Chapter 58: Volume 1- [ - 59 ]
She stopped. Swallowed. The tears came again, silent, running down her round cheeks.
Seraphine’s jaw tightened. Her internal voice was a murmur of reluctant sympathy:
‘She has lost four parties in three months. That is not unlucky. That is cursed. Or — the system notification said blessed. Blessed by the Goddess of Bad Luck. What does that even mean? How can bad luck be a blessing?’
“Does anyone have a map of this place?” Seraphine asked, steering the conversation toward the practical. The warrior in her was already assessing, already planning, the emotional moment filed away for later processing.
Mirra nodded. Wiped her face. Reached into her satchel and produced a creased, water-stained parchment. She unfolded it on the ground, and they gathered around it — Seraphine, Elwen, the sisters, me standing slightly back, watching.
The dungeon map was rough — hand-drawn, probably by a previous party, the corridors sketched in charcoal, the rooms marked with symbols that indicated monster density and hazard type. The entrance was at the bottom. The boss room was at the top. Between them, seven floors of twisting passages, trapped chambers, and monster nests.
“Level four dungeon,” Seraphine said, her yellow eyes scanning the map. “I have cleared level six solo. This is manageable.”
‘Level four. Seven floors. With a full party — even this mismatched group — it should take six to eight hours. The goblins we killed outside were the overflow. The dungeon’s internal population will be denser, but the corridors will funnel them, which favors our formation. I take point. Elwen provides support. The lord and his women —’
Her internal voice paused. She looked at me. At the sisters, who were standing behind me, their hands on my arms, their bodies pressed against my sides. At the carriage driver, who was tending the horses and clearly had no intention of entering the dungeon.
‘The lord can fight. I saw him kill five wolves. But his women — one is missing a leg. The other — I do not know if she can fight. They are a liability.’
“We should clear it,” I said, and my voice carried the quiet authority that I had learned to deploy — the voice of a man who had already decided and was offering the appearance of consultation. “If we leave it uncleansed, the overflow will destroy the nearby village. And—”
I turned to Mirra. Looked at her directly. Held her gaze.
“Mirra,” I said.
She flinched. Her brown eyes went wide, the tears still wet on her cheeks, her mouth opening slightly.
“How — how do you know my name?” she whispered. “I never told you. I never—”
I let the silence hold for one beat. Two. Then I let my expression shift — not to surprise, but to something softer. Something wounded. The expression of a man who had been caught off guard by his own memory.
“My mother,” I said, and the word came out rough, hesitant. “She had the same name. Mirra. I have not seen her — not since I was a child. But there was a portrait, in the manor, and when I looked at you—”
I stopped. Looked away. Rubbed the back of my neck — a gesture of discomfort, of vulnerability, the kind of gesture that said ‘I did not mean to say that’.
“You look like her,” I finished. “My apologies for calling you by that name. I did not think — who would have thought—”
Mirra’s internal voice was a cascade of surprise and confused warmth:
‘Mirra. His mother’s name. And I — I look like her? His mother? He has not seen her since he was a child — a portrait — and I remind him of — that is why he looked at me that way. That is why he—’
“No — it is fine,” she said, and her voice had changed — softer, less frightened, the voice of a woman who had been given something unexpected and did not know what to do with it. “My name is Mirra too. It is — it is a coincidence.”
She tucked a strand of mousy brown hair behind her ear. Looked down. The blush on her face was faint but visible — the first blush I had seen on her, the first sign that the wall of bad luck and self-blame she carried had a crack in it.
‘A coincidence. He thinks I look like his mother. His lost mother. That is — that is kind. No one has ever—’
I smiled. Gentle. Warm. The smile of a man who had just planted a seed and was watching it take root.
‘I cannot let the other women doubt me as a pervert,’ I thought, maintaining the warm expression while internally cataloguing the reaction. ‘The mother angle is perfect. It gives me a reason to be gentle with her, to be protective, to single her out without raising suspicion. Every time I look at her, they will see a man remembering his mother. Not a predator selecting his next target.’
Seraphine was watching. Her yellow eyes moved from me to Mirra and back, and her internal voice was cautious, probing:
‘He called her by name. Before she introduced herself. And his explanation — his mother — it could be true. It could be a coincidence. But the timing — the way he said it — the vulnerability in his voice — it was too perfect. Too rehearsed. I have seen men lie before. I have seen men manipulate before. And this—’
But the thought dissolved, because the alternative — that a nobleman had genuinely been reminded of his mother by a commoner girl — was the kind of sentimental coincidence that happened in stories, and Seraphine, despite her warrior’s cynicism, was a woman who had been raised on stories.
‘Maybe it is true,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I am being paranoid.’
Elwen’s internal voice was simpler, more direct:
‘His physiological responses when mentioning his mother were consistent with genuine emotional recall. Elevated heart rate, pupillary dilation, micro-tremor in the right hand. If he is performing, the performance is anatomically precise. Further observation required.’
The conversation continued. The map was studied. The plan was formed — Seraphine at point, Elwen in support, the lord and his women in the middle, Mirra at the rear with her buffs. The dungeon would be cleared floor by floor, room by room, the monsters eliminated, the traps triggered or avoided, the boss confronted at the end.
But before they moved, the talk turned personal. The way it does when strangers are about to enter danger together — the need to know who is beside you, what they are, where they come from.
“The nearby town,” Mirra said, her voice steadier now, the blush faded but the warmth remaining. “Oren’s Hollow. It is small. The Adventurer’s Guild there is — well, it is lacking adventurers. Being in the countryside, most trained fighters go to the capital or the larger cities. We get — the ones who cannot get work elsewhere.”
She smiled. A small, self-deprecating smile. ‘Like me.’
“And you, Lord Veyne?” Seraphine asked, and the question was pointed — not conversational but interrogative, the question of a woman who wanted to know who she was walking into a dungeon with. “You said you are a lord. Of what house?”
“House Veyne,” I said. “A minor noble house, granted this estate by the crown two generations ago. My grandfather received the title after—”