The imperial official, bearing the Emperor’s decree, stepped forward and recited Heathcliff’s crimes one after another.
The list was long—far too long—and all of it was familiar to Ludger.
Of course, mixed among them were crimes he had never committed.
That too was intentional.
If he was going to vanish anyway, it was better to shoulder more sins on the way out.
“Criminal Heathcliff van Bretus is hereby sentenced to death!”
WAAAAAAAH!!!
The citizens roared so loudly the plaza itself trembled.
Because of the earlier terrorist attack by the Demon King’s followers, even those who had felt indifferent were now filled with hostility toward him.
Ludger and Casey watched in silence.
Clunk.
The executioner, his face hidden beneath a black hood, pulled the lever that pronounced death.
The floor beneath the gallows dropped, and Heathcliff’s body plunged downward.
He hung there like a mannequin supported by a single thread.
Far away, Ludger fixed his blue gaze on the sight.
Heathcliff van Bretus—once his own identity, the very essence of his current life.
The so-called Demon King who had shaken the world met an end that was pathetically anticlimactic.
Yes.
In the end, things ended with emptiness like this.
There was no grand finale, no brilliant epilogue to a grand saga.
Within the flow of the world, someone’s end was nothing more than a quiet point along the current.
“How do you feel? You’re getting a fresh start now.”
Casey rested her chin on her hand as she asked.
Her eyes seemed to say: Just this once, it’s all right to be honest.
“Surprisingly, I feel almost nothing.”
“What kind of reaction is that? Really?”
“Why not? I didn’t die. My double did. What disappeared was nothing but a trace of my past.”
“But that’s still you.”
“Maybe... I’m a little satisfied.”
Satisfied.
Yes. If he reached into the still waters of his emotions to choose one word for the moment, satisfaction was appropriate.
It wasn’t the Demon King who had died—just a substitute.
But the world would remember him as the Demon King.
That man’s real name and real face would vanish, leaving only the illusion of “the Demon King.”
He felt no sympathy for the nameless prisoner who had taken his place.
To stand on that platform meant that man, too, had committed enough sins to deserve it.
Instead, Ludger watched the people cheering at the Demon King’s death.
They rejoiced because peace had returned.
Or they felt a fierce satisfaction at the eradication of evil.
Those deafening cheers would fade.
Then silence would come.
The Demon King would eventually be forgotten, and memories of him would remain only as quiet records.
A world where no one spoke to him.
A world filled with quiet.
Was that not the truest form of rest?
“You’ve done well. Rest now.”
Ludger murmured softly.
To Demon King Heathcliff.
To the version of himself that no longer existed.
The part of him that remained still had to live on.
Even if the Demon King died, time continued to flow.
The world would move toward the future, and he along with it.
There was no need for bitterness, sympathy, or relief.
This wasn’t an end—just a beginning.
No reason to cling.
Ludger closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again once he had put his heart in order.
His sapphire-bright eyes glimmered with calm.
“You’re more sentimental than I expected,” Casey said, watching him.
His melancholic expression seemed unfamiliar—too unlike the Ludger she knew.
“I’ve changed over the last three years.”
“Ah. That makes sense.”
Three years was long or short depending on the person.
Some never changed.
For others, it was more than enough time to transform.
Considering how much Ludger had gone through, he had actually remained remarkably steady.
Not unchanged, no—but the difference was good.
If before he had recklessly rushed toward whatever he saw, now he knew how to stop and breathe.
He really has changed, Casey thought, feeling something indescribable swell inside her.
The realization that he had changed... and that things could never return to how they once were.
Whether that was good or bad, she couldn’t decide.
“It seems the commotion has died down. We should get going,” Ludger said.
“Yes. And it looks like they’ve noticed our presence.”
There was no way the knights wouldn’t recognize who had taken down the followers so spectacularly.
Before things got troublesome or noisy, both stood up at the same moment.
“Lady Casey Selmore! Please wait, we need to speak—!”
Someone shouted urgently from below as footsteps rushed up the stairs.
Casey winced—she’d missed her chance to run.
Before the pursuer reached them, Ludger extended his hand.
“What? Out of nowhere?”
“I’ll escort you, milady.”
Casey answered with a playful smile.
“If you offer so sweetly, how could I refuse, good sir?”
She placed her hand in his.
Shadows poured from Ludger’s body, enveloping both him and Casey.
Their silhouettes collapsed inward like a collapsing black dot—
—and vanished.
The imperial official who arrived breathlessly on the second floor found only an empty table waiting for him.
* * *
“People are such a nuisance. No matter where I go, someone shows up begging me to stay.”
A park some distance away from the plaza.
Because of the Demon King’s execution, the area was unusually empty.
Ludger and Casey strolled along a neatly maintained path.
“It’s always like that. Everyone wants a mage of color to stay in their country. And some noble families keep trying to flirt with me.”
“You must have been quite busy.”
“So I usually ran away. What else could I do? If I run, no one can catch me. At least the Empire was less obsessive... but after what I just did today, that won’t last.”
Casey chattered on, venting years of accumulated frustration.
Ludger simply listened.
“So what have you been doing lately?”
“Me?”
“Yes. I asked earlier too—why you seem exhausted recently.”
“Uh...”
Casey trailed off, not expecting Ludger to remember.
“Just... studying magic?”
“A mage of color is training now? And didn’t you already transcend your limits three years ago?”
“...You knew?”
“I could feel it.”
“Right. When an 8th-circle mage says that, I guess it makes sense.”
“So what’s the real reason?”
Ludger stared at her calmly.
Casey flinched, her cheeks reddening, and turned away.
“Well... I’ve been in a slump.”
“...A slump?”
He genuinely didn’t understand.
A mage of color—Casey Selmore—having a slump?
She had already surpassed her own magical limits.
If she was struggling, the problem had to be something else entirely.
Could someone like Casey—genius detective, mage of color, daughter of a renowned magical family—actually face trouble?
Perhaps it was Ludger’s doubtful expression, because Casey snapped:
“I have other things in my life too, you know!”
“Weren’t you working as a detective?”
“I’m... taking a break.”
Judging by her reaction, it must have been quite a long break.
“My head was just... too full. I couldn’t tell what was right or wrong anymore. After everything that happened, I started wondering what any of it even meant.”
Casey had once firmly believed in vanquishing evil from the world.
She became a detective to catch criminals—and also to break free from the suffocating constraints of the Selmore family.
She’d taken pride in her work and had always given it her all.
But meeting Ludger had shaken the foundation of her beliefs.
James Moriarty.
A man who willingly became a villain to expose the root of crimes no one else could touch.
Chasing him, feeling crushing defeat, obsessively pursuing his traces—
and then meeting Ludger, crossing paths with him repeatedly, experiencing incident after incident together.
Casey had no choice but to question good and evil, right and wrong.
After the Holy War ended, Ludger disappeared.
Her elder sister, head of the family, needed rest after suffering mental domination.
Even if Casey hated the Selmore family, she could not run around solving cases like a rebellious child forever.
“So I drifted. Wondering what I should do, what I could do in this world.”
“A common dilemma.”
“Then Betty told me something. She said I should try writing.”
“Writing?”
“Yeah. Like a diary. She said my life is entertaining enough that just writing it would be fun. It’s such a childish idea, but it wasn’t bad. So I tried.”
Casey began writing.
“I wrote about the cases I solved. It’s autobiographical, but... you know, it felt weird to put myself in directly.”
“I didn’t know you had that kind of modesty. When we first met you were... hmm.”
“That was just a phase where I was kind of arrogant, okay?! Anyway, back to the point—I changed things so it wouldn’t be obviously me.”
“What kind of changes?”
“I made the narrator a man. And added some settings here and there...”
In other words, she wrote her own life, but turned it into a fictional story with fictionalized characters.
“Did that cause trouble?”
“Trouble... yeah, you could say that.”
Casey spoke in a defeated voice, as if even she couldn’t believe it.
“It became too popular.”
“...?”
For a moment, Ludger wondered if he’d heard wrong.
Too popular?
Who?
What?
“I don’t understand. Popular? What do you mean?”
“The main character of the story I wrote.”
“That’s still you.”
“I told you—I changed the gender, the personality, everything! It’s only the stories that are mine!”
“Fine. And?”
“I stayed home and wrote more. Looking back helped me sort out my past, and it even lifted my mood. But then my sister found it.”
Maria Selmore.
Upon reading Casey’s manuscript, she sent it to a publisher without Casey’s permission.
“She thought it was fun, apparently. I yelled at her for doing something so outrageous, but it was already too late.”
The publisher believed it would be a hit.
They immediately printed it and released it.
The genre: detective fiction.
It was already a popular genre, but the issue wasn’t the genre—it was the success.
“The story I wrote became ridiculously famous.”
“...”
Unbelievable as it sounded, it was the truth.
Casey’s writing was unlike any other detective story.
Her real-life experience as a detective lent authenticity and sharp detail.
Combined with magical knowledge and a new “magical detective” protagonist, it was a breath of fresh air.
Readers were hooked.
The books sold explosively.
“Go to any bookstore in the Empire and the bestseller shelves are filled with my books.”
“...”
Ludger realized she wasn’t joking.
“So that slump is because...”
“Yeah. Because of my writing. It got too popular, and now I’m scared to do anything else.”
“Then can’t you just end the story?”
“I TRIED! I TRIED TO END IT! But then the people from the publishing house came to my door, got on their knees, and begged me to write the next volume!”
That was the problem.
The sales volume alone rivaled a mid-sized corporation.
If Casey stopped writing now, that entire revenue stream would collapse.
“So you came here because...”
“Partly because I wanted to see you after you came back... and partly because I ran away to avoid writing. {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Well—not just that. I also ended the story on a really shocking note.”
“Shocking?”
“Look at this.”
Casey pulled out a newspaper clipping from a few days ago.
[Shocking! Beloved mystery novel detective protagonist falls from a waterfall cliff and dies!]
It was... oddly familiar.