Magda's hands trembled as she flipped through the aged parchment, her mind reeling with each revelation. The tale of the Ice Phoenix was harrowing enough, but what she read next shook her to the core.
The previous Duke of Valenhart and his beloved wife had a daughter—the elder sister of Fredrick's father—a child whose body could not contain the overwhelming amount of mana she was born with.
The old Duke and old Duchess exhausted every known method to keep her alive, but despite their efforts, tragedy struck. One day, the child's heart simply stopped beating.
The old Duchess, unable to accept the loss of her only daughter, committed the most desperate of acts.
She fed her child the blood of the Ice Phoenix—the very blood harvested from sacrificing previous incarnations. The result was both miraculous and horrifying.
Though the girl's body lived, she never awoke.
She remained in a deep, unnatural coma, and as the years passed, an even stranger phenomenon occurred—her body ceased aging.
She remained frozen at the age of ten for seven years while her younger brother grew into a teenager. Then, one day, she simply vanished without a trace.
Then, roughly fifty years ago, on the very day Fredrick's grandmother passed away, the Ice Phoenix's mana detector pointed to a beautiful child found in the wilderness.
Fredrick's grandfather took the girl in, named her Celeste, and raised her as his own daughter.
But deep down, he knew the truth—this was not merely an abandoned child.
This was his own daughter, reborn with the soul of the Ice Phoenix.
The Valenharts were cursed with the ability to sense the life and death of one of their own, and the old Duke instinctively knew that this child was his.
As the years passed and the time of the White Saber's curse drew near, the old Duke was faced with an impossible choice.
To prevent the cycle from repeating, he sent Celeste away to the Imperial Capital, shielding her from the extended family and her destined fate.
To deceive the Valenhart family, he used the stored blood from previous Ice Phoenix incarnations, temporarily suppressing the mana fluctuations and convincing the rest of the family that the Phoenix had already been slain.
Only Fredrick's father and the old Duke knew the full truth.
Bound by the weight of their knowledge, they made a silent pact—one to protect Celeste.
They understood that revealing the truth would only lead to her being hunted, her life reduced to yet another sacrifice in the cycle of slaughter.
Instead, they chose to remain quiet, to let Celeste live a life where she was unaware of the fate she had escaped.
The Duke sent her away to the Imperial Capital, far from Valenhart's reach, while her father stayed behind, keeping the secret buried in the cold northern lands.
Yet, this solution was never meant to last. Without the true Ice Phoenix's blood, the land could only hold off disaster for so long.
The curse of the White Saber continued to loom, and the blood they had used to deceive the family could only suppress the mana fluctuations for a time.
Eventually, the truth would demand to be confronted once more.
Celeste, devastated upon learning the truth of her existence, had nearly resigned herself to her fate.
She had made peace with the idea of giving her life for the empire, believing that was the only way to break the cycle.
But just as she was preparing for the inevitable, she discovered something that changed everything—she was pregnant with Magda.
The revelation struck her like a force of nature. All her life, she had been bound to a fate she had no control over, her existence dictated by a cycle older than the empire itself.
But now, for the first time, she had something that was truly hers—something untouched by duty or destiny.
It was not obligation that bound her to this child, but love—a love born from her union with Raphael, one she had never dared to believe she could have.
With Magda's presence growing inside her, Celeste could no longer resign herself to sacrifice.
The child she carried was not just another heir to the empire, nor was she merely a continuation of the Ice Phoenix's legacy—she was a miracle, a reason to fight.
Celeste had spent her life healing others, but now, she had to protect her own. She had to live—for her child.
But carrying Magda was no easy feat. Even in the womb, Magda's developing body demanded enormous amounts of mana.
At first, Celeste continued to use her magic, depleting herself more and more. But when she collapsed from exhaustion, the doctors warned her—if she continued to strain herself, she would lose her child.
Terrified at the thought of losing the baby she had come to cherish, Celeste made a decision.
Instead of relying on her mana, she began creating elixirs that required far less energy, pouring all of her knowledge into ensuring Magda's survival.
Magda's vision blurred with unshed tears as she read her mother's final journal entries, preserved in the Northern laboratory after being transferred from the Imperial Palace.
Each word resonated with the love Celeste had felt for her, the sacrifices she had made to bring her into the world.
It was then that Magda understood why Raphael loved her so fiercely—because to him, no other child could compare to the one Celeste had given her life for.
Her heart ached with bittersweet understanding.
And as she read further, another revelation struck her. Her adoptive mother, Livya, though she had stolen Magda from her birth parents, had given her the name that Celeste had originally planned for her.
Magda now understood why Fredrick had refused to tell her about the discrepancies in the story he had shared with her that morning.
He wasn't hiding it out of uncertainty—he was protecting a truth that he had carried for years.
Fredrick was her biological cousin, and the reason Celeste and Fredrick had always been so close was because Fredrick had known from the very beginning.
To him, Celeste was not his father's adopted younger sister as the world believed—she was his father's true elder sister, a truth that had remained buried beneath the weight of history and duty.
Magda clutched the journal to her chest, the weight of her mother's devotion pressing down on her.
Through everything—the tragedy, the sacrifices, the love—she now saw the depth of her mother's struggles. And in that moment, she vowed to honor Celeste's legacy, no matter what it took.