The Boundaries of Possession - Chapter 24

Andreas watched Marcus burn, his breath ragged. The moment suspicion turned into reality, it plummeted into a dark abyss.

This was the tragic result of trust—trusting Marcus, trusting himself, trusting his father’s faith in him. His naivety had led them all to this ruin.

“Why… why did Father have to die?”

Helen’s faint scream pierced his ears. Her voice was so weak it was drowned out by the sound of the collapsing mansion. Helen stood there, staring at the crumbling estate, muttering Roxen’s name repeatedly.

“Because of me…”

His foolish, weak trust had brought this about. As Helen teetered on the brink of collapse, Andreas spoke softly to her.

“I’ll fix everything. Even without Father, I’ll put everything back together.”

Only then did Helen fall to her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. Her son’s proclamation felt like a cruel verdict.

Until the fire was finally extinguished, servants and villagers worked tirelessly. When the flames were at last brought under control, one of the servants timidly asked,

“What do we do now?”

The fear and uncertainty in the servant’s voice were palpable. Swallowing the lump of grief and tears threatening to escape, Andreas replied,

“We’ll start over.”

While Andreas was running around securing bank loans, an architect and several servants fled with valuables. He hastily arranged a marriage for the sake of the family, only for his fiancée to elope with one of the servants.

Even when he found out, Andreas didn’t care. What was lost was already meant to be lost, and those who left were people who were never meant to stay. His trust in and affection for people had burned away alongside the mansion.

People whispered that the new Duke of Eperthier had gone mad. He remained composed even in the face of betrayal, and he showed no anger over financial losses. Even as the mansion was rebuilt and its pillars stood tall again, Andreas himself remained broken.

The wounds ran deeper and were far more fatal than they appeared. His mind grew desolate. Night after night, he relived the nightmare of the burning mansion and his father’s death.

It was as if he were trapped in a water tank, struggling desperately but unable to escape. He realized he could never return to who he was before. At some point, he began to deviate from proper etiquette and behavior. Conversations and actions became riddled with subtle but significant inconsistencies.

Andreas was aware of the growing dissonance within him, yet he did nothing to address it. He had reached his limit. After all, there was no one left who cared enough to ask about his condition.

Helen tried her best as a mother, but she failed to recognize her son’s deteriorating state. She locked herself away, eating only the bare minimum to keep living. Twice a week, she forced herself to join him for dinner, wearing a strained smile that failed to reach her eyes. Their awkward meals became the only time they spent together.

Andreas gradually forgot proper table manners, even picking up his utensils incorrectly. After a few dinners, Helen noticed the servants casting worried glances at her son. Only then did she grasp the severity of the situation and call for a doctor.

But even then, Andreas made no effort to reclaim the memories that had been eating away at him. He couldn’t remember the necklace his father had gifted to Helen or that she had worn it constantly. He couldn’t recall the friends he had once been close to—their names, their faces, all gone.

Though the mansion had been restored to its former glory, Andreas himself was crumbling.

“His Lordship has lost his memories,” the doctor told Helen. “He’s blocked out painful memories by erasing others along with them. There’s a chance those lost memories may never return. In fact, it’s possible he may continue to lose more as time goes on.”

For the first time since Roxen’s funeral, Helen wept in front of her son. She knelt by his chair, placing her hand gently on his arm as her expression crumbled.

“You weren’t supposed to suffer like this. Andreas, none of this was your fault!”

Her voice, raw and strained, echoed through the now-dark and eerily quiet mansion.

‘Brother, you’ll become a good man, just like the Duke.’

Who had said those words? The voice clung to him like a curse, but he could no longer remember its owner.

It took him several months to regain a sense of direction and pull himself together. When he went to the imperial palace to inherit his father’s title, he received insincere condolences from the nobles—empty words filled with false sympathy.

He was only nineteen years old.