By late afternoon, Lusian left the infirmary.
The air carried the fresh, metallic scent that came before a night of rain. The Academy bells rang in the distance, mixing with the murmurs spreading through the corridors.
The central courtyard was filled with students.
Until Lusian appeared.
The conversations began to die down one after another.
"That's..."
"Yeah."
"That's Lusian Douglas."
Some students discreetly stepped aside to make way for him.
Lusian frowned slightly.
He didn't understand what was happening.
Just a few hours ago, these same students had been celebrating the tournament. Now they were looking at him as if he had just crawled out of a dungeon.
Then he heard a whisper.
"They say the Douglas army left no survivors."
"My brother is in the Royal Army. He said they found corpses all over Vayllencity."
"They also say the demons were there."
"And the Douglases exterminated them."
Lusian kept walking.
He tried to ignore them.
But the space around him kept growing.
A group of students occupying the stairs saw him approaching and immediately moved aside.
Even one of the professors supervising the courtyard stopped talking to his students and stepped several paces away.
Lusian noticed.
Seriously?
He looked behind him.
There was no one there.
Then he understood.
Ah.
It was his surname.
The problem was that everyone now knew what had happened in Vayllencity.
And Lusian realized that carrying the Douglas name was what caused this reaction.
He had simply forgotten how people reacted to it.
He continued walking.
A student standing too close accidentally looked up.
Their eyes met.
The boy froze completely.
The color drained from his face.
He swallowed hard.
Then he took a step backward.
"I... I'm sorry."
Lusian blinked.
"What?"
The young man immediately lowered his gaze.
"I-I-I... I'm so... sorry, Lord Lusian."
Lusian remained silent.
The student looked like he was about to faint.
"You don't have to apologize."
But the boy simply nodded rapidly and hurried away, almost running.
Lusian watched him leave.
"What the hell...?"
A few meters away, Emily had witnessed the scene.
She didn't smile.
She slowly approached Lusian.
"Are you okay?"
Lusian sighed.
"Nothing unusual."
Emily looked around.
Then she realized it wasn't just Lusian.
Two girls who normally greeted her lowered their gazes as she walked past.
A group of students was blocking the corridor. When they recognized her, they immediately moved aside, leaving far too much space for her and Lusian to pass through.
Emily stopped.
"Do you know what happened?"
Lusian shook his head.
"No. I'll ask my mother."
Emily nodded slowly.
"There must be a reason, right?"
Lusian didn't answer.
The whispers continued around them.
"They say they didn't leave any survivors..."
"There were even children."
"The Douglases showed no mercy."
"Did you see what they did to the Denisses?"
Emily clenched her hands slightly.
She didn't need to hear those rumors to know who the Douglases were.
She had known long before accepting the engagement.
She knew about the families that had disappeared.
She knew about the nobles who had stopped opposing the Douglases after one of their own was found dead.
She knew that when a Douglas considered someone an enemy, there was rarely a second chance.
She knew.
She had always known.
But knowing something was one thing.
Seeing it reflected in the faces of the people around her was something else entirely.
Emily glanced at Lusian.
He was still the same.
The same boy she had spoken with that morning.
The same one who had joked with her.
The same one who had just left the infirmary with one arm immobilized.
But now, everyone else looked at him as if he were holding a sword against their throats.
And she was walking beside him.
For the first time, she truly understood what it meant to become a Douglas.
It wouldn't simply mean marrying Lusian.
It would mean carrying that surname.
It would mean entering a family that could make a student tremble simply because their eyes happened to meet.
Emily lowered her voice.
Lusian hesitated for a few seconds before speaking.
"We can cancel the engagement."
Emily stopped dead.
The color drained from her face.
"What?"
"I don't want you to have to endure this because of me."
Lusian discreetly gestured toward the students watching them from a distance.
Emily felt a knot form in her stomach.
No.
She couldn't cancel the engagement.
She couldn't.
To Lusian, it seemed like a simple decision between two people.
To the Carters, it was something entirely different.
Breaking off the engagement with the Douglases could turn them into enemies of the most powerful family in the duchy.
And after what had happened to the Denisses...
Emily didn't even want to imagine what might happen to her family.
"No," she finally replied.
Lusian looked at her.
"No?"
Emily took a deep breath.
"I don't want to cancel it."
Lusian frowned slightly.
"Are you sure?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
For several seconds, neither of them said anything.
"I..." Emily took a breath. "I don't know what really happened in Vayllencity."
She looked at the students moving aside as they passed.
"But if everything they're saying is true..."
She didn't finish the sentence.
Lusian remained silent.
Emily continued walking.
"Even so, there must be a reason."
She looked up at him.
There was fear in her eyes.
Lusian noticed it, but interpreted it completely differently.
He thought she was simply frightened by the rumors.
Emily gave him a faint smile.
"I just need to understand."
"You don't have to push yourself that hard."
Emily shook her head.
"I'm not."
Lusian raised an eyebrow.
"Are you sure?"
Emily turned her gaze back toward the path.
"Yes. Someday, I'll be a duchess."
Lusian let out a small laugh.
"That's still a long way off."
"Then I have plenty of time to prepare."
For the first time since leaving the infirmary, Lusian smiled genuinely.
But Emily looked back again.
The students were still moving aside as they passed.
They weren't only afraid of Lusian.
They were afraid of the consequences of crossing a Douglas.
And now she was part of that family too.
Emily pressed her lips together.
What kind of family is this...?
Meanwhile, Lusian felt it with chilling clarity.
The story was beginning to move.
And no matter how hard he tried to stay on the sidelines, he was already caught in the current.
An heir of cursed blood in a world where the value of a life was measured by the magnitude of one's magical power.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let the whisper of the wind drown out the voices around him.
Then a thought made its way through his mind.
Simple.
Raw.
Inevitable.
Survive.
I just have to survive.