I couldn’t understand, and as I rolled my eyes, he continued explaining.
[The law of the gods, forgotten in very ancient times. Yes. No one remembers it now, but it certainly exists.]
“W-what… how…?”
In my impatient words, he made no reply and simply placed his hand on Isabella’s forehead.
[First, we must examine the summoner’s memories.]
At that moment, a sharp pain exploded in my head. Soon, my body felt as if it were floating in a dream, pulled somewhere far away.
On a cold winter day, young Isabella was holding her mother’s hand, heading somewhere.
“Mom, my feet hurt so much… where are we going?”
Despite the child’s whining, her mother gave no answer. She only muttered with a pale, ashen face:
“I have to go. We must escape quickly. To a place where no one can find us…”
How many nights they spent in places without proper roofs, no one knew. At night, they huddled by a fire to get some warmth and sleep, and by day, they walked again. Some days they rode on horses or sat on wagons, but most of the time, they had to walk until their feet were blistered.
As soon as they reached a foreign duchy, her mother passed away, leaving young Isabella behind.
“How tragic…”
Isabella, crying inconsolably over her mother’s corpse, was discovered by Veronica Valentin, the duchess of the duchy.
“Poor thing. She must be alone now, without her mother.”
Perhaps feeling pity for a girl of similar age to her own son, Veronica took Isabella in as her adopted daughter and raised her like her own child.
Isabella grew up as a daughter of a wealthy duchess, living without lack. Beautiful and cheerful, she became a noble young lady of the highest grace.
The only thing that troubled her was the recurring nightmares from her past.
“Catch the girl! Don’t let her escape!”
In her dreams, she would run desperately with her mother, only to wake the moment she was caught by her pursuers. She would wake drenched in cold sweat, with curiosity gnawing at her. Why had they been running? Where was her father?
Yet, she could not share these longings about her family before meeting Veronica, who cherished her.
Eventually, Isabella secretly visited her mother’s grave and retrieved the belongings she had left behind.
Inside a small box were a brooch emitting a brilliant blue light and a worn diary.
The first line in the diary, written in a messy hand, reflected her mother’s troubled heart:
[Everything has gone wrong. He shouldn’t have done this to me.]
The following pages were tattered from repeated erasures and rewritings. Words overwritten, and then erased again, layered over one another.
Only on the next page did the handwriting become legible:
[Ah, Isabella, my poor daughter. What am I to do?
And my poor son, who left me without even receiving a name from me.
You will grow up thinking a stranger your mother, never seeing the face of the mother who bore you.]
A son? I had a younger brother?
Isabella froze upon discovering this unexpected fact.
‘Who is he? Who were we running from?’
She faintly recalled her father. The strong arms that held her as she ran, the kind face with a broad smile. Could the “he” in her mother’s diary be her father? Did her mother flee from him to reach here?
“Please, Renié… I want to know about my father.”
Renié, Veronica’s son and her childhood friend, willingly agreed to help. Although the clues were few, they managed to find someone who recognized the blue brooch.
“The Bréum Count family? That was an heirloom?”
“That’s not all.”
The information gathered from the guild at great cost was shocking:
[Baron Harper and his wife, traveling to inherit the Bréum countship, were ambushed by bandits!
With no heir, the Bréum Count decided to adopt Baron Harper, who had been a distant relative, and summoned them to the capital.
Yet, bandits awaited them on the journey. During this attack, Baron Harper lost his wife and daughter, and barely survived with his infant son to reach the Bréum estate.]
Then, were the brutal hands pursuing her mother the bandits’?
Why did her surviving mother, instead of contacting her father, flee the empire and come to the duchy?
She remembered the first line of the diary: Everything has gone wrong. He shouldn’t have done this to me.
‘Who is he?’
Flipping through the newsletter, the familiar blue brooch caught her eye.
‘This event also caused the loss of the family heirloom, the brooch, given in advance to Baron Harper. The Count is willing to pay any price to retrieve it…’
The brooch. The “Blue Aria” made of blue coral was in her possession.
Her identity, forgotten past, and the existence of other living family members she never knew. Isabella’s heart raced.
“Renié, help me. I must see my father.”
“Isabella…”
She needed to know the truth.
Faded memories, a mother full of questions—it all gnawed at her.
Unable to suppress Isabella’s will, Renié assigned his knight, Hugh, to accompany her.
“He will ensure you reach the Bréum estate safely.”
With cautioning words, Isabella departed to see her father. By chance, she came across me crying in front of a temple.
Now I understood why she had reached out to me. She wanted to finally learn who her mother had been fleeing from—the person responsible for her death—inside my own home.
“No need to leave witnesses unnecessarily. What we need is only the woman who knows the whereabouts of the item.”
Only one person in the empire knew that she had the brooch: her father, Count Bréum.
“Why are you… why me…?”
Feelings of regret and resentment flooded my mind as I peered into Isabella’s memories.
Tears, whose were they, mine or hers, wet my cheeks.
[Poor thing.]
The vision before my eyes faded like heat haze. Once again, Oliver’s figure appeared.
I noticed Isabella standing there, her body cold and stiff.
She slowly turned, glancing at the men with harsh faces behind her.
“These are people hired by the Bréum Count?”
The figure simply smiled faintly, offering no answer.
“The Bréum Count didn’t want his daughter to return alive. He only wanted the family heirloom brooch.”
‘My father… that man…’
Isabella’s thin, wavering voice floated in the air like a ghost.
Summoning the courage to speak, I asked,
“You said earlier there was a way I could survive. Does it relate to Isabella’s memories?”
[Recall the summoner’s most intense memory.]
The strongest emotion…
[That her father, who drove her to death, pays the proper ‘price’ for his sins.]
The child’s eyes curved like a bow.
[You only need to fulfill the summoner Isabella’s wish.]
The blue brooch in my hand glowed, forming an unknown symbol in the air.
[If you accomplish the ‘sacred vengeance’ sworn by the law of the gods, you may enter a contract with me and gain one wish.]
“Vengeance?”
I was speechless at the shocking words. The law of the gods. Sacred vengeance. One wish in return.
It felt as if I were dreaming.
[If you accept, you are given a period of just one year. During this time, you must, as ‘Isabella,’ drive the target of your revenge into irreversible despair and ruin.]
Me? Could I really do that?
“What if I fail to complete it within the allotted time?”
[According to the law, the price for failing the given time is death.]
