“Are you alright, Lumiere?”

Lumiere slowly raised her head to look at her lover who asked with tenderness.

Today was an important day, so Karl had also slipped out of the palace with difficulty.

Even though it would only be for a few hours while the performance was held, she felt simply delighted to see her lover outside for once.

‘Looking at him like this, he does seem quite similar……’

She briefly traced the elderly gentleman’s face she had seen earlier in her lover’s face.

The shape of the eyes and eyebrows, and the bridge of their nose seemed similar.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Are you not okay? Perhaps you feel unwell……”

Lumiere, who had been smiling brightly, said,

“Your grandfather came.”

At her sudden words, Karl furrowed his brow.

Then, tilting his head strangely, he laughed as if he’d heard something absurd.

“You’re joking, right?”

“Not at all. He asked me to tell you that he’ll be watching from afar and leaving quietly. We met just up ahead.”

“……Really?”

When Lumiere nodded, Karl briefly turned toward the audience seats.

Indeed, among dozens of box seats, he could see an elderly gentleman covering his face with a hat in one of them.

A strange light entered Karl’s eyes.

Soon he burst into laughter and rubbed his forehead.

“This is unbelievable. Well, that’s just like him.”

“What is?”

Karl looked at the distant elderly gentleman with affectionate eyes.

“I can never dare to guess what’s in his mind.”

Looking at Karl’s expression as he gazed at the box seat, Lumiere could immediately tell that he loved his grandfather very much.

Though their meeting had been brief, she thought she understood why Karl loved his grandfather.

His strong and tender aspects resembled Karl exactly.

Lumiere leaned her head on his shoulder and whispered.

“Do you think I could meet him again with you someday? I was so surprised that I couldn’t properly greet him.”

“It won’t be as easy as you think. He’s more mischievous than he looks.”

“I’ll have to prepare myself thoroughly then.”

The two locked eyes and interlocked their fingers.

Unlike the tender atmosphere between the two, the actors on stage were screaming desperately.

With the portrayal of rising flames, dozens of actors sang a song like a scream.

They ran urgently across the stage in torn clothes and bare feet, showing their desperation.

“Save me, please save me!”

“It’s hot, someone please save us!”

“Please, please! Let us out of here! Please, at least my wife, at least my child!”

The actors’ desperate screams dominated the theater.

Amid this, Geril and Schultz, holding blood-soaked swords high, shouted:

“Kill them all! So there can be no witnesses, so no one will know the truth of this day! Kill them!”

Thus ended Act 3, Truth Burned in Fire, and Act 4, The Story of the Survivors, began.

A boy with a face disfigured by fire crawls out from under the mansion reduced to ashes and sings.

With his face distorted by makeup, his face smashed by burns, the boy shouted:

“I will, surely, survive and reveal the burned truth!”

The boy collapses, and his helper hurriedly takes him to the palace.

On the darkened stage like a grave, in the most secluded corner, a girl digs her way up from the ground.

The girl looks around her mansion reduced to ashes while crying.

“You’re no longer Buchanan now. Survive, Philia. Live and wait for us. I’ll go out first, then bring Mother and Father out. Remember, Philia.”

A hand in rags emerges from a narrow secret passage and reaches toward the mansion turned to ashes.

“You are no longer Buchanan. Remember. If someone asks your name, you must never say Buchanan.”

A song murmured like sobbing echoed faintly in the spine-chilling silence.

“Ah, Rudels, my brother. Why aren’t you coming out? You told me to wait. You told me to escape first. Rudels, my brother. Why, don’t you come. Why! Ah, Father, Mother!”

The girl who collapsed to the floor wails.

The solemn music encouraged the girl’s crying.

Then, crying began to break out from the previously quiet audience.

“……My sister died like that?”

“My lovely grandmother…… so, so miserably!”

The families of the nobles who died in that tragedy still remained in the capital.

Some of them now faced the truth here.

The voices sobbing with the girl grew louder.

“……I will have revenge. Someday I will surely reveal the truth of this day to the world! Surely!”

The voice of the girl, no longer innocent, echoed desperately throughout the theater.

The curtain falls, and shortly after, Philia Buchanan, now grown up, appears.

Born with a new name, she watched from afar Laedro Stings who had become king.

Since they couldn’t completely reveal the whole truth about the two, the opera added some fictional elements.

Lumiere Lashantia’s name was changed to something completely different, and her occupation was changed from painter to singer.

This was something Luka had suggested for Lumiere’s sake first.

‘I don’t know what changes might occur afterward, but considering potential dangers, I think it would be better not to reveal your identity here, Lumiere.’

This opera would not change everything.

Nor would it restore her lost status as a lady.

Lumiere gratefully accepted the suggestion for fictionalization.

Afterward, in the opera, the two were set to meet again by chance when she entered the palace as an opera singer.

That was when she regained her memories.

The girl and boy who recognized each other embraced and thanked each other for their survival.

They burst into tears, saying they would be each other’s strength, that they had survived until the end for this purpose.

Meanwhile, the eldest son of Tartien who became suspicious approaches her and poisons her to uncover her secret.

When the actor playing ‘Landers’ took out a yellow flower from his br*ast, gasps could be heard from several places in the audience.

They must be people who knew about this.

Strangling Philia who refused to yield to the poison, he threatens her to reveal what she’s hiding.

The girl barely escapes from Landers with the king’s help.

Then she begins to tell people about that day by creating a song.

“His cold hand with the prosthesis strangled my neck! I did not reveal my noble truth to that wicked man. Fake bloodline, fake manners, fake face! Everything about him is a lie!”

The girl’s song spreads throughout Karien, and Tartien’s illegitimate child appears to help her reveal their weaknesses.

The blood of foreigners who deceived the country and the king, hiding in society!

Their coffers filled with all sorts of corruption!

Even their wickedness in treating people like their slaves!

Tartien, who tried to kill his own illegitimate child, eventually dies at the hands of the illegitimate child he tried to kill.

People who learned the truth banish ‘Tartien,’ and the Tartien family, wandering the desert, starves to death miserably.

It was a very shabby and miserable ending befitting the demise of villains.

At the end of that arduous process of revenge, the king finally fails to recover his weakened body and dies of illness.

“My old friend, respected and beloved last owner of Buchanan.”

“Your Majesty, you cannot leave like this. We still have happiness to enjoy. The journey is not over.”

Holding the crying Philia’s hand, the king with the distorted face smiles.

“In life, I was an illegitimate king, a powerless king hated by all. But in death, I will become a king who regained honor. Neither I nor my parents ever committed fraud or caused the death of a friend. My story, which no one would listen to, is revealed because of you. Thank you, my friend. My little flame.”

The king, seeming to have no further regrets, kissed the back of her hand that held his, then slowly closed his eyes.

Thud—

The king’s hand falls, and Philia, just as he had kissed her, kisses the back of his hand in the same way and begins to sing.

A song commemorating the king whom she loved, cherished, and pitied.

“Rest in peace, my king.

May your death be peaceful.

May we not have lived in vain……”

Another voice overlaps with hers.

Those who helped the two’s revenge come out one by one and sing with her.

“Ah!

Be eternal.

Farewell.

Rejoice, for we have finally revived the truth we thought dead.

Your death will be recorded not as a weak defeat, but as a victory shining like the sun.”

Philia stepped up to a higher place, and more people gathered below her.

About a dozen actors who had been sacrificed in the fire gathered around Philia as if resurrected and sang as one.

“Remember!

The moment we were alive!

Remember!

The truth we reclaimed!

We will survive until the end and illuminate the darkness with the candle of truth!”

The surroundings gradually darkened, and Philia, standing alone, turned toward the audience, smiled, and sang a solo.

“I rejoice and sing that the moment has come when this ugly truth you have seen today finally spreads widely throughout the world.”

The curtain falls.

The opera ended.