Ikanel gazed deeply into his son’s eyes, which trembled like a campfire in the wind, then smiled bitterly.

The position of Emperor was such a filthy one. So Lord Callisto’s words were exactly right. From that time on, he truly gave up living as a human being.

“Father. Then, the One Year Calamity… was it really caused by Freia Nigritia?”

Elios could no longer believe anything. He had heard the whole story of the Nigritia ducal family’s rebellion. It was too shocking.

There were claims that Freia Nigritia had made a contract with a demon, but no one had ever actually seen a demon with their own eyes except in stories passed down through generations. Nevertheless, not only the ignorant commoners but even the nobles believed in the curse of the witch Freia. The word “curse” was the only explanation for that enormous natural disaster.

In fact, what decisively led people to accept this as a supernatural phenomenon was how all the disasters miraculously returned to normal when the Saint was born.

“The ‘curse’ was a fabrication spread by the imperial family. When a family wielding enormous power was exterminated, the entire noble society was in turmoil, and with the abnormal phenomena occurring, public sentiment was also shaken. It was to suppress this.”

“…Ah.”

Elios uttered a short exclamation, his gaze unfocused.

‘I see.’

So they dragged an innocent person, moreover someone already dead, from their grave, cut them down, slashed them again and again, and completely crushed them. No, Freia probably wasn’t even buried in a grave. She was charged with treason.

Isn’t the imperial family, the country, politics—don’t they all exist for the people? Initially, they must have been created for everyone to live well together. But what is all this? They killed an innocent person, someone he had loved, making them an invalid before death, and instead of comforting their departed soul, they branded her a witch, making her the target of resentment from hundreds of thousands of people.

Elios found his position as prince, and the imperial throne he had always thought he would one day ascend, utterly horrifying.

After that, Ikanel continued speaking for some time, but Elios could barely hear him. To summarize roughly, it was something like, “At first it was just pinned on her, but it turned out the calamity was really caused by Freia.” Because the Saint herself had said so. To quell the calamity, Freia’s anger needed to be appeased.

Elios just mechanically answered, “Yes, yes,” for a while before standing up. He had been fine while sitting, but as soon as he stood, his body, sick with fever, swayed. Beads of cold sweat formed on Elios’s face. Only then did the Emperor notice that Elios was not well.

When the Emperor asked if he was alright, Elios answered “Yes” once more like a machine and left the room. As he turned his back on his father and opened the door, Elios heard the sound of phlegmy coughing. His father’s throat was not good, and he might have strained it further by talking too much. After leaving his father’s bedroom, Elios arranged for a doctor to examine his father again.

He headed not to his own room but to the imperial library. Various thoughts came to him on the way.

Now he could guess why his father had been so afraid of any connection forming between him and the Saint. His father seemed to have seen his own time as Crown Prince overlapping with him. But Elios knew he was different from his father.

He wasn’t sure about personality or appearance. After all, he didn’t know his father well in his younger days. But one thing he could be certain of: one factor that could significantly affect the outcome was clearly different.

In other words, Elios would never meet the same kind of tragic end as his father and Freia had.

There was no one in the library. It was a space that only the imperial family and nobles with their permission could enter. Besides, Crusis, who practically lived here, would be completely occupied with the task Elios had assigned him, so it seemed unlikely anyone else would come in for a while.

Elios gathered all the books and materials related to the Nigritia family and the One Year Calamity. Suddenly, a sense of urgency washed over him. Too much time had been spent talking with his father. What he had heard there was so shocking that he had forgotten he needed to hurry.

He intended to find out if Snow and Freia were really connected. He wanted to compare how similar the One Year Calamity, which occurred before he was born, was to the current weather anomalies caused by Snow’s emotional outburst.

He still thought it made no sense, but if Snow was indeed Freia as his father suggested, that would mean Freia was also Snow.

Though he considered it highly improbable, it was the only premise he could work with at the moment. Elios started thinking from there. If Freia was Snow, perhaps she also had similar abilities. That is, the empire’s weather might have changed according to Freia’s mood.

Elios laid out all the materials mentioning the Nigritia family.

—The Nigritia lady was in very poor health and never went outside.

It was similar to how Snow had not left Santarium when she was young. Did Freia really have the power to control the weather too? Was that why they kept her hidden inside the house, using poor health as an excuse?

Unlike Snow, who was born a Saint, Freia was just a noble lady, and her ability to affect the weather might not have been considered a sacred power. Even now, when Snow is worshipped as a Saint, her ability to change the weather is kept quiet; in Freia’s case, it would have been even worse.

He searched through more records. The extermination of the Nigritia ducal family was a major event that marked imperial history, so there were relatively detailed documents about it.

The Duke had secretly gathered private soldiers and was preparing to overthrow the imperial family. They planned to start the rebellion with the death of the Crown Prince. But they were caught there. It was quickly revealed that the lady had poisoned the Crown Prince’s cup, but fortunately, the Crown Prince did not drink a lethal amount and his life was saved.

From there, the historical records stated, the tide turned completely in favor of the imperial family. Elios frowned.

It was a lie.

At least, the claim that the lady had poisoned the Crown Prince’s cup was a lie. He had just heard the truth directly from his father, who had been the Crown Prince at that time. History is written by the victors. He knew this, but seeing it firsthand was different. Another wave of skepticism washed over him.

Nevertheless, he continued scanning the records. The imperial family discovered that the ducal family was plotting treason, and the Crown Prince personally led troops to launch a surprise attack on the marquis’s house.

Duke Nigritia and his son, Lord Ian Nigritia, were summarily executed on the spot, and only the lady was dragged to the imperial palace and imprisoned.

In reality, since it was the lady who had directly attempted to assassinate the Crown Prince, she too should have been summarily executed. However, the Crown Prince’s influence was behind her being imprisoned alive. This part was from a confidential document kept only in the imperial library. Elios read that section carefully, tracing it with his finger.

The new nobles argued that the Nigritia lady, the only survivor of the ducal family’s bloodline, should be tortured to root out any remaining accomplices. However, Crown Prince Ikanel Riman Akelan flatly rejected these opinions.

He reasoned that she had only acted on her father’s and brother’s orders, and given her weak position in the family due to her illness, the probability of her knowing important secrets was extremely low. He said t*rture with no efficiency should be avoided. He said this despite being the very person who had nearly died from her poison.

At that time, his father, Ikanel, believed that the Nigritia lady had really poisoned his teacup. Yet he spoke like that; perhaps his father had not fully resolved his feelings for the Nigritia lady even then.

Freia remained imprisoned afterward, and her already weak body became more frail until she could no longer endure and died. It was a miserable and wretched death.

It was obvious that the day the Nigritia ducal family was exterminated had a profound impact on Freia’s emotional state. However, there was no record of any major changes in the empire’s weather that day. Then again, weather events aren’t easily recorded unless they cause disaster-level damage.

There was nothing specifically noted about the weather up until the day before she died in custody. Everything began on the very night she died.

—Lightning struck from a clear sky.

—Birds flying in the sky turned black and fell in droves.

—Worms from underground collectively came to the surface and died.

—Rain red as blood fell.

One after another, events that could only be described as calamities occurred. They were almost identical to recent events. Rain red as blood. Worms dying on the surface.

And finally, a snowstorm that threatened to engulf the entire world.

Elios searched through all kinds of books describing the calamity. Midway through, his vision darkened from fever, and he nearly blacked out momentarily, but he managed to maintain consciousness by shaking his head vigorously. There was no time to collapse now. Judging by how his hands could barely turn the pages, his physical condition seemed quite poor even to himself.

Still, his physical state was not the priority right now. Elios continued investigating the calamity.

Similar. Chillingly similar. No, identical.

The pattern of the One Year Calamity that occurred then was repeating itself exactly now.

His father was convinced that Freia was directly connected to the One Year Calamity in some way. And Snow had said the same thing. To stop the calamity, they needed to appease Freia. In fact, everyone involved was claiming this, and only Elios couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t an easy story to accept.

However, after examining various materials, he too had to reach the same conclusion.

In the end, Freia and Snow are truly connected in some way. It wasn’t just that Snow was acting like Freia due to nightmares or extreme stress; there was definitely some link between the two.