want to make sure it is not as morbid and creepy as you've heard of it. Thus you question it and question it, and question it and question-

Until the trust breaks.

In the end, it did not matter if it was false. What mattered was why someone said someone like that to you. 

Everyone falls the same way.

It ends especially badly for those on top.

'Why did that person saw someone like the Empress Constance there?'

'She never sets foot out of the castle unless its that fruit shop?'

'But could she be... I've heard rumors that humans with white hair are cursed.'

The rumors and imaginations of the people spiraled and before anyone could understand that they were swayed by one malicious person, they have already driven Constance out.

Constance, who was aided by a secret helped, lived and escaped the palace. She was too sweet and good for this world. She should just die.

Right.

Dying was the best way for her.

Someone as good as her...

In the end, Constance was caught by the heartbroken emperor and her bestfriend. 

Unfortunately she was caught on the act. She was residing in a comfortable cottage in the Eldritch Woods, house full of materials and ingredients used for sorcery. There was even a magic broom that defended her.

Even with all the evidence pointing to her as a witch, she still claimed innocent.

But the emperor did not listen nor did the bestfriend, and Constance was vanquished just like that.

'However the people here did not know all of this. What they knew and what I knew was vastly different... All they knew was Constance who was vanquished by the emperor after being labeled as a witch.'

Constance who once almost shave her whole head because one child who had a terminal illness liked it.

Constance who smiled even when her father sold her to an ungrateful prick of an emperor.

Constance who loved that prick because it was her duty, and found the smallest good things about him and never ever badmouthed him.

And that Constance who-

'So stupidly, stupidly, stupidly'-

-Not choose herself and let the emperor and her bestfriend live happily every after.

"What a stupid woman, naive and innocent she was. Did she think he'll remember her if she gave them her blessing with her life?"

Sharp words passed through the woman's mouth as she watched the banquet ensue. 

A few strands of black hair flew out of her similar colored robe. Her white-grey eyes grew colder as she watched the murderers of her sister.

"Comrades, Let these traitors burn to death. The lot of them."

Her words sparked the fire in the hearts of the 500 black mages within the vicinity.

'How dare they?!'

'Insolent people!'

'You will rot in hell with us!'

All of these people though smaller than the mighty army of the emperor, Kidian Murdine, have magic burning even their lives to step on a small army with their full strength.

That's right.

These black mages are Constance's support group.

She was indeed a witch.

However compared to all of them, she was the only one who broke through the limits of being a black mage and became a white mage.

Mages usually did not have colors.

They'd be classified into their specialty of elements they can wield like an elementalist. However, white and black mages were indeed special.

It is because they can summon a power that did not exist in this world.

For a black mage, it was the abyss.

And for the white mage, it was life.

Constance was naive as she was sweet and pure.

She wished for the people who love her to be happy even when she died.

But she must have forgotten that right now... the people who love her left alive are those who would kill for her?

"Follow the Great Witch's orders!"

"Burn the country!"

"Let these villains taste the greatness of our sorrow!"

And yet even though Constance was a white mage, the Great Witch title did not belong to her.

Constance had the affinity of controlling life with white magic.

But the Great Witch was someone who can put an end to it.

<Death >

The Great Witch can control someone's death and death itself.

Standing at the highest level of the skies with white-grey cold eyes and long black hair was a woman named, Sequentia.

The person whose title was stolen in public by Constance and because of the foolish humans who wanted to turn that innocent girl into something much dangerous than she actually was.

And also Sequentia, who lost her precious sister and greatest creation.

For Sequentia, that girl was the only homunculi who absorbed a soul completely.

But even then-!

Her cottage in the Eldritch Woods was even burned and all her secret recipes for a homunculi besides Constance was thrashed and stolen.

"You! You rascals!!!"

Sequentia's closest aides sighed at the Great Witch's behavior.

"Hey Maine... she's not sad about Constance, is she?" One of the new mages whispered silently to another.

The blonde man named Maine shrugged, "She only used Constance as a fuel to drive the mages here to their deaths. Probably to avenge her precious hut and get her recipes back."

"It's not that simple!" Sequentia's greatest ally and assistant, Morticia, yelled at them. "The Great Witch has a bad memory! If her recipes she kept safe and mastered over and over again was burned just like that, do you think you won't froth at the mouth?! Sequentia had lived for thousands of years already trying to master that homunculi recipe! But it was easily stolen by barbarians who calls themselves 'swordmasters'?!"

Morticia continued to grumble about the loss of the recipe as if she too had lost a precious child, even shedding some tears.

Sequentia sighed and flipped her hood over, revealing her face.

Her appearance wasn't so simple.

From the roots, Sequentia's hair was white but the middle part slowly turned black. One of her eyes was white, while the other was black.

"Time to find my recip- Err! My Constance! Time to avenge her, comrades!" 

Though Sequentia yelled this, the black mages had actually decimated about two cities in the country already and was engaging in a fierce aerial battle with the imperial mages while others were trying to break the barrier and sniping out the incoming swordmasters.

Sequentia lowered her flight magic and stood on top of the barrier.

Despite her young face, she had a sharp elegant and elvish disposition.

Seeing her stand closely in one of the created holes of the banquet hall, Kidian Murdine the emperor looked surprised at the moment and glared at her. "You're.. Sequentia, are you not?"

"What's it matter to a high ranking official like you?"

Her pale pink lips turned into a grin and with a stomp of her feet, the barrier broke like fragile thin glass.

"Ahhhhh!!!"

Everyone trapped in the hall, soldiers, civilians, adults or children alike screamed in dread.

"My, what a good show. The children who laughed at the puppet shows regarding Constance's death are here. The parents who fueled the rumors and eventually lead to her exile. And wow! The main actors! The emperor Kidian and Constance's bestfriend Evangeline who plotted against the very person who cared for them wholeheartedly JUST SO they could live a happily ever after without any guilt! It is JUST SO WONDERFUL, isn't it?"

Sequentia's blood boiled under her veins.

Even if she didn't care much about Constance's choice of living, no one would stay neutral and feel nothing after knowing how, and even more so, knowing why her sister and creation had become the laughingstock of the country and died like a villain.

A sense of sorrow of turning a blind eye until her banishment.

Only offering for Constance to come back home and not even resolve the loose ends.

'Right. It is time to burn those loose ends so they never be experienced agai-'

"Hm..? Why is... magic moving away from me?"

Sequentia, in the middle of conjuring a majestic sun magic on top of everyone, felt a sense of incongruity.

It was then that a single strand of white hair caught her attention.

<Sequentia, please don't hurt them...>

"Hah?"

Sequentia was too stunned to speak, nor move as she saw scythe heading towards her head.

<Thanks to you, I can now control the last realm of magic.>

<As my soul is enhanced as the Great Witch, I won't let you kill him. have a contract to uphold after all...>

-PHUK!

Chapter 1 End

Avenge Constance - Failed