“From now on, your name is not Number 10, but Scarlet Evande.”

The man declared.

After my name changed, my life also fundamentally shifted.

In the life of Scarlet Evande outside, there was no longer the daily pain I had to endure.

It was something I could never have imagined until now.

However, I couldn’t solely be happy because, beyond pain, there were challenges much harder to bear.

[Don’t you feel resentful about the pain you’ve suffered?]

[Aren’t you angry? Don’t you want to burn everything to ashes?]

[Those who hurt you, the people, the world, everything.]

Ever since the day I desperately fought against the voices and extinguished the fire emanating from my body, those voices sporadically echoed again, and intense emotions swelled uncontrollably.

If I let go and succumbed to those feelings, I somehow knew that I would burn everything around me to ashes, just like last time.

And this time, I was sure it wouldn’t end until my entire body was consumed by flames.

So, I desperately resisted the voices and suppressed the flames.

As a result, I had to lie quietly during most of my waking hours, exhausted.

But it wasn’t just to avoid experiencing the pain of a burning body.

I could only endure because I wished to fulfill the man’s request.

He had always made my suffering bearable, given me a name, and was the only person who treated me warmly in that cold room.

So, as I had promised before, I wanted to become someone who could protect others.

The man said that by entering the academy, I could become a hero.

A hero is a profession that protects people.

So, I wanted to become a hero.

I felt that if I became a hero, I would see the man’s happy face.

That’s why I endured, no matter the difficulty.

Whenever I felt the urge to follow the voices and torch everything, I held on, thinking that the man would be saddened. I resisted, resisted, and kept resisting.

Finally, on the morning of the day I would enter the academy…

I realized.

That my mind could no longer withstand the voices whispering constantly to burn everything to cinders.

I wanted to become a hero.

I wanted to see the man happy.

But despite desperately trying to stay conscious, my vision seemed to blur little by little.

If I could no longer contain the flames, they would probably incinerate everything around me.

The only relief was that when the man had asked me to choose a place I liked, in case something like this happened, I had picked a place where no one lived.

If I lost consciousness and couldn’t move, at least no one else would be hurt.

One person burning was enough.

In a quiet room of a building where no one lived.

Lying on my bed, I closed my eyes, thinking I wanted to see the man happy.

*

On the first day of school, I recalled the reason why Yoon Si-woo was late in the original story.

While chatting with Sylvia, Yoon Si-woo had explained that he was late because he helped put out a fire he saw on the way to school.

Until now, I had just thought of it as a coincidence, but following Yoon Si-woo and arriving late, I hadn’t seen any fire.

So where was the place where the fire occurred in the original story?

That might be the reason why there were only 29 students in Class A and why Scarlet Evande hadn’t appeared.

Perhaps Scarlet Evande was destined to die in a fire on the first day.

*

I felt a disturbing dizziness and an uncomfortable feeling as though I were bound to something.

When I tried to get up but couldn’t move, I opened my eyes and saw the guardian man slumped in a chair, apparently unconscious.

In this alarming sight, I tried to move my body to help him, but I only heard the clinking of chains and couldn’t move.

Upon closer inspection, my condition was far worse.

Not only were my hands and feet bound by chains, suspended in midair, but I was also trapped in a cage-like prison.

I was sure I had fallen asleep in the bed of my room, so what on earth was happening?

It seemed the man and I had been kidnapped by someone.

I tried to melt the chains binding my hands and feet with fire, but the flames that erupted from my body were sucked into the chains one after another.

At that moment, I heard a voice.

“No matter what you do, it won’t work, Number 10. That’s a special restraining device made from absorption stone, just like the one attached to your prosthetic arm.”

Looking toward the source of the voice, I saw an elf with silver hair, Sator, grinning unpleasantly as he looked at me and the man.

Though I had seen him only a few times, this guy called me Number 10 in my dreams countless times.

Was it a deeply rooted memory enough to become a trauma?

My body trembled slightly, and flames erupted naturally from the fear and rage that surged above it.

I had roughly begun to guess for a while.

I wondered if the dreams I had been having recently were perhaps memories of Scarlet Evande’s past.

Even just the snippets I vaguely remembered were pretty serious, which made me anxious, but by all means, they were just events that had occurred in the past.

Since I couldn’t change what had happened, I thought it would be better to focus on the things that would occur in the future.

But how could I have imagined that I might be kidnapped by some lunatic while I slept?

I was afraid of what might happen to me, but more than that, I felt angry as I glared at Sator, who seemed to have kidnapped the man and me.

He frowned, then suddenly smiled.

“Since you’ve resisted, you’ll need to be punished.”

Thinking he might do something more painful, I shut my eyes tightly, but contrary to my expectations, the rod didn’t aim for me.

“Ugh!!!”

The man’s scream echoed out.

As I opened my eyes wide, I saw Sator holding the man’s hair, who seemed to have woken up from the sudden pain.

The man also looked confused, unsure of what was happening, and opened his mouth in bewilderment.

“Sa…tor… what on earth is…”

“You said you wanted to meet Number 10, didn’t you? So I prepared the best seat for you right here. To explain further, I had no choice but to forcibly bring you here because I couldn’t cancel my plan. Failure is not an option in my vocabulary.”

As Sator spoke with a laugh, the man shouted in a threatening tone.

“…This was a plan to save people, wasn’t it? But what is this? Do you even know how serious a crime it is to commit an offense against a hero?”

Then Sator started laughing while scratching his neck.

“If you hadn’t run away with that thing, I wouldn’t have had to do this. And a hero? Are we talking about that? The one made with a piece of the heart of a witch, the enemy of humanity?”

Hearing that, I could roughly understand the identity of this body.

Although my curiosity was resolved, it only worsened my feelings.

Damn, of all things…

Sator continued to speak, scratching his neck.

“Just to inform you, the plan to weaponize the witch wasn’t set up to save people. It was originally planned to use the witch’s powers to clear the monstrous beasts in the north and reclaim the great land of Astra. What I said back then was simply because I needed your ability. I might have deceived you, but you’ve deceived me too, so it shouldn’t really matter, right?”

That revelation seemed quite shocking, as the man’s face turned stiff.

Sator continued to laugh at the man, as if finding his reaction amusing.

Blood trickled from the neck he was scratching, dyeing the gloves he wore red.

He definitely didn’t seem to be in his right mind.

In a situation where someone like that held our lives.

The man spoke with a stiffened expression.

“…What are you planning to do?”

Sator smiled.

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m going to continue the experiment to see what I can do with this failure. Don’t worry. Astra never forgets a favor. Even though you deceived me, you still helped me, right?”

Sator brought the rod to the man’s body.

“I’ll give you a chance for a noble sacrifice to unleash his anger. So, hold on as long as you can.”

A scream echoed out.