Yves

Yves is a physician and medical researcher specializing in Mana Core Degeneration Syndrome, which he calls Mana Core Cancer. Decades earlier, he served as one of Julia Barielle's artificial-stigmata researchers and as the young Astrid Barielle Aetherion's first doctor. The project kills his wife Roxanne and causes the disease Yves later devotes himself to understanding. He becomes Vanitas Astrea's personal physician, using the treatment partnership both to prolong Vanitas's life and to pursue knowledge that may protect future patients. (Chapters 88–101, 205, and 233–295)

Biography

Role in the Supplied Story

Yves first meets Vanitas at a nominally closed Millin City clinic that conceals a privately funded laboratory. He initially refuses service, but the mention of Mana Core Degeneration immediately draws him back because he has spent much of his life studying the condition that killed Roxanne. Yves scans Vanitas, replaces a misleading two-year prognosis with an estimated eight to ten years, and offers a painful mana-purification treatment with a disclosed one-percent success rate and the risk of accelerating the illness. Vanitas funds the unfinished machinery, while Yves promises monthly treatment and reorganizes his life around the case: he moves his clinic to Valenora, transfers his hospital employment, and treats Vanitas as patient, benefactor, and possible partner in uncovering the disease's origin. (Chapters 88–101)

When Vanitas's condition later worsens, Yves finally explains the history he has withheld. He, Roxanne, and Clarice Astrea studied together before Julia recruited them into a classified artificial-stigmata project. Yves served as Astrid's early physician and participated despite its repeated near-fatal procedures, though he was away treating another patient when Astrid's stigmata finally manifested and irradiated the facility. Roxanne and Clarice were among those fatally exposed. Yves documents the new syndrome, confronts Julia, and tries to reveal the project, but the Imperial Family suppresses his evidence and erases him from official records while Julia quietly shields him from punishment. His later account gives Vanitas the causal link between Astrid's experiment and his inherited illness, turning Yves's medical work into an effort to expose and repair damage in which he was also complicit. (Chapters 205 and 233)

In the later conflict, Yves continues treating people whom Vanitas brings into his covert care, including an injured Margaret Illenia and the drugged Soliette Dominique and Elsa Hesse. His clinic's absence from Vanitas's public records makes it a refuge during the manhunt, though Yves challenges Vanitas's choices and warns when continued sedation could become harmful. He maintains Vanitas's purification procedures, restores nutrients, and reports the final-stage collapse of his mana pathways, nervous system, organs, and mobility without offering false hope. By chapter 295, treatment can at best extend Vanitas's life by roughly a month; Yves nevertheless continues daily conditioning because the research may help future victims even though it cannot save his current patient in time. (Chapters 245, 252, 288, and 295)

Appearance and personality

Yves is shown wearing a white laboratory coat and glasses when he emerges from his Millin clinic. The corpus does not establish his age, hair color, eye color, build, or a different signature outfit after he moves to Valenora. His visual presentation is therefore defined chiefly by his clinical clothing and the machines he operates. (Chapter 88)

Gruff, profane, and frequently tired, Yves has little patience for social niceties, status, or demands that compromise his judgment. He is nevertheless candid with patients about uncertainty and risk, reacts quickly when Vanitas arrives in danger, and refuses to raise Soliette's sedative beyond a harmful dosage. His ethics are complicated by his willing participation in Julia's project: guilt over Astrid's suffering and Roxanne's death drives him to expose the truth and seek treatment, but it does not erase his role in the original harm. With Vanitas he mixes criticism and guarded affection, recognizing self-sacrifice beneath the professor's claims of revenge while continuing care that he knows cannot produce a timely cure. (Chapters 88–91, 205, 233, and 252–295)

Magic and abilities

Mana Core Degeneration research and diagnosis

Yves has spent decades investigating Mana Core Degeneration Syndrome and personally builds a scanner for its cancerous mana cells. The device traces mana energy through a patient's chest and lets him estimate when cells left dormancy, assess core stability, monitor failing pathways, and distinguish the disease's effects from acute mana sickness or overuse. His successive readings identify protective activity slowing Vanitas's early deterioration, then later detect decaying legs, nervous-system failure, collapsing pathways, internal bleeding, and an apparent contradiction between physical function and the body's scanned state. Yves marks his explanation of Vanitas's compensating mana as a theory, and he admits that the patient's continued ability to cast near death exceeds his medical explanation. (Chapters 88, 91, and 295)

Mana-purification treatment

Yves's experimental treatment attempts to isolate and purge corrupted mana cells or vessels, then replace what is removed with a stabilizing agent. It requires specialized machinery, restraints, carefully adjusted output, and hours of painful exposure; monthly sessions can suppress symptoms and may extend life, while later daily conditioning and nutrient restoration help keep a failing body functional. The initial machine is operational but far from optimized, with a stated one-percent success rate, an estimated fifteen-year development period, and a risk that failure will accelerate the disease. By chapter 252, it draws corrosive vessels from Vanitas and delivers stabilizer through his veins, but Yves explicitly says the accumulated research will benefit later patients rather than cure Vanitas. By chapter 295, even proper treatment and rest can offer only an approximate month. (Chapters 88–91, 252, and 295)

Artificial-stigmata medicine and clinical care

As a medical scholar on Julia's project, Yves understands its attempt to engineer synthetic spirits, bind them to hosts in imitation of a soul bond, and condense that bond into a stigmata. He is Astrid's first physician and later documents how her forming stigmata siphons nearby vitality and produces the radiation behind Mana Core Degeneration Syndrome. His knowledge is substantial but incomplete: he was not present at the final manifestation, relies partly on Roxanne and other survivors for that event, and never claims to reproduce Astrid's stigmata independently. In current practice he can monitor sedation, recognize dangerous drug adaptation, restore nutrients, and supervise injured or unconscious patients. These are demonstrated medical competencies supported by equipment and pharmaceuticals; the corpus never shows Yves casting a healing spell, invoking a personal stigmata, or receiving a formal magical rank. (Chapters 205, 233, 245, 252, 288, and 295)

Relationships

• Vanitas Astrea: Vanitas funds Yves's laboratory and becomes the patient through whom he can advance research on the illness that killed Roxanne. Yves gives him candid diagnoses, protects his confidentiality, and continues treatment after it can no longer save him, seeing both a chance to help future victims and an opportunity to atone for the project that exposed Clarice's son. (Chapters 88–101, 205, and 252–295)
• Roxanne: Yves meets his future wife through their shared university studies and later works beside her in Julia's research facility. Astrid's manifestation exposes Roxanne to the syndrome that eventually kills her. Her death becomes Yves's central personal reason for investigating the disease, attempting to expose the project, and trying to save Vanitas where he could not save her. (Chapters 88, 205, and 233)
• Astrid Barielle Aetherion: Yves is Astrid's first doctor and one of the researchers who subjects her to artificial-stigmata procedures intended to save her fading soul. He questions Julia's methods but remains in the project. Astrid's eventual manifestation saves her while creating the syndrome that consumes his colleagues, leaving Yves both one of her early caretakers and one of the adults complicit in her suffering. (Chapters 205 and 233)
• Julia Barielle: Julia recruits Yves, Roxanne, and Clarice and trusts Yves enough to grant him unusual freedom in the facility. After Roxanne dies, Yves tells Julia he detests her and tries to reveal the truth. She suppresses his evidence as ruler but secretly keeps the Imperial Family from punishing him, a protection he regards as an inadequate gesture of guilt rather than reconciliation. (Chapters 205 and 233)
• Clarice Astrea: Clarice is Yves and Roxanne's close university friend and later colleague. Her exposure and death help motivate Yves to treat Vanitas, whom he views as a chance to atone for the group's role in the experiment and its consequences. (Chapters 88 and 205–233)

Items

• No notable item associated with Yves meets the scoped item-manifest criteria.