"Judging by the clothing and the order of the memories, the one who was killed should have been Theodore Bronte's wife."
Miss Bell spoke softly.
After killing his own wife, the owner of the memories used a spell to preserve that grieving woman's soul, then took a carriage to the family cemetery and sent her into the "Edge of Life and Death."
He did not follow her inside. Instead, he stood alone in the empty cemetery and muttered to himself:
"This is all for your own good. Death is for rebirth. One day, sooner or later, I'll bring all of you back to life and grant you immortality like mine. What I have obtained must not leave me, whether it is my life or yours.
Why does the Time Curse require me to regularly come into contact with concentrated power of death? It greatly depletes the Life Force I absorb and increases my consumption. So is time urging me to kill?
I see. If I want a longer lifespan, I must make others lose the lifespan they should have had. That way, everyone's time remains conserved. Yes, that's it!"
The scene ended, followed by another series of fragmented images.
The witch sighed softly:
"He really has gone mad."
At this point, everything about Bronte's initial contact with the tree hollow, his discovery of the coffin's contact with the Mourner, and the Time Curse he bore had been revealed.
Shade had thought the scattered scenes afterward would contain nothing important, but the rapidly flashing images froze once more. This time, however, the scene was extremely strange.
"This is... a dream?"
The owner of the memories moved through a dim forest at night, but the scenery around him was highly unstable. Shifting blocks of dark color constantly reassembled at the edges of