Enid woke from the dream sometime around noon the next day.

  It was the latest she’d slept since arriving at the academy.

  She got dressed in a hurry and stepped out of her bedroom.

  Antonio was already in her sitting room, lounging with a newspaper in hand and a mug of coffee like he owned the place.

  The coffee, of course, had come from Enid’s own cabinet.

  When he saw her, he greeted her with an easy smile and said, “Morning, Enid. Well, technically afternoon. You really slept in today, didn’t you?”

  Enid sat down across from him and poured herself a cup to clear her head.

  “…Why are you in my room?”

  Antonio chuckled. “You almost never sleep this late. When you didn’t show up for breakfast, I figured something might be wrong, so I came to check on you.”

  Enid was about to speak, but Antonio lifted a finger to his lips, telling her to hold that thought.

  “I’m guessing you’ve got a lot you want to ask me,” he said. “Good timing, because I’ve got a few questions for you too.”

  He folded the newspaper, leaned forward, and lowered his voice a touch.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you recovered more memories, right?”

  Enid nodded.

  Antonio’s eyes sharpened with interest. “Then can you tell me which part came back?”

  Enid thought for a moment, replaying the vivid fragments and the faces that had appeared in her dream.

  Then she told him everything she’d seen.

  When she finished, Antonio leaned back into the sofa and stroked his beard, looking genuinely surprised.

  “Huh. So it was the part where you first met Elena,” he murmured. “Not the section I expected.”

  He studied Enid, puzzled.

  “Rosalie and Elena don’t really resemble each other… other than both being pretty cute,” he added, half to himself. “So maybe it’s not about similar people at all. Maybe it’s the kind of power they carry.”

  Enid didn’t interrupt.

  She just sipped her coffee and let him think.

  Come to think of it, every time her memories returned, they always cut off right after she passed out.

  And the next time she “woke” in a dream, it felt like she was picking up the past again, almost in order.

  Maybe her memories were coming back along her own timeline, step by step.

  Another thought crept in, if Antonio could live this long as a half-elf, then demons probably had long lives too.

  And Elena, being half demon and half elf, should have had an even longer lifespan.

  Enid was still turning that over when Antonio’s voice pulled her back.

  “Anyway, I can think myself in circles and still get nowhere,” he said. “About yesterday, about me arranging that meeting between you and Rosalie, there’s something I need to add. I owe you the truth.”

  Enid remembered the way he’d brought Rosalie, someone who carried the air of a Holy Spirit Church “saint child,” to see her.

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  She’d known Antonio was keeping things from her, but she hadn’t expected him to offer an explanation less than a day later.

  Or at least, part of one.

  “I’ve always known,” Antonio said. “Not just me. Elena knew too, and so did our other two companions back then. We all understood what holy mana does to the curse inside you. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten.”

  Enid didn’t respond, which was answer enough.

  Antonio continued. “Like in the memory you just described, Elena’s holy mana was overwhelming. Just standing near you made your curse more active.”

  He cleared his throat, a habit that meant he was getting to the point.

  “Your curse is twisted by nature. It’s evil at its core, and it doesn’t just react to holy casters, it provokes them. It can even trigger changes in them.”

  “Most of the time,” he added, “those changes are actually… beneficial.”

  Enid could already see where he was going.

  “So you’re saying Rosalie has the same kind of potential Elena had,” Enid said, “and the curse inside me can push that potential out into the open.”

  Antonio clapped once, delighted. “That word is perfect, awakening. Yes, that’s the idea.”

  “And Rosalie, like Elena, has a particular attachment to you,” he said, choosing his phrasing carefully. “Not romantic. More like dependence, respect, something close to reverence.”

  Enid finally had a thread to follow.

  The pressure she’d felt around Rosalie really had been her ancient twisted curse rejecting the holy mana.

  When the “total amount” of divine power around her crossed a certain threshold, the curse stirred, and the pain followed.

  And Rosalie’s reserves were massive, so massive that even Enid, who wasn’t a holy specialist, could feel them.

  It reminded her of the amount Elena had released back then, right before Enid nearly died.

  Holy magic could still heal Enid, but the results were always weaker than they were on ordinary people.

  Blessing-type spells barely worked on her at all.

  And compared to that, the curse seemed far more “comfortable” around Caroline’s darker energy.

  Still, there was something Enid couldn’t make sense of.

  She couldn’t recall every detail, but she understood what Elena had believed about her.

  Elena had treated Enid as a “Divine Messenger,” the focus of her worship and devotion, and that may have fed Elena’s talent for miracles.

  But Rosalie was different.

  It had been their first meeting.

  Enid had no idea what Rosalie truly thought of her, and most holy casters, priests, and clerics sensed the curse inside Enid and instinctively pulled away.

  Rosalie clearly hadn’t.

  He didn’t seem to hate Enid, but he didn’t look like someone who fully trusted or worshiped her either.

  And even though Rosalie was a boy, Enid didn’t get the sense his attractions worked in any “normal” direction, so she could rule out simple infatuation.

  More than that, Rosalie’s presence didn’t only remind her of Elena.

  It also kept tugging up a vague silhouette in her mind, someone blurred and half-remembered, like a name on the tip of her tongue.

  Rosalie had secrets, and Enid doubted Antonio’s explanation alone covered all of them.

  Enid voiced those suspicions.

  Whenever she got close to something crucial, Antonio would check whether she had recovered any matching memories.

  If she hadn’t, he would laugh it off and refuse to go further.

  He insisted that memories “told” by someone else, even by him, were never as reliable as the memories Enid recovered herself.

  He also said that bringing her to the academy had partly been for that reason.

  Antonio admitted that no one had a firm explanation for Enid’s curse.

  All he knew was that it had ties to the long-destroyed Demon King.

  And based on more than five centuries of watching and studying Enid, he’d noticed a pattern.

  The quieter the curse became, the faster Enid lost her memories.

  And after every flare-up, after every wave of pain, Enid tended to regain large pieces of her past.

  So Antonio didn’t know the “right” way to handle the curse.

  But he leaned toward letting it “get some sunlight” once in a while, meaning letting it stir, especially when triggered by holy power.

  In the end, he said he’d told Enid everything he could.

  The rest, he claimed, was for her to figure out in her own time.

  If she had the chance, she should meet people, have tea, talk, especially with Rosalie and the priests.

  If stirring the curse helped bring back what mattered, then a little stimulation might be worth it.

  Before Antonio left, Enid asked one last question.

  “Tell me something, Elena… how is she now?”

  Antonio just smiled and shrugged. “Healthy as ever. Unlike me, a five-hundred-year-old fossil.”

  “Elena still looks young, and her outlook is just as bright,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll see her again soon.”

  “And when you do,” he added with a grin, “don’t pretend you don’t remember her just to mess with her. She’ll believe you, then she’ll cry for days.”

  With that, Antonio put on his coat and opened the sitting room door.

  “Antonio,” Enid called.

  He paused and looked back. “Yeah, Enid?”

  Enid hesitated, then said it anyway.

  “I don’t know your full plan, and I’m not questioning it.”

  “But when things get heavy, when it starts to feel like too much, don’t forget your teacher. I’ll be behind you, same as always.”

  For a split second, Antonio’s usual warm smile slipped.

  Then he smoothed it away, bowed with perfect gentlemanly precision, and answered.

  “I won’t forget.”

  “Just like before, if things ever get close to the point of no return,” he said softly, “I’ll come to you and ask for help.”

  “And when that day comes,” he added, voice light again, “I hope you’ll treat me like you do everyone else, and not look down on an old man like me.”