Chapter3

As soon as Chloe's words fell, a magic apprentice below the stage roared in fury.

"Don't let her fool you! Back then, Chloe knelt outside her water dungeon and knocked her head until it bled, and she didn't even crack the door open!"

"She even released shadow familiars to bite us! Does a monster like her actually have feelings?"

"Lord Arthur treated her so well, yet after he died, she just watched Chloe break down and go insane!"

The momentarily hesitant crowd instantly filled with righteous indignation once again.

Chloe lunged onto the high platform, grabbing my collar with both hands in a death grip. "Erin! Open your eyes and look at me."

Her manicured nails dug into my flesh, dragging me forward half an inch. "You were an unwanted orphan! My father kindly took you and Arthur in, and Arthur treated you exactly like a blood sister! Yet, you repaid us with death!"

She raised her hand, and a faint Holy Smite wrapped around her palm before she slapped it directly across my face.

"Do you still want to use tears to disguise your malice? You killed Arthur! Did you think shedding a few tears would make my heart soften?"

Her chest heaved violently. "Arthur is dead! And the person shielding his murderer—is you! It's you, Erin!"

She stood up straight, wiping away her own tears with her pristine white sleeve. She pulled a broken staff from her robes; the old blood on the jagged break had long since dried rigid and black. She gripped the broken wood so tightly she nearly crushed it.

"Erin, let me tell you this. I will not rest until I dig that monster out of your skull. When I find it, I will drag you and that beast down to hell together."

She spun around fiercely, barking orders at the inquisitors. "Maximize the mana! Push the pain receptors to their absolute limit!"

The elderly mage trembled. "Your Eminence... the prisoner's body reached its physical limit a long time ago—"

"I don't care if she lives or dies!"

The array churned, and tyrannical mana flooded the epicenter. Iron chains rattled loudly. A massive surge of blood poured from my mouth and nose, splattering heavily onto the freezing metal rack.

"Ahhh—!!!"

The light screen strobed violently. The grand library, the stream behind the mountain, the backyard of Bart's house—endless fragments of mundane memories featuring the three of us flooded the sky, but the rainy night remained entirely absent.

The crowd grew restless.

"What's going on? Why is the night of the murder missing?!"

"Didn't the magical retracing Arthur left before his death prove that she was at the scene?!"

Chloe turned and interrogated the mages. "Why can't you extract it?!"

The elderly mage was drenched in cold sweat. "Your Eminence... She... she is burning her life essence and the very foundation of her soul... She is using her soul as fuel to tightly wrap that specific memory, utterly refusing extraction!"

Burning a soul to fight the Truth Formation—throughout the entire history of continental magic, this was an act of pure, suicidal self-destruction.

The entire plaza fell dead silent for a brief second.

Chloe smashed her fist against the console, screaming shrilly. "Erin! Even at this point, you are still trading your life to hold out? What exactly is the monster that dug out Arthur's heart?! Why is it worth you protecting it with your life?!"

The moment her piercing voice hit my eardrums, splintered memories flashed across the screen.

Five years ago. The third day after Arthur's death. Chloe squatted in front of me, her eyes bloodshot, her voice hoarse beyond recognition. "Erin, just tell me it wasn't you who did it. If you say it, I will believe you."

But I remained completely silent in front of her. Her expression shifted rapidly from pleading, to confusion, to raw disbelief. She stormed out of the room, slamming the heavy wooden door against the wall with a deafening crash. Later, she intentionally leaked the news of my hiding spot in the Confinement Woods. The inquisitor apprentices hunted me down and burned Twilight alive. When I knelt in the muddy water begging her to stop them, she just stood there with a cold, hardened face and smashed a holy spell onto my body. As the blinding light swallowed my vision, she gritted her teeth and spoke. "Erin, I treated you as family. What did you treat us as?"

Five days later, she was taken away by the Empire's Grand Mage as a chief disciple. Meanwhile, the vast majority of my mana was crippled, and I was thrown straight into the shadow water dungeon.

Those fragmented memories vanished.

The screen kept running. Blood seeped continuously from my eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Under the relentless bombardment of high-density mana, the final barrier protecting my memory began to crack and splinter.

I lay weakly in the center of the array, my voice dropping to a low, broken whisper. "Chloe... when your father told you to stop... I really should have let him drag you away..."

She stood frozen in place. The hand clutching the broken staff finally began to shake.

Yet, she didn't stop the machine. The screen above the cracking barrier flickered dangerously.