Chapter 45: The Truth Behind the Eccentric Fourth Hero
As we walked on with the other heroes, my mind slowly climbed back out of the fog the despair had sunk me into — thanks to Alice, and no doubt to Apotheosis as well, which kept me from going under entirely. And with my head a little clearer, I set about turning the whole situation over again.
I took the problem from the other end.
The fourth hero was weakened. Lazaüs was far too strong for us. Two other high demons stood on the neighboring fronts. And the giant had a regeneration ability beyond anything normal, nothing like the sluggish chimeras we’d faced at the castle, in the present.
In the true timeline, things had to unfold exactly as they did before our eyes: the giant struck the wall, the breach opened, and Lazaüs cast his great spell, the one that sealed the city in darkness. All of it was written. But then why hadn’t the ancient heroes all died? Why had only one of them perished, where the whole city had fallen?
Something had to happen afterward. Something big, very big, right after the spell.
The trouble was that the moment the giant broke through the wall and the spell came down, it counted as a failure of the mission — and the loop closed before we could see what came next. We’d never held past that point. We didn’t know what came after.
But what if—
I was cut off from my thoughts by a voice. A cry, pleading, that stood out clearly from the panicked murmur of the citizens.
I turned my head toward it.
A young man stood there, curled into a ball against a wall, a bow across his back. There was nothing of the archer you’d picture — none of the lean, unobtrusive build of a marksman. He was tall, broad-shouldered, almost too heavily built for his weapon, with poorly cut fair hair and strips of cloth wound along his forearms. And, a detail it took me a moment to register, two little white wings stuck out of his back, on either side of his bow — tiny, barely bigger than hands, beating faintly in time with his trembling, looking about as useful as they were decorative.
His bow, on the other hand, was anything but ordinary: as long as he was tall, carved from a dark wood veined with glints, it hung across his back like a dead weight he clearly hadn’t touched in a while.
He held his head in both hands, his body shaking, repeating the same words over and over.
"Please! Stop, leave me alone! Please, ple, please, ple, ple, ple, ple..."
"Is that him?" I asked.
"From what the citizens told us, yes," Gu Yanshu answered.
Seorin frowned.
"Isn’t it a little cruel of the other heroes, to have left him here alone in this state?"
"We thought the same," said Evelyn. "The urgency, maybe. Or else they just didn’t get along, who knows. But it gets us nowhere to wonder — what matters is that he helps us."
I nodded. It was sensible enough.
Alice, for her part, walked calmly toward the man curled against the wall. The mana flowed toward her, that gentle tide she called up without effort, and she raised a hand toward his brow before speaking the words.
"Angelic Word of the Mind."
The instant Alice spoke, the sobbing stopped all at once.
He rose slowly. A moment earlier, he’d been nothing but a man curled up holding his head; now he stood straight, shoulders squared, his gaze clear. He looked around, unhurried, settling on us, then on the city, then on the red sky above the rooftops, like someone gathering his wits and piecing a situation back together.
The quiet serenity of his face had nothing to do with the panic of a moment ago. You’d have sworn they were two different men.
"I see," he said at last, in a composed tone. "If I understand correctly, we’re in Akhartenzia."
He frowned, thinking aloud, posing the questions to himself as he went.
"The city is under attack. My mind has just been freed from some hold — I can feel it, that fog lifting. So a spell was cast on me, something that gripped my head. The question is who, and why." He brought a hand to his chin. "The demons, obviously. Who else? And if the demons turned my mind in the middle of the battle..."
He stopped short. His eyes widened, as if under the weight of a revelation.
"... then under their control, I must have raised my hand against my own companions." His voice firmed, seized by a quiet certainty. "There. It all fits. I killed the other heroes. And you came to stop me."
A silence.
Huh?
I stood speechless for a moment. The first half held together — a spell had indeed fogged his mind, that much was true, and nothing said it hadn’t come from the demons. But from there, he’d gone completely off the rails. He’d taken that plausible beginning and rushed it straight into a conclusion out of nowhere, without a single one of us saying a word.
And while we were all still searching for where to begin setting him straight, his face slowly crumpled. His eyes welled up. His lip trembled.
"So that’s it, then..." he breathed.
Then the tears burst out. Real tears, in floods, streaming down his cheeks as he dropped to his knees before us, hands clasped.
"I beg you." His voice broke. "Even if you’ve freed me from the evil that was gnawing at my mind, I’ve no taste left for living, not after what I’ve done. I beg you... put an end to the life of the sinner I am."
No one said a thing.
Seorin stared at him, mouth slightly open. Evelyn had brought a hand to her face. Gu Yanshu looked elsewhere, as if refusing to be associated with what was unfolding. Leon had gone a little pale, his mouth open on an objection that wouldn’t come. Gabriel, arms crossed, watched him with a mix of embarrassment and fascination. And the archer’s two little wings beat faintly at his back in time with his sobs, which really didn’t help anyone take the scene seriously.
I turned to Alice for a bit of support.
Bad idea.
She had a hand clamped over her mouth, shoulders shaking, her eyes fixed on me and bright with a hilarity she was barely holding back, as if she were just waiting for me to crack so she could burst out too.
I let out a long sigh, as much to keep from laughing at Alice’s complicit look as at the situation itself.
"No one’s going to kill anyone," I said, stepping toward him. "You didn’t kill any hero. You didn’t even fight them. We found you curled up in a corner, begging to be left alone — that’s all. The spell we’d had on you was muddling your mind, nothing more. No one died by your hand."
The archer lifted his head, cheeks still streaming, and blinked.
"... Ah."
"There you go."
"So I didn’t... kill anyone?"
"No one."
He spent a moment digesting the information, brow furrowed, as if he had to dismantle piece by piece the whole structure he’d just built. Then, as quickly as they’d come, the tears dried, and he sprang to his feet, brushing the dust off his knees, his tragic air gone.
"Well, that’s excellent news." He gave a broad smile, his little wings straightening valiantly at his back. "In that case, I owe you my thanks. You saved my mind."
Behind me, I heard Alice snort for real.
"He changes moods fast," Seorin murmured, a little thrown.
"He seems to be a good-hearted man, at any rate," said Gabriel, regarding the archer with a softened eye.
I could only agree with him.
Once everyone’s wits had returned — literally and otherwise — I made the introductions in a few words. I saw no point in telling him about the tower, the loops, or the fact that we’d come from the future; I simply explained that we were a party of adventurers passing through, caught by the attack before the city fell, and come to lend a hand. That was plenty for him, and he calmed down enough to really listen.
His name was Adam, and he had indeed been one of the four heroes dispatched to Akhartenzia.
"Listen," I said once he’d found some semblance of seriousness. "We need you to tell us what happened before your mind was clouded."
Adam scratched his head, his gaze drifting, plainly rummaging through a memory still fogged in places.
"Wait... let me think. It’s all still hazy..."
He stayed like that a moment, brow furrowed, tracing back the thread. Then he suddenly struck his fist into the palm of his other hand.
"Ah, I remember! It was Hannah who cast that spell on me, actually. So I wouldn’t go telling our plan to just anyone."
So he hadn’t even been bewitched by a demon? But in that case, where had all that theory he’d served us at the start come from? Was he even of sound mind? And this Hannah, who was she?
"Hannah..." I repeated the name, trying to place it. "One of yours, I take it?"
"One of the heroes went by that name," Evelyn confirmed.
One of them, then. One of the four had deliberately fogged Adam’s mind to protect a secret — a secret none of us was meant to know, and that even the fortress’s inhabitants were unaware of. The pieces were falling into place one by one, and I was beginning to see where they led.
It was Gabriel who put the question out loud.
"What plan?"
Adam looked at him as if the answer were self-evident.
"Well, the surprise attack on the command center of the demon army. What else?"
And there, everything fell into place at once.
So that’s the key to this trial.