IWOE 02

The Real One Was Me Chapter : 2

Clink.

Somewhere, she heard the sound of rippling water.

‘The sound of water?’

Liarthe turned her eyes, searching for the source of the water.

But there was no water anywhere. Instead, a familiar place came into view.

A room so small that one could never imagine a duke’s daughter, let alone Elhaim’s daughter, living there.

The old, faded gray wallpaper still made the room look bleak. The empty space contained not a single piece of furniture besides the bed.

‘Am I… not dead?’

This was the place where Liarthe had spent most of her life.

As soon as it was confirmed that she was an unawakened, her blood relatives in Elhaim had shoved her into this room.

They had told her that if she knew the shame of being the disgrace of the family, she should at least avoid drawing attention to herself.

‘This is strange. This room should have already been burned down and destroyed.’

When she unconsciously raised herself, pain coursed through her entire body as though every bone were breaking.

But compared to the agony she had felt as her life slipped away at the moment of her death, it was nothing.

Yes. Liarthe’s breath had completely stopped.

As she slowly searched through her memories, she recalled the moment she had met her death.

“……That man.”

The moment she spoke, her throat began to sting.

The Elhaim Awakened, whose eyes had been fixed on the water magic circle, probably hadn’t seen him, but Liarthe had definitely seen the blue man.

As always, the spirit stones had been placed around her twin younger brother, Rian.

The only difference was the light emanating from the spirit stones.

Flicker.

A faint light leaked from the surface of the stone, which rippled like water. Liarthe couldn’t take her eyes off it, staring as if hypnotized.

As the execution proceeded, the light gradually grew stronger.

The blue man appeared when a blinding light burst forth.

Water gathered between the shattered fragments of the spirit stone and took the shape of a person.

Eventually, the completed blue man desperately reached out toward Liarthe.

[No!]

The immense power contained within the spirit stone poured into Liarthe’s body.

The power of water spread naturally throughout her entire body, as though it had finally found its master.

The torrential rain that had become one with Liarthe’s emotions poured down from the sky. At that moment, Liarthe realized that she had awakened.

‘Only now.’

The power of water she had given up on, believing she would never be able to use it for the rest of her life.

Rainwater flowed down her expressionless face like tears.

Looking at Rian seated upon the throne, Liarthe thought,

‘It was my power, not yours.’

Just as she was vaguely forming that thought, darkness overcame her vision.

That was Liarthe’s final memory.

Clink.

Water gathered around Liarthe’s feet as she rose from her place.

For a moment, a strange light flashed in Liarthe’s eyes.

No matter how much the family had rejected her, she had watched people use the power of water so many times that she knew the movements by heart.

When she imitated the movements she had seen Rian and her other relatives perform, water coiled around her fingertips.

It was such precise manifestation that any other water Awakened would have admired it instinctively.

Half of an Elhaim.

The first unawakened to ever appear in Elhaim.

Those titles that had followed her throughout her entire life were wrong.

Liarthe was an Awakened of water.

Her awakening had simply been delayed, and she had gained her ability at the moment she faced death.

Then, someone lightly knocked on the door.

Without waiting for an answer, they naturally slid the door open.

Soon, a figure walked inside.

“Liarthe.”

His face was shadowed because he was standing with the light behind him, but it wasn’t difficult to recognize him.

The boy everyone loved.

Liarthe whispered dryly.

“Rianlicious.”

There was no longer any affection in Liarthe’s eyes.

The Duke of Elhaim asked the maid standing outside Liarthe’s room.

“Is there still no sign that she will wake up?”

“The poison has definitely been neutralized, so she should regain consciousness soon. Young Master Rian has just entered.”

Sensing the duke’s low spirits, the quick-witted maid answered promptly.

When the name of his beloved youngest son, Rian, came up, the Duke of Elhaim’s anger subsided slightly.

“Rian will take care of matters concerning that child.”

It was a statement to himself rather than something that required an answer.

The duke looked once again at the closed iron door.

Two weeks ago, an incident had occurred in Elhaim.

An assassin had stormed in while a banquet was being held inside the ducal residence, with members of the imperial family and nobles in attendance.

‘How dare they invade Elhaim?’

Rumors had been quietly circulating that Elhaim’s power of water was no longer what it used to be.

For that reason, Elhaim’s Awakened evacuated the honored guests while demonstrating that their water abilities remained intact.

Up to that point, everything seemed perfect.

But then there was Liarthe.

“An ignorant and useless thing.”

A chill settled over the duke’s face as he muttered under his breath.

The assassins’ target had been Rian. By the time they realized that the commotion itself had been a trap aimed at Rian, it was already too late.

A poisoned blade was aimed at Rian.

And Liarthe had thrown herself in front of the blade as though protecting him.

After that, Liarthe had remained unconscious.

‘To think she would become a burden to Rian, who has so much to do.’

Rian could not use his water ability when separated from Liarthe. The only thing the duke cared about was the fact that Rian’s schedule had been delayed.

Not whether Liarthe lived or died.

For an entire week, no one went to see Liarthe, wary of the duke’s anger.

The duke had assumed she was receiving treatment on her own, only to learn of the situation belatedly.

Apparently, she had suffered from the poison alone for a week.

‘But she’s still alive, so that’s enough.’

The duke had no interest whatsoever in Liarthe’s inner feelings or her injuries.

‘She’ll obey again anyway.’

As always, she would wander around her family, begging for their affection.

That was the pathetic daughter the duke saw when he looked at her.

The duke never imagined that Liarthe could abandon them.

At that moment, the distinct aura of water unique to an Awakened could be felt.

“Father.”

“Isn’t that Ainrius?”

A young man with silver-gray hair appeared. Ainrius had always been the eldest son who was calm and rational.

“Have you found out who was behind the assassination?”

“There is no need to think too deeply about it. It must have been Virche, anyway.”

There were two Awakened families in the empire that had not lost their abilities.

The Elhaim Duchy of Water.

The Virche Duchy of Death.

But the two families did not have a good relationship.

“The only person in this empire who would dare attack Elhaim is Carmen Virche.”

Just thinking about the slick Virche Duke made the duke feel his blood pressure rising.

Erasing his thoughts, the duke placed a hand on Ainrius’s shoulder.

“But I don’t know what brings you all the way here.”

Among all the blood relatives, Ainrius was the one who despised Liarthe the most. Ainrius lowered his voice.

“This is not the time for that, Father. Something unusual just happened to the spirit stone.”

A rapid whisper reached the duke’s ear.

“The spirit stone has begun to glow.”

The maid was still standing outside Liarthe’s room. Although the duke composed his expression, his eyes had widened.

“Is that true?”

Despite the first Duke’s dying words, the spirit stone had remained dormant all this time.

‘So it really was true that the master would be born on the day the spirit stone began to glow.’

Naturally, the duke was thinking of Rian.

“Summon all the high-ranking water Awakened immediately, Ainrius.”

The true master Elhaim had been waiting for all this time might finally have been born.

Rianlicious’s hand slipped between Liarthe’s fingers.

Holding hands.

The dry contact was merely a means of using the power of water.

His other hand gently stroked Liarthe’s long black hair.

“Why did you do that?”

His clear, refreshing voice softly rebuked Liarthe.

But unlike other times, Rian’s twin sister merely stared at him silently.

A white face framed by black hair. Watery-colored eyes.

Their appearances were similar, but the twins’ circumstances were completely opposite.

“What do you mean, ‘that’?”

Liarthe was observing Rian’s face, which looked much younger than it had just before her death.

‘Strange.’

Unlike her last memory, when he had looked more like a man than a boy, he now looked to be around his mid-teens.

At first, she thought all of this was a dream she was having after death.

But the sensation of breathing and the feeling of being alive were far too vivid.

A dream couldn’t possibly be this vivid.

‘Then what are this room and Rian?’

Liarthe’s room had burned down and disappeared on the morning of the execution.

It had been done under the Duke of Elhaim’s orders to erase any trace that an unawakened person had ever been alive.

It felt as though she had gone back several years.

Until Rian’s coming-of-age ceremony, he would frequently visit her room because he couldn’t use his ability without Liarthe.

‘Several years ago?’

Rian’s hand slowly slid from the middle of her hair to its ends.

“You should know better than anyone, Liarthe.”

Liarthe remembered this conversation.

Long ago, when she had awakened after being poisoned and hovering between life and death, Rian had said these exact words.

At the time, when she still loved her family, she had cried and apologized when Rian told her that his schedule had been delayed.

‘How foolish I was.’

Words she had never been able to say before came out without hesitation.

“What do you mean by ‘that’?”

Liarthe asked in a dry tone.

“Do you mean when I threw myself in front of the assassin to save you?”

At first, she had thought this was a dream she was having after death, but it wasn’t a dream.

“Or do you mean when I was dying from the poison after telling everyone that I’d been poisoned, but no one from the family came to me?”

Her body hurt just as it had several years ago when she had been poisoned. Every time she spoke, a wheezing sound mixed with her breath.

This was reality.

Liarthe had already experienced this situation and this conversation once before.

‘What if I really did return?’

She remembered the shattered spirit stone and the immense power that had flowed into her body.

What if she had traveled back through time and returned to the past?

She couldn’t rule out the possibility.

“Don’t worry, Rianlicious Elhaim.”

Liarthe’s cold hand, devoid of warmth, removed Rian’s hand and pushed it away.

“I won’t waste my time on such pointless things again.”

It wasn’t like the Liarthe he knew.

A subtle crack appeared in Rian’s previously impassive expression.