Turning

With each continuation of Kishiar’s voice, what once felt like a distant and unreal story of the past began to rapidly gain flesh and vitality. After piecing together all the old records he had uncovered, Kishiar had come to a single conclusion.

“It seems the Pearl Tower at the time truly decided they needed to bury this incident as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”

“To investigate whether the miracle was real?”

“That was certainly part of it, but... I also got the feeling it might have been more about protecting their own reputation.”

According to Kishiar, the era in question was one of the worst periods in terms of hostility between mages and the temple.

“It’s said that the Tower Master at the time openly mocked the Temple of the Great God and once even declared he would never seek a priest’s healing, not even on his deathbed. That should give you some idea of the atmosphere.”

“That’s... harsher than I expected.”

“Exactly. They were willing to do just about anything just to avoid appearing weak in front of their opponents.”

Because the Pearl Tower had moved quickly to cover up the incident, the Emperor’s side at the time never even became aware of it. The event merely circulated like a fading legend, passed on by word of mouth among those who had witnessed it.

“I’d like to know how the Pearl Tower investigated that mage... but I suppose that’s too much to ask.”

“Not necessarily.”

To Yuder’s surprise, Kishiar responded unexpectedly.

“Don’t tell me... you found that out too?”

Kishiar smiled with his usual eye-smile and pulled out a new sheet of paper.

“Your antique shopkeeper friend from your hometown was just too interesting. I began investigating her the moment I returned—had to find out what kind of person she really was.”

Sallandin had claimed she quit before she even properly became a mage, but neither Yuder nor Kishiar had believed that to be true.

“If she joined that magical school, then she couldn’t have just been some novice. And the fact that she remembered the theory that the so-called ‘miracle of the gods’ might actually be linked to the ‘Blessing of the Great Mage’ handed down in that school... that implies a pretty deep connection.”

If that was the case, then the quickest way to uncover what that magical school knew was to follow Sallandin’s past.

The moment Kishiar returned to the capital, he dispatched people to dig into Sallandin’s history. It was difficult, since she had been active as a mage long ago—but thankfully, she had never changed her name. And eventually, they found her.

“She was listed on a record of mages who were expelled from the Pearl Tower. Officially expelled 43 years ago.”

“What was the reason for her expulsion?”

It would take more than a minor mishap to shock a mage, but there were still a few offenses considered absolutely taboo in their world.

And among those, the most serious was...

“She «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» harmed her master. That’s what got her expelled.”

She had violated the sacred master-disciple relationship.

“She claimed her master had stolen her achievement, but she couldn’t prove it. So she was cast out. After that, it seems she quit magic altogether. A sad story, but that’s not the important part.”

Kishiar then investigated the place Sallandin had belonged to before her expulsion. The reason was simple.

“She said she learned about the magical school from someone she knew back then. If we can find that person, it might open the path to even more information.”

And they already had a clue. Sallandin had described that person as “an older mage she studied with at the time.” So Kishiar searched for any mages who had studied under the same teacher, during the same period as Sallandin.

The answer was one.

“Her master didn’t take many students. Lucky for us.”

Sallandin’s senior mage wasn’t particularly famous. But, true to mage nature, he had left behind quite a number of papers in the field that interested him most—namely, the history of mages.

“He dedicated his entire life to investigating forgotten histories within the Pearl Tower from a magical perspective. I combed through every paper and publication he left behind, and I found this.”

The paper Kishiar held appeared to be an excerpt from one of those works. At the top of the sheet was written: “Divine Miracle, or the Blessing of the Great Mage?”

“The very words Sallandin once said to you are written here, exactly the same. The author of this paper investigated what happened to the mage at the center of that incident, and how it was buried. He even cited internal documents only someone from inside the Tower could have obtained.”

Maybe it had been a huge event at the time, but now that all involved had long since died, it had faded into myth. But this mage had dug through once-classified records and pieced together testimony from Pearl Tower insiders to reconstruct the event.

Yuder turned his gaze to a passage Kishiar had marked with underlines.