“Please, stop! You don’t have to do this!” I heard a shout from within the house.
I ran forward, reaching an open window first that allowed me to look inside. What I saw left me immediately stunned. It was the mother, her daughter, and the brother like before. They all looked a bit older now. The daughter was perhaps sixteen or seventeen. The mother had started to show her age a bit too. The brother was now a bit older than me.
The person who cried out was the daughter. She was being pinned to the bed, partially stripped. Her brother was on top of her, and it was clear what he was about to do with her. What was even more shocking was the mother. She was watching this unfold, but she seemed to be encouraging it.
“This is the only way. This is your purpose. You have to do this.” Her mother declared, edging them on.
I then looked at the brother, and I realized there was a line of mana around his neck. He must have been marked with a slave mark too. Tears were falling down his cheeks, and he had a nearly vacant expression like he was being forced to do this. That was when I saw an arrogant man step out from the shadows.
He had some kind of whip-like weapon in his hand and was holding it threateningly toward the brother.
“Do it! This is what you’re here to do! You foolish boy. You thought you could run from me.”
“Stop… he doesn’t love me, stop making him do this.”
Her brother stopped a moment just as he was pushing down on her. “S-sister… I do love you. That’s why… I can’t do this.”
“B-brother…”
“When the time comes, and you find the man you love, give him your all!”
The noble seemed to take that as his cue and he lifted up his whip to strike the man. I grabbed the door and pulled, only to find that it didn’t budge. Cursing, I kicked the door with all of my might, but I might as well have been kicking a rock wall. I had to be. I grabbed a rock and smashed it into the window, and it bounced off without making a dent.
“You won’t be interacting with this one.” A voice came from next to me.
I spun to see the old lady standing there.
“Why are you showing me this?” I demanded.
“You can’t change the past, Master, no matter how much you want to. Ah! I mean, Deek.”
I glared at the old lady who looked flustered. “Elaya?”
“Tcht!” She made an irritated expression as her body changed back into her beautiful and youthful form. “I did have you tricked for a while, didn’t I?”
As we were speaking, I could hear shouts and the sound of fighting inside, but I couldn’t do anything about it. It felt cruel.
“What game are you playing?” I demanded.
“Not a game… just the truth… Look, it’s already over.”
I looked through the glass. The mother was crying on the floor, holding her son. He was convulsing. The noble was on the ground dead. He had managed to kill his own Master. The backlash of the slave mark must have been unbelievable. The girl was trembling in her bed, hiding under the covers.
“Is this your history?” I asked.
“I wonder,” Elaya responded, but when I turned to look at her, she was already gone.
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