𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫

3.4 || Blue Flames

With only two more days left of the break, Seungmin spent his time looking into Sion's past. There wasn't much to go off of, as there was nothing left behind. The obsession with cleanliness and perfection that rose from his desire to be better than Christopher at something, anything—it was the exact reason why Sion left no traces of his personal feelings. The fairies that were helping Seungmin look for a diary or any sort of personal belonging pouted at their failure to find anything.

Shin crawled out from beneath the bed and whined. It was a futile search for the mana beast as well. It hopped onto the bed with flattened ears, prompting Seungmin to chuckle lightly. With time, not only was Shin growing in size but in personality as well. In the beginning, it was quiet and rarely did anything more than sleep, but it began exploring more and playing with the fairies as of late.

Seungmin scratched Shin's head and went back to thinking about the situation. It was unfortunate that he couldn't find any memoirs, but the fairies made up for it by telling him their observations of the previous Sion. Supposedly, he had a kind soul similar to Seungmin's before he was overcome with jealousy. But there was something that didn't add up in this.

"You say my soul is still kind, but I made inventions I knew would kill thousands," he muttered. "How is it that Sion's soul was tainted when it was purely a sibling rivalry?"

The fairies looked at each other hesitantly before one fluttered forward and answered, "Too much black magic."

Seungmin narrowed his eyes.

"I thought Sion could only use fire magic," he countered.

"Don't need to use black magic to be affected by black magic," another fey replied. One by one, other fairies piped in.

"Jealousy and..."

"Hatred!"

"Selfishness..."

"They all feed black magic."

"So all those emotions fueled black magic nearby and corrupted his soul?" Seungmin asked, a hand raising to his chin as his eyebrows knit in thought.

"No no," a fairy explained, "black magic to humans with no black magic is no harm. But if human have bad bad feelings...it eats their souls."

Seungmin realized then that his soul must have ended up in Sion's because there was no more soul left in the healthy body. It was simply a perfect shell. Sion's body was built healthily, and it didn't seem like he fell ill often at all, so the collapse in school could have been an effect of the black magic.

Further, Seungmin now knew that black magic did exist to a certain extent around him, enough, at least, to eat away at Sion's soul. He wasn't too surprised since he knew that fairies of all different attributes were everywhere, but he hadn't a clue who could be the dark magic user around him, and like holy magic, he had never yet seen a black-clothed fairy.

With a sigh, he plopped backward on the bed and mumbled, "And that still doesn't answer why Sion cared for his Mother's garden."

According to Sophia, Sion never called his mother "Mother" but "Concubine Irene." She wasn't sure how they addressed each other in private, but to call to his own mother as if they didn't have any relation at all, Seungmin thought, made it seem like Sion was hiding that he at least cared enough to make sure her garden was always tended to. Even records of what Sion would tell the gardeners to do didn't exist when most activities the Imperial Family ordered were written for the treasury or safekeeping.

"If he was caring for her in secret, is it a stretch to think he might have been protecting her? He had a horrible relationship with other people and used to be targeted in assassination attempts..."