Swordsman's Regression: Reawakened as a Necromancer-Chapter 56: Alenya Crestveil

Percival sheathed his sword slowly.

The snapping sound seemed to break the elderly woman out of her trance. She flinched, pulling the heavy furs tighter around her frail shoulders, her clouded eyes staring at Percival’s face.

"I am not the Reaper," Percival said.

He had done his best to make his voice gentle. To not terrify her, to comfort her as much as he could manage.

"My name is Percival. And I am not here to end you. I am here to free you."

Alenya said nothing for seconds, then, as though she had finally processed his words, she parted her lips weakly.

"Free me?" her voice cracked, dry as parchment. She let out a hollow, rattling laugh that turned into a cough.

"There is no freedom from this room, Per— Percival. Tell me the truth and don’t try to comfort me. Did... did Tristop send you? Has he finally decided that feeding me is a waste of coin?"

Percival stepped closer. He saw the tray of food on the bedside table: a bowl of congealed, gray broth and a heel of bread hardened by time.

"Tristop doesn’t know I’m here," Percival said. "Can I carry you to a chair, Lady Alenya?"

Alenya’s ancient eyes gazed into Percival’s for a moment. "You carry a darkness I can trust. If you do carry me to a chair, it’ll be the first I have sat in months."

Percival’s brows creased. Hearing that strung his heart with a sharp pain he couldn’t describe.

Saying nothing more, he turned to the wooden chair, softened with leather. He grabbed it and placed it by the bed.

Then, with gingerness, he picked the old noble woman from the bed and carefully placed her on the chair.

She smelled like dried flowers.

Once she sat, a sigh of relief escaped her. Her body melted to the chair, her frail bones finding rest in another position that wasn’t prone.

He helped her arms to the armrests.

Then, certain she was comfortable, Percival moved on with his questions.

From what he observed, the answers were self-evident. Alenya Crestveil had suffered at the hands of her husband and his kin.

But it felt unfair to not hear the words of her own suffering from Alenya herself. Before he acted on her behalf, he needed to hear the indictment from her own lips.

"It is important that I know this, Lady Alenya. What did they do to you here?"

Alenya looked at Percival with a silent defensive anger simmering within her.

"Do not mock me," she hissed, though the effort left her breathless. "I am no Lady. I have been reduced to a shameful secret. A monster locked in a tower."

"Tell me what they did to you," Percival asked again, softer.

Alenya looked into his eyes once more. She saw that darkness once again. That darkness she could trust.

The anger drained away, leaving only exhaustion.

"It started... after Olysson," she whispered, her gaze drifting to the window where the light poured in. "My son. I gave Tristop an heir. I did my duty. But the birth... it broke something inside me."

"The healers called it the Long Sickness. My vitality leaked away, day by day. My hair turned to snow before I saw my twenty-fifth winter. My skin... became this."

She held up a trembling hand, the skin translucent and spotted with age. "Yet death didn’t come."

Percival listened quietly. He knew about the Long Sickness. It cursed one with longer life while punishing that life with an unbearable ailness.

But... there was already a cure for it now. Tristop must be intentionally hiding it from her.

"Tristop... he is a man of image," Alenya continued, her voice trembling with a lifetime of suppressed tears.

"He looked at me with disgust. He could not bear to have a ’withered crone’ by his side at the banquets. He was ashamed. So, he kept me here in the solarium. Away from the people’s eyes."

Percival felt a heaviness settle in his chest. "Your husband abandoned you because you were sick?"

"It will seem so, Percival," Alenya said sadly. "But he kept me alive. Do you know why?"

She turned to him, a bitter smile twisting her lips. "Because I am a Crestveil. Even with my family fallen, my name holds power. He claimed my dowry, my lands, my father’s artifacts... he used it all to fund his little war to reclaim the Barony. I am like a useful corpse to him."

She gestured weakly to the cold room.

"A prisoner. Unloved. Forgotten. Sometimes... sometimes the maids come to bathe me, their eyes full of pity or revulsion. They bring me food barely cooked, thrown onto a tray like slop for a hound."

"You are a noblewoman."

"Tristop doesn’t care."

"He should have."

Alenya smiled, noticing the emotions in Percival’s eyes. "He hates me, Reaper. He hates that he needs my name. And now that the Crestveils are no longer in power... Regardless of how he takes advantage of me, I am still useless to him."

Percival’s body was frozen, frozen because he was trying to stop himself from shattering the table beside him.

The agony he felt was so raw he wondered if he had developed empathy magic. To treat a woman you married with such cruelty... Tristop Highbard was a coward and a wretch.

But regardless of how he felt, what was important was how Alenya felt.

She was the one who had suffered. She was the one whose family sold her to her jailers. The one who lost everything for nothing.

And now, with the truth determined, there was only one thing left to do.

"Lady Alenya," Percival said softly.

"Do you remember the man you loved? The man you were supposed to marry before Tristop?"

The room went silent. The wind howled softly outside the glass, but inside, the air stood still.

Alenya’s eyes widened.

The cloudiness seemed to clear for a second, replaced by a spark of something young and agonizingly bright. Her hand went to her chest, clutching the nightgown over her heart.

"Yes," she breathed. The word was a prayer.

"How could I forget him? My Mercius. He was... he was the sun. He was everything that I never knew I wanted. He was my bethroted."

Tears began to pool in her eyes, spilling over to trace the deep lines of her cheeks. "He died in the war, you know? My father sent him there to die, and he did die and I ended up... b—bitter and sad and alone, and living... this— this wretched half-life."

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with pain in the form of silver tears. "Why would you remind me of him now? Why make my heart bleed with memories of my beloved? Why?!"

Percival felt his breath rise, his heart pounded with a kind of pain he couldn’t understand.

It wasn’t just him, he realized. He was carrying Mercius’s pain as well.

Percival took a step back.

"I do not want to frighten you, Lady Alenya," he said. "But there is someone you have to meet."

Alenya stared at him. Confused.

Then, the air in the room dropped ten degrees.

Blue flames swirled beside Percival, and as Alenya watched with wide-eyes, the flame coalesced and a form appeared out of its blaze.

Alenya gasped, pressing herself back against the chair.

Mercius stood there.

His face was not the face of a corpse, but the face of the man as he had been in his prime: strong, handsome, with eyes full of infinite sadness.

Alenya froze. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

All she could do was stare, starstruck to dumbfoundedness, unable to comprehend the impossibility standing before her.

The spirit moved. Mercius Seagrave came closer, his armor singing as though he was not a spirit at all.

He stopped by the chair and slowly, reverently, lowered himself to one knee.

"Alenya," Mercius whispered. His voice echoed, carrying the resonance of death, yet it was undeniably him. "My heart."

Alenya reached out with a trembling hand.

She hesitated, fearing her fingers would pass through smoke. But when she touched his cheek, she melted.

She could feel him. She could feel the man she loved.

"Mercius..." she sobbed, the sound tearing from her throat. "Mercius... are you real?"

"I am," he replied. "I am real." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

He leaned forward, wrapping his arms around her frail, withered body. He didn’t care about the wrinkles, the gray hair, or the smell of sickness.

He buried his face in her neck, holding her as if she were the most precious thing in the world.

"I missed you," she cried, clutching his armored shoulders, her fingers digging into the steel. "I missed you so much. I’m sorry... look at me... I’m so old..."

"You are beautiful," Mercius murmured into her hair. "You are as beautiful as the day I last saw you."

Percival watched them silently. He felt like an intruder, witnessing such a reunion. It could have never been possible without the Necromancer Class.

Without him.

It was beautiful, and it was cruel.

The embrace lasted for a long time. The only sounds were Alenya’s weeping and the soft hum of the mana sustaining Mercius’s form.

But Percival’s Contract Quest wasn’t done yet.

"Mercius," he called softly.

Still, holding his beloved, Mercius’s eyes narrowed, the glowing blue flames within his sockets constricting into vengeful slits.

"Master," he said.

"Kill them all."

Percival turned his back on the couple and headed out of the room.