Even in his grandfather’s time, when the imperial family had cowered before the Duke’s family, they no longer yielded to the ducal house. They gradually pushed the Duke’s family aside. They brought in nobles from the provinces to form their own power base and appointed new talent. At the center of all these changes were the damned Emperor and his brilliant son, Crown Prince Ikanel Riman Akelan.

He often compared his son Ian Nigritia with the Crown Prince. The two were about the same age and were thoroughly hostile to each other due to their family influences. Ian was just as intelligent as Ikanel and equally quick to discern matters. But Ian was too soft. Just look at how he coddled his useless sister. The Duke was always displeased with Ian’s gentle nature. He wished the boy would be more cold-hearted.

Recently, however, he had no time to worry about such relatively trivial matters. The Duke of Nigritia had been increasingly unable to sleep. The movements of the Emperor and Crown Prince were suspicious.

The Crown Prince was personally traveling throughout the country, drawing nobles who had been living in seclusion back into politics. The Emperor was granting new titles to these returning nobles and assigning them duties.

It was more extensive and blatant than before. It was as if they were shouting that they weren’t afraid of the pressure from the House of Nigritia. Among the newly titled nobles, not a single one was allied with Nigritia.

It was clear they intended to completely twist the flow of power. Two of the three baronial houses that had maintained the closest relationships with the House of Nigritia had turned toward the Emperor. When the two barons encountered the Duke at the imperial palace, they would subtly avoid eye contact and turn their backs.

And finally, by quite a coincidental opportunity, the Duke realized that the Emperor and Crown Prince were planning to purge the ducal house.

Extermination.

The imperial family intended to exterminate the ducal house. They planned to dry up its seeds so that it could never rise again.

The enormous taxes the ducal house had diverted, the countless people who had died without even a scream for the sake of the family’s security, the deception of the imperial family by forcing their daughters as empresses, the obvious lies told to the Emperor. The secret elimination of princes born to concubines rather than duchesses-turned-empresses. Numerous crimes of the ducal house were being secretly investigated and compiled under the imperial family’s direction. Not only that. The imperial family was quietly building up military forces without anyone knowing. It was obvious who they were targeting.

Though the ducal house had lost its former glory, it was still a family that enjoyed immense power. Numerous houses still followed the ducal house, and it was one of the houses with the strongest voice in the noble council. Thus, the Duke had to make a choice. Whether to be quietly exterminated as things stood. Or to take the risk of gathering nobles to overthrow the imperial family.

In the former case, the ducal house would be exterminated, and many household members including himself, Freia, and Ian would lose their lives. In the latter case, if successful, Nigritia would become the imperial family. If it failed, they would be exterminated just as in the former case.

The Duke was engulfed in deep anguish. And after a very long time, he reached a conclusion. He summoned his son Ian Nigritia to his room.

♣ ♣ ♣

Even as Freia was roughly seized by two imperial knights and dragged out to kneel, she couldn’t grasp what was happening. She spotted Ikanel standing behind the group of knights, wearing armor. Ah, so he really was the Crown Prince. Freia thought dazedly, surrounded by a sense of unreality. Her head, which had been struck hard with the flat of a sword as she was dragged out, was buzzing.

Freia placed her palm on her forehead. Sticky blood was flowing. Cough, cough, she couldn’t stop coughing. It was the first time in her life her head had been cracked open, but she had no time to worry about such things. Freia blankly stared at Ikanel. Ikanel didn’t even glance in the direction where Freia was kneeling.

It was then. Clang! The sound of swords clashing rang out. Freia, startled back to her senses, turned her head toward the sound. And froze white.

Callisto, the Count and commander of the Crown Prince’s direct Astal Knights, was confronting her brother Ian Nigritia. Ian’s clothes were torn by a sword and soaked red.

“Huk, heok”, Ian breathed roughly. He had fought well, but inevitably gave ground to Count Callisto, the empire’s finest knight.

“Bro, brother, brother!”

Freia shouted with difficulty, her voice barely coming out. Her head hurt too much. Freia’s body was as fragile as thin ice, receiving greater impact from small shocks than others. The cracked head might be a more serious injury than she thought.

Though it was a small voice, Ian heard his sister’s cry with uncanny precision. He hesitated. Count Callisto didn’t miss that moment and pressed Ian further. Flustered, Ian stepped back and tripped over a corpse, falling down. Freia swallowed her breath in terror. That corpse was the Duke of Nigritia, her and Ian’s father.

Count Callisto placed his sword against Ian’s neck. Crown Prince Ikanel, who had been quietly watching the scene, raised one hand. Knights swarmed around Ian. The knights surrounded Ian and pointed their swords at his neck. Count Callisto stepped back and stood beside Ikanel.

Ikanel had Count Callisto read the Emperor’s decree. Count Callisto, with an expressionless face, calmly read the decree written on silk.

In Freia’s dizzy consciousness, provocative words like treason, extermination, criminal occasionally pierced through. But Freia was already overwhelmed just trying to forcibly hold onto her fading consciousness. There was no sense of reality at all. What did they mean by treason, by extermination?

‘Am I dreaming right now? Is that father lying there, that person with his eyes rolled back white, really my father?’

‘No, brother.’

‘Don’t.’

Brother!

Eventually, Count Callisto read the last sentence of the decree.

“…Therefore, all families involved in the rebellion of the House of Nigritia are to be exterminated, and summary execution is authorized for the Duke of Nigritia and his son, who were at the center of it.”

Execution. Summary execution.

“Ah”

Ian, surrounded by sword blades, quietly closed his eyes. From the moment he had heard about the rebellion from his father, he had probably thought that things would eventually come to this. The House of Nigritia had committed too many sins, and he thought that someday the family would pay for its crimes. He knew that future wasn’t far off. Only his pitiful sister, whose only crime was being born into a sinful family, weighed on his mind, and he had tried to endure somehow for her sake.

But it had come to this in the end.

Ian already sensed the end. His life would soon come to an end. He only hoped that Freia would survive, even if she became a slave. The final victor is the one who survives. Freia. Ian gazed at Freia with a regretful face. Freia was pleading to the Crown Prince with a trembling voice.

“I-Ikanel, Your Highness, noble Crown Prince, please spare my brother. Kill me, kill me instead. Please spare my brother. Please…”

The eyes of Ikanel, who stood behind the knights wearing gleaming armor while feigning indifference, wavered for just a moment. With the delicate voice that had whispered love to him, Freia was now abjectly groveling to save her brother. She eventually began to rub her palms together in supplication.

Ikanel turned his head away from Freia completely. He intended not to look at her. But just because he couldn’t see her didn’t mean he couldn’t hear Freia’s sobbing voice.

“Your Highness, Crown Prince, please spare my brother.”

Ikanel didn’t budge. She had to save Ian, her brother, somehow. Freia banged her head on the floor and cried out.

“Use me as a slave. My life, my heart, my-my body. I’ll give you anything!”

“Kill the traitor Ian Nigritia.”

Ikanel said.

Surrounded by dozens of sharp swords, Ian momentarily had a blank expression. A streak of red blood trickled down his neat forehead.

“Brother!”

Freia, roughly held by two knights, screamed. Freia’s heart pounded, “ku-gung, ku-gung”, with tension that felt like it might burst.

From the tips of the many swords aimed at Ian, the blood of the ducal house members who had been sacrificed earlier dripped down. Ian’s expression was neither calm nor fearful. For just a moment, the red tips of dozens of spears and swords were reflected in his eyes, green like a midsummer forest. The next moment, he looked at his beloved sister.

‘Ah, Freia.’

His sister bore many wounds, large and small, on her weak body. Ian’s face contorted as if he might burst into tears at any moment. But it happened so briefly that neither the soldiers surrounding him, nor the knights, nor even Freia noticed.

Instead of showing his tears, he wore a faint smile. The last bit of color drained from Freia’s face. A gentle smile. The one Freia loved most. Seeing it, she instinctively knew.

‘Brother is going to die here.’

“No, no! Brother!”

Freia twisted her body and kicked to escape from the knights. It was a wonder where such strength came from in that thin body that had been sickly all her life. But it was not enough to shake off knights who had trained their bodies their entire lives.

‘Freia.’

Ian spoke without making a sound, only with his lips. The blood that had flowed from his forehead entered his dry lips. There was no time. Even the final moment was not allowed to the siblings. Ian smiled as warmly as he could. It would be his last appearance in Freia’s memory.

‘You must survive.’

Tears rolled down from the ends of his brightly curved eyes. He captured his sister’s image in his green eyes one last time. He looked up at the sky once. Behind the gray smoke, the blue sky faintly shone through. He closed his eyes.

‘Ah. The sky was this deep blue and beautiful.’

“Brother, brother!” Freia’s screams could be heard. And soon.

“No!”

Freia cried out desperately as if her last breath.

Thud. With his head facing upward and his eyes closed in that very posture, Young Lord Ian Nigritia’s knees buckled. And finally, he fell forward.

At the same time, Freia’s screams abruptly stopped.