I can feel it...
My end is approaching.
John Jennifer Robins sat alone in his bedroom, staring blankly at the ceiling.
His body felt heavier than ever, and the curse gnawing at his existence had grown increasingly difficult to suppress. Even controlling the flow of Mana within his body had become a struggle.
He knew his time was running out.
Perhaps he had always known this day would come. After all, he had watched his father suffer beneath the same curse, and he had experienced firsthand what it could do to a person.
Yet, knowing that his death was approaching didn't make it any easier to accept.
There were still things he regretted.
So many things he wished he could undo, and among them, one regret weighed more heavily on his heart than anything else.
His daughter.
...Jenn.
John slowly closed his eyes.
His thoughts drifted toward the distant past, toward a time when his family had stood at the very pinnacle of the magical world.
A time when the Robins family had been regarded as one of the strongest and most powerful families in existence.
A time before everything began to fall apart.
---
1454 A.D.
That was the year everything changed or, more accurately, it was the year the world forgot.
During my grandfather's era, a catastrophic war had taken place on Earth. It was a conflict so extraordinary that its consequences extended far beyond the destruction it left behind.
Powerful beings had erased the world's history.
The reasons behind the war, the identities of those who participated in it, and even the truth of what had actually happened were lost to the world.
Ordinary humans and magicians alike were left with little more than fragments of an incomprehensible event.
They knew a great war had occurred.
But who had fought in it?
Why had it happened?
And what kind of beings possessed the power to erase history itself?
Nobody knew.
For ordinary humans, perhaps ignorance truly was a blessing.
They had no means of understanding the scale of what had happened, nor did they possess the knowledge necessary to investigate it. Within roughly fifty years, most had moved on, returning to their ordinary lives as though the world had not once stood on the brink of something unimaginable.
They worked, loved, raised families, and pursued their own ambitions.
Life continued.
For magicians, however, things were considerably different.
Magic was built upon knowledge.
Their understanding of the world, the principles governing Mana, and the countless spells developed throughout history formed the foundation of their society. Knowledge was their pride, their power, and the very thing that distinguished them from ordinary humans.
So, when a portion of that knowledge suddenly disappeared, the magical world was thrown into confusion.
Ancient records vanished.
Historical connections were severed.
The origins of certain magical practices became mysteries, and questions that should have had answers were met with nothing but silence.
For a society that prided itself on understanding the world, being forced to acknowledge the existence of something beyond its comprehension was an unbearable humiliation.
Panic spread.
Some desperately attempted to reconstruct the missing knowledge, while others searched for explanations that might restore their understanding of the world.
But no matter how hard they tried, the missing pieces remained missing.
The world had forgotten, and there was seemingly nothing anyone could do about it.
Except, perhaps, my grandfather.
Unlike the others, he possessed something that had survived the erasure.
A note.
It was a piece of writing left behind by an unknown elder of his family. Nobody knew who that person had been, what their position within the family was, or how they had managed to leave behind something that the world's great catastrophe had failed to erase.
But that note became my grandfather's most precious possession.
At the time, he had lost almost everything.
His parents were gone.
His family's history had disappeared.
Even the names of his own parents were lost to him, leaving him with no clear understanding of his ancestry or the legacy he had supposedly inherited.
He had no one to turn to for answers.
No family records to consult.
No elders to guide him.
All he had were the note, his house, and a handful of books concerning magic and spells.
That was it.
For many people, such a loss would have been enough to destroy them.
But my grandfather was different.
Rather than surrendering to despair, he chose to rebuild.
Starting with almost nothing, he gradually restored the Robins family's standing, relying on his own talent, the knowledge he possessed, and whatever clues he could uncover from the note left behind by his unknown ancestor.
Step by step, he raised our family from the remnants of its former existence until it once again stood among the greatest magical families in the world.
He didn't recover everything we had lost.
But he accomplished something that was perhaps even more remarkable.
He gave our family a future.
---
Magicians, unlike ordinary humans, possessed considerably longer lifespans.
Depending on their Realm and the purity of their Mana, they could live for two hundred years or even longer.
My grandfather, who had reached the Master Realm, lived to the age of four hundred.
Four centuries.
Four hundred years of witnessing the world change, of watching generations rise and fall, and of carrying the burden of rebuilding a family whose history had been torn away from it.
Eventually, when he felt his time had come, he passed the position of patriarch to his son.
My father.
By then, the Robins family had already regained much of its former glory.
Under my grandfather's leadership, we had risen to the top once again.
But inheriting such a legacy didn't mean my father had an easy life.
Quite the opposite.
The higher a family climbed, the more enemies it attracted.
Those who stood beneath us coveted our position. Those who envied our strength waited for an opportunity to bring us down. And those who feared our influence would do almost anything to ensure that we could no longer threaten them.
My father faced countless trials throughout his life.
Political schemes, rival families, hidden enemies, and struggles that ordinary people could scarcely imagine.
Yet, despite everything, he endured.
He protected the family, maintained its influence, and carried forward the legacy his father had worked so hard to rebuild.
For a time, it seemed that the Robins family would continue to prosper for generations to come.
Unfortunately, fate had other plans.
My father was cursed.
Not by an ordinary magical spell that could be studied, countered, or dispelled through conventional means.
No.
The curse was rooted in Spirit Energy.
It operated on principles fundamentally different from those of ordinary magic, making it extraordinarily difficult for magicians like us to understand, let alone break.
No matter how many methods we attempted, we couldn't find a way to remove it.
And eventually, my father died.
With his passing, the responsibility of leading the Robins family fell upon my shoulders.
---
Fortunately, I wasn't alone.
By the time I inherited the position of patriarch, I had already met the woman who would become my wife.
The woman who changed my life.
My world.
She was the reason I became a better person.
Before meeting her, I had been an arrogant fool, a young man who believed his exceptional talent and prestigious family made him superior to everyone else.
I had looked down on people without considering their circumstances, convinced that anyone weaker than me deserved to be treated as such.
Then I met her.
And little by little, she changed me.
She taught me that strength wasn't everything, that a person's worth couldn't be measured by their magical abilities, and that there were things in this world far more important than talent or status.
Because of her, I learned how to love.
I learned how to care for someone other than myself.
And, for the first time in my life, I discovered that there was something I valued more than my own pride.
Her happiness.
For a long time, I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I protected her and our family with everything I had, we would be able to live happily together.
I thought that as long as I was strong enough, I could protect the people I loved.
How foolish I had been.
My father had died beneath the same curse, and despite everything I had inherited from him, I couldn't escape it either.
But my wife was in an even worse position.
Just like Jenn, she possessed a defective magical core and couldn't advance beyond the Intermediate Realm.
Her beauty, intelligence, and strength of character had never been enough to overcome that limitation.
And when the curse finally took hold of her, her body couldn't endure it for very long.
She died.
Just like my father.
The woman who had once been my entire world was gone, leaving me behind in a world that suddenly felt unbearably empty.
---
Something inside me broke that day.
I had lost my wife.
The woman who had changed me, who had taught me what it meant to be human, and who had given me a reason to become someone better.
And I couldn't save her.
No matter how much power I possessed, no matter how many resources the Robins family could offer, I couldn't bring her back.
I couldn't even free myself from the same curse that had taken her life.
The pain was unbearable.
And rather than confronting it, I chose to run away.
I neglected my duties as patriarch.
I neglected my responsibilities as a father.
I turned to drugs, alcohol, and anything else that could help me forget, even if only for a few hours.
As long as I didn't have to think about her death, I didn't care what I put into my body or what consequences followed.
I told myself I needed a break.
That I would recover eventually.
That tomorrow, I would become the man I had once been.
But tomorrow never came.
One day became another, and another, until the man who had once been praised as a genius was reduced to a pathetic shadow of his former self.
I began selling family assets to fund my habits.
I borrowed money from anyone willing to lend it to me, making promises I had no intention of keeping.
And slowly, the Robins family began to crumble.
Workers and servants left one after another.
Some could no longer tolerate the uncertainty. Others simply couldn't afford to remain when their wages went unpaid.
Only a handful stayed.
They were the people who had served our family for the longest time, the ones who had witnessed its rise and understood the hardships it had endured.
Even when their payments were delayed, even when the family's circumstances grew increasingly desperate, they remained loyal.
They continued to serve us, despite having every reason to leave.
And what did I do in return?
Nothing.
I was too consumed by my own misery to notice the people who were still standing beside me.
Too selfish to recognize that while I mourned the woman I had lost, I was slowly destroying the family she had helped me build.
I had become everything she would have hated.
---
And then, not too long ago, I committed the most unforgivable mistake of my life.
I sold my own daughter.
Jenn.
My beloved daughter, who resembled her mother so much that looking at her sometimes felt like looking into the past.
I had agreed to her engagement with another family in exchange for money and valuables, convincing myself that the arrangement would somehow benefit the Robins family.
But deep down, I knew the truth.
I had simply traded my daughter's future for something I wanted.
I had betrayed the very person I should have protected.
That night, I dreamed of my wife.
For the first time in a long while, I thought I might finally see her again, even if only in a dream.
But it wasn't a happy reunion.
She stood before me with tears streaming down her face.
She didn't smile.
She didn't embrace me.
She simply looked at me with an expression of profound sorrow, as though she could scarcely believe what I had done.
Then she asked me a single question.
John... what have you done?
I couldn't answer.
I wanted to explain myself, to tell her how much I had suffered, how unbearable the pain had been, and how desperately I had wanted to escape it.
But none of those excuses mattered.
Not when I saw her crying.
Not when I realized that the woman who had once trusted me with her heart would be devastated to see the man I had become.
I woke up in a cold sweat.
And for the first time in years, I was forced to confront the full weight of my actions.
I had to cancel the engagement.
I didn't care how much money I had received or how valuable the jewelry was. I would return everything, compensate the other family however I could, and accept whatever consequences followed.
I would do anything to undo what I had done.
But before I could make a move, news reached me.
The engagement had already been canceled by the Runes.
When I heard that, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
For once, something had gone right.
At least my daughter wouldn't have to suffer because of my selfishness.
But there was still one problem.
Jenn hadn't returned home.
Days passed, and I heard nothing from her.
I didn't know where she was or how she was doing. I could only imagine what she thought of me.
Perhaps she hated me.
Perhaps she never wanted to see my face again.
And honestly, I couldn't blame her.
If I were in her position, I might have felt the same way.
So I stopped searching for her.
Not because I didn't want to see her, but because I no longer believed I had the right to demand anything from her.
She had suffered enough because of me.
If leaving home was what she wanted, then I would let her go.
Even if she never returned.
Even if I never saw her again.
I would accept it.
Or at least, that was what I told myself.
In truth, the thought of my daughter hating me was slowly eating away at what little remained of my sanity.
Every time I tried to gather my Mana to suppress the curse, my thoughts would drift toward her.
Her face.
Her eyes.
The way she resembled her mother.
And the memory of what I had done to her.
My concentration faltered, allowing the curse to grow stronger.
The more I worried about Jenn, the harder it became to suppress the curse. And the harder it became to suppress the curse, the more I realized how little time I had left.
Eventually, I could no longer deny it.
I was dying.
And before I died, there was only one thing I wanted.
I wanted to see my daughter again.
Not to demand her forgiveness.
Not to force her to return to the family.
I simply wanted to see her face one last time.
To know that she was safe.
To tell her, if I still had the chance, that I was sorry.
So I summoned my son and gave him an order.
Find your sister.
Bring her home, if she's willing to come.
I didn't know whether Jenn would agree. I didn't know whether she would even want to hear my name.
But I had to try.
Because if I died without seeing her again, I knew that regret would follow me to my grave.
---
...Jenn.
John slowly opened his eyes.
The ceiling above him remained unchanged, and the room was as quiet as ever.
Yet, for some reason, he found himself remembering the day his daughter was born.
He remembered holding her in his arms for the first time.
He remembered how small she had been, how tightly she had curled her fingers around his own.
And he remembered his wife's smile as she looked at their newborn daughter.
Look, John. Isn't she adorable?
He had smiled then.
A genuine smile, one that came from a happiness so pure he hadn't even known such a feeling was possible.
Back then, he had believed that he would always be there to protect them both.
But his wife had died.
And now, he was about to leave his daughter behind as well.
...What a failure I've become.
His breathing grew shallow.
The curse stirred within his body, and a wave of pain spread through his chest.
John clenched his teeth, struggling to maintain control of his Mana.
He didn't know whether Jenn would come.
He didn't know whether she could forgive him.
But if she did arrive, he hoped he would still be alive to see her.
Just once more.
That was all he wanted.
Please... Jenn.
Let me see you one last time.
---
"...Honestly, I don't think she'll ever return to this house after what I've done to her."
John Jennifer Robins, the patriarch of the Robins family, lay on his bed, his body covered in purple spots. A deathly aura surrounded him, and his complexion had grown increasingly pale.
Even breathing had become an exhausting task. The curse had spread throughout his body, steadily draining the strength he had spent his entire life cultivating.
At this point, he could feel his remaining time slipping away.
Beside his bed stood Albert, the loyal butler who had served the Robins family for generations.
"Albert, do you think Jenn will come?"
John turned his head slightly toward the old butler.
Albert had served the Robins family for most of his life. His family had been in the service of the Robins household since John's grandfather was still the patriarch. He had practically grown up alongside John, witnessing the family's glory, its hardships, and, more recently, its gradual decline.
If there was anyone who understood the Robins family as well as John himself, it was Albert.
"Yes, she will, sir. You don't have to worry"
"Hahaha..." John let out a weak laugh. "Your words always manage to comfort me, Albert. But you know how much she resembles her mother. Not just her appearance, but her personality, too"
His smile gradually faded.
"Knowing Jenn, I doubt she'll come back"
Albert remained silent for a moment before answering.
"Her mother loved her family very much, didn't she, sir? And Jenn is just the same. No matter how disappointed she might be in you, I believe she still cares about this family"
He gave John a reassuring smile.
"She'll come. Just wait a little longer"
"...Yeah," John stared at the ceiling. "She's really her mother's spitting image"
A quiet silence settled over the room.
Whenever John spoke about his late wife, this always happened. His expression would soften, his voice would grow quieter, and his thoughts would drift toward memories he could never bring himself to forget.
Albert had seen it countless times over the years.
He knew better than to interrupt.
However, after a while, John spoke again.
"Albert"
"Yes, sir?"
"Thank you"
Albert raised an eyebrow.
John slowly turned his head toward him.
"Even when I was acting like a complete fool, you continued taking care of this family. Even when I neglected my responsibilities and allowed everything to fall apart, you stayed." He paused, struggling to catch his breath before continuing. "Thanks to you, this family is still standing. So... thank you, Albert"
"..."
For a moment, Albert simply stared at his master.
Then he frowned.
"Don't say things like that, John. You sound like a man who's about to die any minute now"
John blinked.
Albert crossed his arms and gave him a stern look.
"Cheer up! You're not dead yet, you know!"
"Hahaha..."
John laughed weakly.
"Alright, alright. I will"
Whether he meant that he would cheer up or simply agreed that he wasn't dead yet was anyone's guess.
Albert could only sigh at his old friend's response.
'Haaaah... Honestly, this man...'
Looking at John lying helplessly in bed, Albert felt a familiar ache in his chest.
They had been together since childhood. He had witnessed John's arrogance, his transformation into a better person, his happiness with his wife, and the devastating grief that followed her death.
He had watched his friend gradually lose himself.
And despite everything, Albert had never abandoned him.
"John"
"Hmm?"
"We've been together since we were children. I know you better than almost anyone else." Albert adjusted the blanket covering John's body. "Your family is my family, too. So, of course, I'll take care of it when you're no longer around"
He paused briefly before adding in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Even if you stop paying me, I'll still stay"
"...Hahaha!" John burst into laughter, though the sound quickly turned into a cough. "Really... thank you, Albert"
Albert shook his head helplessly.
"Just save your strength, you old fool"
Despite his words, a faint smile appeared on his face.
For a little while, the room returned to silence.
Then...
*Tok, tok, tok*
A sudden knock came from the door.
Both men turned toward it.
Under normal circumstances, the Robins family would have had numerous servants attending to the household. But those days were long gone.
Their financial situation had deteriorated so badly that they could no longer afford to maintain a large staff.
Most of the workers had already left.
At present, only Albert's family and a handful of young people he had personally taken under his wing remained in the household.
They were orphans Albert had found and raised, giving them food, shelter, and a place to belong when they had nowhere else to go.
In return, they helped maintain the household, working as maids and butlers.
They received little beyond the necessities of life, yet they continued working here willingly.
Perhaps it was because they understood what it meant to have nothing.
Or perhaps, after everything they had experienced, they simply regarded the Robins household as their home.
Whatever the reason, they had remained loyal when so many others had abandoned the family.
"Come in," Albert called out.
The door opened slightly, and a young servant peeked inside.
"Mr. Albert, the young master has returned"
John's eyes widened slightly.
"The young master?"
"Yes, sir. He's here to see the patriarch." The servant hesitated for a moment before continuing. "...And he has brought the young miss with him"
"..."
For a brief moment, neither John nor Albert said anything.
Then...
"ALBERT!" John suddenly tried to sit up. "Quick! Tell them to come in!"
"Careful, Jhon! Don't move too suddenly!"
Albert hurriedly supported him, though a smile had already appeared on his face.
"Yes, yes! I'll tell them!"
The servant bowed and quickly withdrew and closed the door behind her.
John looked at Albert, his eyes filled with an emotion he could barely contain.
"She's here..." His voice trembled slightly. "Jenn is really here..."
Albert smiled.
"See? I told you she would come"
"...Yeah"
John lowered his head, trying to suppress the emotions welling up inside him.
'Jenn... My daughter... Thank you for coming'
He didn't know whether she had come because she still cared about him or simply because she wanted to see him one last time.
He didn't know whether she could ever forgive him.
But right now, none of that mattered.
She was here.
That alone was enough to make him feel as though a tremendous weight had finally been lifted from his chest.
Not long afterward, the door opened again.
John immediately raised his head, expecting to see his son accompanied by his daughter.
And indeed, two figures entered the room.
However, the moment he saw the young man walking alongside Jenn, John couldn't help but stare.
The young man appeared calm and composed, with an air of confidence that seemed entirely out of place given the circumstances.
He walked forward without the slightest hesitation, stopping in front of the bed.
Then, with a perfectly polite smile, he introduced himself.
"Hello. I'm not sure which one of you is Jenn's father, so allow me to introduce myself first." He placed a hand against his chest. "My name is Taufik, Jenn's soon-to-be husband. It's a pleasure to meet you, Father-in-law"
He paused briefly.
"Oh, and by the way, I'm still eighteen years old"
"..."
John stared at him.
Albert stared at him.
For several seconds, the room fell completely silent.
Then...
"...WHAT?!"
....
...
..
.