The Heroines Who Framed Me Are Clinging to Me

Chapter 22 - The Reverse Eye

Lloyd didn’t like the defiant look in Hector’s eyes.

The guy had been like this since they first met.

That same glare from when they were in the carriage, the way he would glare back during training.

Everything about him rubbed Lloyd the wrong way.

He had just been tolerating it.

But now, with all mental restraints lifted, Lloyd saw no reason to keep holding back.

Lloyd reached out and placed his hand on Hector’s frozen face.

He gently lifted his eyelid.

He marveled at the feeling of the perfectly spherical organ beneath the lid, the eye, the most flawless sphere in the human body.

Lloyd slowly ran his fingers over it, savoring the texture.

"Hmm."

In truth, he had only one concern.

If he saw too much blood, Ortega might awaken.

As long as he avoided that, Lloyd could proceed with Hector’s punishment a bit more aggressively.

After all, eyes don’t bleed that much, do they?

Crunch.

Lloyd\'s fingers tightened around Hector’s eyeball.

"You."

A voice rang out.

It was quiet but commanding.

This shouldn’t be possible.

Time in this room was supposed to be frozen.

Lloyd slowly turned his head.

Standing at the doorway, where everything should have been still, was a girl with pure white hair.

— Tap.

In the silence, her footsteps echoed.

Lloyd stood rooted to the spot, staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.

The girl looked to be in her late teens, with sapphire eyes that sparkled like gemstones.

Lloyd blinked.

It wasn’t just a metaphor. Her eyes were literally glowing, with blue light swirling within them like a magic circle.

An entirely alien sight.

"...The Reverse Eye?"

Lloyd murmured in disbelief.

The Reverse Eye. A rare and ultimate magical talent that had only appeared a handful of times in history.

It allowed its wielder to nullify magic with a mere glance, an overwhelming ability beyond comprehension.

And here was someone with that power, walking through a frozen moment in time.

— Step.

The girl finally stood before Lloyd, glaring at him as she spoke.

"Take your hands off him. Stop."

Her voice carried the weight of command, as if she was accustomed to giving orders. It gave Lloyd a clue to her identity, but he needed to confirm it.

He asked bluntly.

"Who are you to give me orders?"

The girl scoffed and straightened her posture, inhaling deeply as she looked down on him.

"I am a descendant of the great bloodline of Estrid. I am Yulia Estrid."

Yulia Estrid. The name was familiar. She was...

"As the Third Princess of the Britannia Empire, I command you. Stop."

The person who would later be known as the Princess of Rebellion.

This was unexpected.

Lloyd had imagined she would have red eyes like Ortega’s, consumed by madness, with a haughty and tyrannical demeanor. He had expected her to be more of a reckless tyrant.

‘But she seems cold.’

Her blue eyes.

Her calm voice, even in this situation.

Her composed yet striking appearance.

Her presence was more akin to that of a ruler than a tyrant.

Lloyd removed his hand from Hector’s eye.

But not before breaking a few of his fingers...

"Enough."

Lloyd had to raise his hands in surrender at the princess’s command.

She was, after all, his new mistress.

◆

Yulia Estrid, the Third Princess of the Empire, had lost her way in the Gray Duke\'s mansion.

To be precise, she pretended to be lost.

The reason was simple. While walking through the hallway to use the restroom, she had sensed an unusual flow of mana. In one spot within the mansion, mana seemed to have frozen, completely stopped. Thanks to her innate talent, the Reverse Eye, she could perceive this anomaly.

Finding the hidden passage leading to the servants’ quarters wasn’t difficult. Mana always left traces. The location where mana had frozen wasn’t far from the passage. It was close enough that she could come up with a reasonable excuse if she was caught snooping around.

"A servant’s room?"

Surprisingly, the source of the disturbance was behind an ordinary wooden door. Yulia opened it naturally, and at that moment, her Reverse Eye activated involuntarily.

‘...What is this?’

Yulia stood frozen in place, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Dust particles suspended in midair.

Curtains frozen in mid-flutter.

Humans utterly motionless, as if time itself had stopped.

‘Stopping time...?’

She had never heard of such a spell. It defied the laws of nature. It was impossible. Yulia repeated this in her mind, stunned.

Then, a story from her family’s history struck her.

A tale from long ago, passed down through the Estrid lineage. A tale of a dark void in their family tree, the one stain on the great Estrid lineage: Ortega Estrid.

Only those within the Estrid bloodline knew this story.

Ortega could stop time.

Yulia surveyed the room.

One boy was moving within the frozen time.

A boy with jet-black hair.

The boy was about to gouge out another boy’s eye.

Yulia spoke reflexively.

"Stop."

The boy turned to face her.

And the moment she saw his eyes, Yulia felt a chill.

It was because of his eyes.

The boy’s eyes were glowing red.

Just like the eyes of Ortega, whom she had only seen in portraits.

Yulia moved forward instinctively.

She had to stop this boy.

Only she could move within the frozen time, thanks to her Reverse Eye—a talent she had never revealed to anyone.

The Reverse Eye, the most brilliant talent within the Estrid bloodline, alongside the curse that was the madness of Ortega.

The Estrid bloodline inherited two extreme talents.

One was the ‘madness’ Ortega possessed.

The other was the ‘Reverse Eye’ that Yulia now wielded.

It was thanks to an Estrid ancestor with the Reverse Eye that Ortega was subdued and sealed away.

In other words, Yulia had a duty.

She had the duty to subdue and seal any Estrid who inherited the ‘madness.’

She had no idea why this boy possessed the ‘madness.’

"As the Third Princess of the Empire, I command you. Stop."

Even as she spoke, Yulia swallowed nervously.

What if he doesn’t stop? Could I win in a fight? Honestly, she had no confidence. But fortunately, the boy stopped.

Instead of gouging out the eye, he merely broke a few fingers, but Yulia could overlook that. The boy had stopped. Then, he looked directly at Yulia.

"Why are you here, Princess?"

"What were you doing here?"

"Nothing much."

The boy shrugged as he looked around.

"Just giving the kids a bit of an education."

"Education, with everyone frozen in time?"

The boy shrugged again.

His red eyes gleamed in the light, triggering a sense of deja vu in Yulia.

The boy’s body was clearly not of Estrid blood.

There were only two possible hair colors in the Estrid family: golden or platinum white.

This boy had black hair.

So, his body wasn’t Estrid.

But his behavior...

His casual demeanor and the arrogance in his every movement, as if he stood above everything...

They bore a faint resemblance to Estrid.

"Your name?"

"Ah... Lloyd. Lloyd Arenberg. I think that’s what it was."

Yulia’s brow furrowed.

This boy... it felt like his body and soul were mismatched.

Like a foreign soul had taken residence in him.

"Lloyd. Snap out of it."

The boy tilted his head, confused.

"I’m perfectly fine. You just don’t know what I’m really like."

His tone had changed completely from when they first spoke.

Yulia was certain now.

This boy’s soul was being taken over by someone else.

"Lloyd. Someone is taking over your mind. Snap out of it."

"No, they’re not. This is just who I am."

Yulia held a mirror up to him.

"Look at yourself. Look at your red eyes. I can tell your eyes weren’t this color."

The boy’s eyes trembled violently.

He bit his lip hard, as if trying to hold something back.

Blood began to trickle down his chin.

"You’re being consumed by madness. You have to stay alert. Keep your eyes open and fight it."

Yulia spoke instinctively and then realized the gravity of the situation.

Madness. It was the curse that afflicted Ortega, the black stain on the Estrid bloodline.

And the fact that her Reverse Eye had drawn her to this place meant this was fate.

Yulia took a step closer to the boy.

The boy’s fingers twitched in fear.

His eyes, as if locked in a battle for control, began to shake violently.

Thirty years ago, deep within the palace’s underground vault, the seal on Ortega’s soul had been broken.

Despite the Emperor’s secret deployment of every resource at his disposal, Ortega was never found.

The boy’s body trembled violently.

Yulia drove the point home.

"Lloyd. Ortega is trying to take over you. You have to fight back and win."

The boy glared at her with glowing eyes.

"Shut up, you witch with the Reverse Eye."

He spat the words out, his mouth full of blood.

"I had this body nicely cooked and ready, but you had to spoil it."

Thud.

The boy collapsed where he stood.