It all began with those magic words.

“You must take revenge.”

A thin, trembling hand gripped Kallian’s small hand so tightly it felt as if it would shatter.

It was a hand so dry and withered that it was almost doubtful where such strength could come from.

“It must be you – no one else – who takes revenge.”

Though his body was as thin and withered as a dry branch, only his eyes remained alive and piercing. After speaking these words, he took a deep breath.

His blue eyes burned intensely, like the last flicker of a candle before it was extinguished. In that flame, he had burned away every last remnant of his pride and stubbornness.

“Do you understand, Kallian Elsen?”

“…….”

A name no longer in use was spoken aloud.

Finally, with a long, drawn-out exhalation, the man’s breathing stopped.

“Ah…”

Dylan, who had been at his side the whole time, finally broke down in sobs.

“How… how could this happen? How could this happen…?”

His grief-stricken voice broke from his throat, rough and trembling, like that of a man transitioning from middle age to old age.

“He’s so young… He has so much ahead of him…”

“…….”

“Young Master…….”

Dylan still called Kallian’s father by that title.

To Dylan, who had served Kallian’s family since the time of his grandfather – a man Kallian had never even seen – Kallian’s father was always “Young Master”, no matter what his age, and Kallian himself was forever the “Little Young Master”. 

“This… this can’t be happening…” 

While Dylan, overcome with grief, buried his head next to the lifeless body of Kallian’s father and sobbed, Kallian just stood there, staring silently at the corpse, his expression unchanged. 

And he remained the same even after the body was placed in a coffin and taken away, even after the pitiful excuse of a funeral hardly worthy of the name, and even after he was finally buried in the ground without so much as a proper gravestone. The people around him were sure that the child was in shock.

Only ten years old. A child who had lost his mother and siblings at such a young age, and now his father – it had to be the shock that kept him from shedding a single tear.

“Little young master… no, Lord Kallian.”

Dylan pulled Kallian, who had a blank expression on his face, into a tight embrace and whispered,

“I will help you.”

“…….”

“I will help you take revenge. Even if I have to burn this life to ashes, I will see to it that I live to see the day when you regain your honour from these usurpers.”

Kallian stifled the sigh that threatened to escape.

The child wanted to ask – what did it mean now?

But such words had never been allowed.

From the moment he had been born his father’s son, he had been bound to this revenge.

They said he had been usurped. That their once mighty ducal family, which had stood strong until his grandfather’s time, had been stolen by the treachery of a long-trusted retainer, their name buried in obscurity.

“So you must take revenge.”

It was something his father used to say, almost as a habit. As he spoke those words, he was always looking for people who could help him, gathering those who held a grudge against Ilmos. While he spent his time outside, leaving his family behind, Kallian’s frail mother held him in her thin, bony hands.

Kallian’s father was his grandfather’s youngest son. When his grandfather – his father’s father – was overthrown from the position of Grand Duke, and the legitimate heir was killed along with his other sons…

His grandmother, gnashing her teeth in resentment, fled, carrying his father in her womb with the help of her loyal retainer Dylan and a few subordinates.

Thus his father was born and raised with a deep-seated resentment instilled in him by his grandmother and Dylan.

“The reason we live in such misery is because of Ilmos.”

“Ilmos killed your father and all his brothers.”

After his grandmother died, his father embraced anger and vengeance, accepting it as his destiny. Of course, he wanted to pass it on to his children.

But Kallian – he couldn’t do the same. The hunger he felt at that moment was too overwhelming.

With his father constantly away, his mother’s condition gradually deteriorated. The only one bringing money into the household was Dylan, but because of his age there were few places willing to employ him.

In the meantime, Kallian took any job that would accept a child. Fortunately, he was born strong, so physical labour was not difficult for him. Occasionally, people noticed his strength and asked if he would be interested in training to become a mercenary.

From them, Kallian learned the skills of stabbing, slashing and fighting, while continuing to work. What little money he earned he spent on food and medicine for his frail, emaciated mother.

“Kallian, my good son.”

His mother used to say, looking at him with pity.

With the desperate struggle to survive and the harshness of life, there was no room in Kallian’s heart for hatred of Ilmos to take root. For a child, the exhaustion of relentless work and the heavy responsibility of caring for his dying mother took precedence over everything else.

Revenge and everything else – it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t survive first.

It all came to a head when his younger sibling was born.

“How dare you speak such nonsense, my son?”

For the first time, Kallian dared to defy his father – “Is revenge really more important than the lives of those left behind? What about us, those who must survive?”

It happened the day his sick mother could no longer produce milk, leaving the newborn hungry all day. The baby was so weak from hunger that he couldn’t even cry.

Kallian and Dylan ran around desperately looking for food. They finally managed to find some thin porridge to feed the baby. But the baby remained lifeless and weak.

Unlike Kallian, who was lucky enough to be born strong, his younger sibling was frail, as if the slightest breeze could take his life. Their mother, too, had suffered greatly in childbirth and was in a fragile state.

How could he not question his father in such a situation?

When he heard Kallian’s words, his father trembled with rage.

“How could you forget what happened to your grandfather? How could you forget why we live in such misery?”

“Father.”

“It’s all because of Ilmos, those damned bastards. Don’t you understand?”

“I… “

“If you have forgotten, I will make you remember.”

With those words, his father raised a cane and struck Kallian.

Dylan watched in pain, but couldn’t bring himself to intervene. As someone who had witnessed the usurpation first hand, no one held a deeper grudge against Ilmos than he.

***

Not long after, his younger sibling died.

The child might have survived. If only Kallian had been able to go out and work.

But the siege imposed by the Grand Duke and his wife was too tight.

After receiving information that the descendants of Grand Duke Elisen were hiding in the area, they began searching every house with small children.

One by one, the children in the slums were slaughtered. Sometimes they even put poison in the wells.

Because the people of that place were so insignificant in the eyes of the world, their suffering remained largely unknown.

Every morning, the wails of grieving mothers echoed through the neighbourhood as they cradled their lifeless babies.

“My baby… my baby…”

Kallian frantically hid his younger sibling.

He stayed locked inside the house, constantly on guard against the assassins who could come at any moment. Whenever soldiers stormed in, he would hastily hide with the baby.

Through it all, his father never returned home.

His sickly mother, already weak from malnutrition, could no longer produce milk. And in the end, his hidden sibling died, starving and unable to endure.

“…….”

As the tiny life in his arms breathed its last, Kallian felt neither anger nor grief, only an overwhelming emptiness.

He gently closed the baby’s eyes and held the cold body close.

A few days later, a small coffin was returned to his arms.

It was small enough to fit in young Kallian’s arms. It was also so light that he kept wondering if his dead sibling was really inside.

Meanwhile, her father raged like a madman. To him, the child’s death was nothing more than fuel for his burning hatred of Ilmos.

After the baby’s death, her mother’s illness worsened beyond recovery. She began to lose consciousness more frequently, sometimes not waking at all.

“My good son.”

“…….”

“Kallian…….”

For a long time, Kallian did not go out to work or learn new skills. Instead, he stayed by his mother’s side.

Countless nights passed when he would suddenly wake from sleep, gripped by fear, afraid that the moment he opened his eyes, his mother would no longer be there.

But when she finally died, he felt nothing.

The only thought that crossed his mind was a faint sense of relief – that he no longer had to live in constant fear.

But with that relief came a crushing guilt – the realisation that he had felt relieved by the death of his own mother. This feeling cut young Kallian’s heart like a sharp blade.

There was nothing left.

In the end, Kallian wanted to ask his mother one last question – why had she married his father?

Why had she chosen to marry such a man and endure such a miserable life?

But the question he never asked was buried with her cold coffin.

Now only his father remained.

“…….”

“Ah… Young Master. Young Master….”

Even as he listened to Dylan’s occasional, heartbreaking sobs, Kallian was exhausted.

His body, weakened by malnutrition, lacked the strength to hold on to any will or determination.

Maybe it would be better if everything just stopped – including himself. Maybe if he were gone, it would all be over.

This was no longer just despair – an overwhelming resignation clung to him like an invisible hand pulling him down.

That was why he wanted to tell Dylan and the others – it was all over, so why not just stop?

What was the point of all this?

Wouldn’t it be better for everyone to go their separate ways and find their own way to survive?

But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“Please have faith in us, Lord Kallian.”

As the words were spoken, the weight of the eyes on him became unbearably heavy.

“We will help you.

“Please believe in us. Even after three generations, our grudge remains unchanged”.

Everyone expected me to take revenge.

They desperately wanted me to achieve the revenge that my grandfather and father had failed to achieve.

They wanted me to be the one to pay the price for the blood of their loved ones – and for the blood of my own family.

“My family were all killed, too.

“You are all we have left, Lord Kallian.

“Please fulfil our desire for revenge, Lord Kallian.”

The words felt suffocating, but there was no escape.

The long-standing curse of revenge inevitably broke away from his father and settled on Kallian, as if it had always been meant to.

When his father finally died, the useless pride and stubborn self-esteem he had clung to for so long became Kallian’s.

A burden was placed on young Kallian that he could not shake off.

An invisible yoke – one that no one else could see, but from which he could never free himself.