In the Depths of the Crucible, a Seed of Vengeance

The child fell ill that very night.

I had a rough idea as to why. I had witnessed this phenomenon a few times before. Every single one of the precious few children I had managed to rescue throughout my long, endless life had reacted exactly like this. Immediately after I picked them up, no matter how fiercely they flew around or how savagely they snarled, the moment a deep realization clicked in their minds that I was someone they could finally let their guard down around—their bodies would suddenly give out, and they would break down in sickness.

Vanessa had been no different. On her third day with me, she burned with such a terrifying fever that she hovered precariously on the razor’s edge between life and death. Because she had been so horrifyingly emaciated and frail when I first found her, I had honestly believed with absolute certainty back then that Vanessa was going to die.

‘I suppose Luca has finally judged this place to be safe as well.’

Among all the children I had ever taken in, he had taken the absolute longest to reach this point. By all accounts, it was a milestone I should have been overjoyed by, yet I found myself completely unable to smile.

I replaced the damp towel resting on his forehead with a fresh, cool one. Though it had only been resting there for a brief moment, it was already radiating a boiling, scorching heat.

I could guess the underlying reason why this kept happening to these kids. If they didn’t judge their environment to be perfectly secure, they couldn’t even afford themselves the luxury of falling ill. They had to stay strong just to survive.

“You need to get well quickly.”

External wounds and lacerations could easily be mended with divine power or healing magic. However, a sickness of the constitution like this could only be treated the old-fashioned way—by brewing medicinal herbs. Of course, I also happened to be an extraordinarily talented apothecary, so he would likely be completely back on his feet by tomorrow or the day after.

“The best scenario, though, is never getting sick in the first place.”

I kept murmuring to the boy, even knowing he couldn’t hear a single syllable. Though his fever was gradually breaking, leaving him in a prolonged state of unconsciousness could eventually pave the way for permanent complications.

I stayed awake through the dead of night, single-mindedly nursing Lucalis. Whenever his breathing slowed to a soft, rhythmic hum as if he had drifted into a deep sleep, I left him be; but the moment he let out a faint moan or showed even the slightest inkling of waking up, I immediately spoke to him.

“Are you waking up? Can you try opening your eyes for me?”

“Just drink this. You have to swallow this to get better. There’s a good boy. Well done.”

“Why are you frowning so deeply after taking your medicine… Ah, is it too bitter? Would you like a piece of candy?”

Whenever he threw up the medicine, I scrambled to clean up the mess in record time before gently wiping down his small frame with cool water all over again. Though my overall health had improved significantly compared to the ancient past, I was still fundamentally a fragile sunfish, meaning I occasionally blacked out for a few seconds before snapping back to reality—yet I resolutely refused to abandon my post at his bedside.

By the time the dark sky began to bleed into the pale light of dawn, my physical stamina was completely spent, leaving my memories hazy and fragmented. I remember wiping his body down one last time and meticulously straightening his bedding… and then, what did I do after that? I felt a phantom sensation, as if someone had reached out, tightly pulled me against them, and wrapped their arms around me, but I couldn’t be entirely certain.

At some point, the entire world simply faded into a deep, velvety black.

The very moment the inkling crossed his mind that he might be falling ill, the fierce fever was already violently ravaging his body. It felt as though the severe toll of his recent grueling survival out in the wilderness had suddenly hit him all at once. Hot, suffocating breaths forced their way out of his lungs, and the world spun violently around him. He briefly considered calling out for the mage, but when he tried to part his lips, the words refused to form.

It wasn’t because he distrusted the man. In fact, it was the exact opposite. From a certain point onward, he had found himself gradually leaning into the mage’s words. The heavy iron counterweight of his heart, which had always maintained a cold, detached equilibrium, had begun to tilt. Consequently, he had become deeply curious about the man in a completely different way.

He pondered the mystery with a mind thoroughly numbed by the fever. The man was almost certainly connected to the late Emperor Vanessa. If so, what exact relationship did they share?

‘Seeing how he refers to Emperor Vanessa as a mere child, it implies he is vastly older than her… but is such a thing even physically possible?’

At the time of her tragic demise, the Emperor had been thirty years old. By that metric, the mage’s actual age would have to be eighty at the absolute minimum.

He had certainly heard whispers that mages who reached the pinnacle of their craft could live up to two hundred years. However, if anyone were to suggest that a person could maintain such a breathtakingly youthful visage at that age, anyone in their right mind would scoff and shake their head.

Even the legendary knights of the Lucencia Bloodline, a family famed for producing generation after generation of Sword Masters, couldn’t defy time to that extent. The absolute limit of their martial arts was appearing roughly twenty years younger than their biological age. Yet, even by the most generous estimates, that mage looked to be in his mid-twenties at the absolute oldest. In fact, looking at the way he behaved sometimes, he seemed infinitely younger than that.

And that wasn’t the only paradox that defied logic.

‘Why on earth is he living in a godforsaken place like this? And entirely alone, no less.’

Even if he was a magnificent mage who felt absolutely no threat to his personal safety, that alone didn’t explain why he would willingly choose to entomb himself in a forgotten corner of the world.

Rather, a far more plausible theory was that he had committed some unspeakable crime against Vanessa and had been exiled to this wilderness. The continent was vast, but there were precious few places where an exile branded by the Emperor of the Empire could actually hope to survive.

Yet, even if some profound, valid secret existed to dispel all these glaring doubts—meaning every single word the mage uttered was the absolute truth—it remained entirely bizarre.

Even if a profound bond had existed between them, that was a matter from decades ago. For him to lavish such an overwhelming, unconditional kindness upon someone two entire generations removed from that bond simply made no sense—

‘So let’s just say I’m doing all this simply because you’re cute.’

‘What a bizarre… fellow.’

His head throbbed with an excruciating ache, yet a strange, ticklish warmth blossomed deep within his chest. The moment he focused his attention on that warmth, the agonizing pressure in his skull seemed to fade into a dull hum.

Lucalis quietly slipped into unconsciousness.

Shhh-clink, thud.

Shhh-clink, thud.

The nightmare always began with that exact, rhythmic sequence of sounds. The heavy blade of the guillotine being hoisted up, locking into place at the apex, and then violently slicing downward to sever someone’s head.

Every single time that mechanical, monotonous sound echoed through the square, someone he knew was brutally executed. His mother had been the very first to lose her head.

Objectively speaking, she had been far from a good mother. She had given birth to him solely to solidify her own political foundation, and she had remained single-mindedly faithful to that utilitarian purpose from the day he was born until the day she drew her last breath. He had been raised entirely by the hands of wet nurses and vassals. He had never once experienced a warm, affectionate gaze or a tender caress from his mother.

And yet, watching her life get snuffed out left him with a profoundly hollow, surreal sensation.

‘I suppose a mother is still a mother, after all.’

Harboring those empty thoughts, he sat huddled in a dark corner like a corpse. His designated place was not beneath the looming shadow of the guillotine, but rather alongside the victorious faction led by Princess Remina—trapped inside an incredibly cramped iron cage.

‘Ho, she is quite beautiful, yet remarkably sturdy. This is a magnificent piece of craft, is it not? Wherever did your Grace manage to procure such a fascinating item?’

‘I happened to purchase an exotic monster as a pet a while back, and they threw this in along with it. It may look delicate, but it was manufactured specifically for monsters, so even a severe impact won’t leave so much as a scratch on it.’

‘Haha! It fits him absolutely perfectly. Truly perfect.’

‘Hahaha.’

The nobles lingering nearby laughed and flattered the man, but without exception, their reactions were painfully strained. Though they all belonged to the exact same political faction, they were entirely unable to conceal the terror they felt toward the Marquis.

A few silver streaks of gray hair peeked through his immaculately swept-back navy locks. White hair, which should have served as a symbol of physical decline, was transformed upon his head into an emblem of absolute majesty and brilliant strategy. The crimson eyes nestled between his sharp, piercing features evoked the exact same thought every single time one looked into them: I have never personally laid eyes on a demon, but if I ever cross paths with one, they will undoubtedly possess eyes exactly like his.

Marquis Girdan Paheran. The sole mastermind behind this grand catastrophe, and the terrifying man who had engineered his mother’s total ruin.

Possessing a colossal frame with broad, square shoulders, he wasn’t a knight by trade, yet he wielded a blade with masterful proficiency. In his youth, he had been a hot-blooded powerhouse who personally led campaigns to exterminate monsters within his territory. Perhaps because of that martial foundation, he appeared to be in his early forties despite celebrating his sixtieth year.

He was a man perpetually shrouded in a storm of dark rumors. The whisper that he had struck a forbidden pact with a black mage was considered the mildest among them. There were whispers that he drank the fresh blood of children every evening, that he had bartered his very soul away to the Demon King, and that he regularly offered horrific sacrifices to an evil deity.

While his imposing appearance fueled these stories, it was his blood-drenched track record over the past fifty years that truly cemented them. He had entered the world as the illegitimate bastard of a ruined, destitute Marquis family; yet, after gaining the validation of the ancient, childless Marquis who was on his deathbed, he became the sole heir overnight.

Relying entirely on his own brilliant capability, Girdan had resurrected a house that had plunged to the absolute rock bottom of society. Surging forward as if blessed with invisible wings, he consolidated the fractured noble factions, placed himself at the absolute epicenter of their power, and ultimately seized control of the entire Empire.

The phrase ‘absolute, unchecked authority’ had been practically coined to describe him. In the current political landscape, that man possessed enough power to treat him—the sole remaining heir to the imperial throne—as nothing more than a caged pet.

Tap, tap.

Girdan’s massive hand lightly rapped against the iron bars of the cage.

‘Are your accommodations to your liking, Imperial Prince? This Girdan cannot help but worry deeply that you might find it exceedingly difficult to adjust to such unfamiliar surroundings.’

Well. The cage itself wasn’t unfamiliar. He had been trapped inside a cage from the very moment he was forced into the world. Being transferred into a different cage didn’t fundamentally alter his reality.

However, a pure, unadulterated despondency over his current situation weighed heavily on his soul. There was not a single shred of hope visible on the horizon. He despaired in a thoroughly ordinary, human way.

Girdan, who had been smiling with serene satisfaction as he watched a knight weep and howl beneath the guillotine, suddenly called out to Remina as if a thought had just struck him.

‘Your Majesty.’

Remina, who had now officially ascended as the Emperor, flinched violently, her shoulders trembling. She hadn’t even possessed the courage to properly look at the execution grounds. Perhaps due to the intense gaze of the surrounding masses, she had desperately tried to hold her head high at first, but as the hours dragged on, her neck bowed lower and lower until her gaze rested entirely on the tips of her own shoes.

She was timid and frail by nature. He had heard she was a sickly child who had been plagued by constant illness since her youth. Above all else, she had never desired to become the Emperor. She was a woman who would have been entirely content living a quiet, invisible life of obscurity.

Every single time his mother spoke of her, she would wear a deeply complex expression and murmur, ‘A pitiful child who was born into the wrong cradle.’

‘The Imperial Prince appears to be growing rather bored. Why don’t we toss a small toy inside to keep him entertained?’

‘D-Do as the Marquis desires.’

Having uttered those words, Remina buried her face right back down toward the floor. The Marquis gave a satisfied nod and barked a quiet command to a knight standing at his flank. The knight, a loyal pawn of the Marquis, vanished for a brief moment before returning with an object cradled in his arms.

The moment the surrounding nobles identified the true nature of that object, their faces drained of color, turning a ghostly, asymmetric white. Among them were those who hadn’t managed to steel their hearts in time.

‘Gasp.’

The Marquis slowly turned his gaze toward the noble who had let out the sound. The aristocrat trembled violently, desperately slapping a hand over his own mouth to stifle his terror.

‘Well, such lapses in composure can happen, I suppose.’

Shrugging his massive shoulders, the Marquis let out a childish, mocking chuckle.

Creak.

A small hatch serving as a door on the ceiling of the cage swung open, and his mother’s severed head tumbled through the opening, landing heavily on the floor.

Even as he stared directly at it, his heart remained dead silent. He was already drowning in the absolute lowest depths of despair, so there was no reason to break down further, and he refused to grant the Marquis the satisfaction of witnessing his ruin.

Still, the thought of leaving his mother’s head to rest on the filthy, freezing metal floor tore at his conscience. After a brief moment of hesitation, he reached out with both hands, scooped up the severed head, and cradled it tightly against his chest, curling his body into a ball in the furthest corner of the cage. All the while, a detached thought drifted through his mind: A human head is remarkably heavy.

The remaining nobles either watched his profound misfortune with glints of sick amusement or stared blankly with faces completely bleached of emotion. And as for Girdan…

‘How profoundly boring.’

Clicking his tongue in disappointment as his amusement fizzled out, the Marquis aggressively urged Remina forward.

‘They appear to be virtually eradicated. Why don’t we bring this tedious matter to a final conclusion, Your Majesty?’

‘D-Do as the Marquis… desires.’

If he found that pathetic, fading whisper infinitely more pathetic and wretched than his mother’s severed neck, did that mean he had officially lost his mind?

‘By order of Her Imperial Majesty! Do not drag this out, slaughter them all in a single sweep! Impale them with spears and hack them to pieces! Behead them, strip their corpses bare, and hang them from the fortress walls for all to see!’

‘Hooray—!!’

Once, in a lifetime that felt like a dream.

His wet nurse had told him: Even in the deepest valleys of despair, flowers will still bloom. No matter what horrors befall you, you must never lose your hope.

Back then, he had dismissed her words as utter nonsense, refusing to even offer a reply. But now, having been hurled into the absolute abyss, he finally understood. His wet nurse had been entirely right. Within his frozen internal world, a place that had become as dark and freezing as the deepest ocean trench, a single flower had split through the ice and bloomed.

It was a flower forged with petals of roaring flame and a stem of unyielding steel. The more it was trampled beneath iron boots, the more fiercely it raised its head toward the sky. It possessed none of the sorrowful elegance or fragile beauty that a flower should naturally have.

It possessed only a single, absolute meaning.

‘Blessing the birth of the new Emperor, may absolute glory and victory belong to Her Majesty Remina!’

It was vengeance.