Prologue

The king’s head flew through the air. Blood sprayed diagonally, splattering across the golden throne.

Below the neck, where a clean sword trajectory was drawn, the majestic blue cape crumpled miserably. At the same time, the body wrapped in the cape collapsed with a heavy thud. It was the futile end of a king who had reigned supreme above all.

The golden crown designed to mimic deer antlers fell from the head that dropped slightly later than the body rolling on the floor. Clang. Upon hitting the marble floor, it made a sound too light for its weight, then rolled across the floor in a small circle. Finally, it touched the feet of Roshan Vistius—the ruthless invader who cut down its owner in one stroke, the Crown Prince of the Vistius Empire who turned the Kingdom of Sedas into a sea of flames, and the Commander-in-Chief of this war.

“You wretch!”

The queen, seated right next to the throne where the king once sat, wept tears of blood as she tore at her disheveled hair. An inhuman shriek accompanied by sobs directed at the invader emerged from her delicate body.

The middle-aged queen stepped onto the floor stained with her husband’s blood—her companion for nearly a lifetime—and pulled out an ornate dagger from her bosom. The small dagger, decorated with various precious gems, didn’t appear suitable for harming anyone. However, the blade hidden in its sheath was unexpectedly well-honed, matching the queen’s expression.

After glancing once more at the king’s rolling head, the queen made a reckless challenge. Gripping the dagger with both hands, she charged toward the sword-wielding invader, across the pool of her husband’s blood.

“You slaughtered my sons, and now you’ve killed my husband. I shall take you to Lord Hades myself!”

Her movements, giving everything she had, were quite sharp. However, even so, she was a noble lady who had likely never held a blade in her life, but rather, one who usually held flowers or jewels. Roshan’s knights, standing at a distance from him, knew their master’s skills and temperament well enough not to worry about the woman’s clumsy attack. The woman would inevitably fall to the same sword that had tasted her husband’s blood before she could even reach their master’s striking range.

Yet something strange occurred. Despite the queen’s dagger drawing closer, the invader stood rooted to the spot, not moving an inch. Roshan’s knights only realized something was off about their lord’s condition moments before the queen could extend her arm, and they moved in urgency.

Their master held a long, sharp sword under his cape as black as his hair color. However, the sword’s tip pointed to the floor, and his grip was loosely relaxed. While his expression appeared unchanged and nearly expressionless at first glance, those who served him closely could tell.

That their lord was different from usual. Roshan Vistius’s red eyes flickered with an indescribable light.

“Die!”

Until the moment the queen raised her dagger-wielding hand high, the invader’s gaze had avoided her. He was staring intently at something behind the queen, specifically toward the throne where the king he had just slain had sat.

“Your Highness!”

Frederick of House Ludeta, one of Roshan’s closest aides on the battlefield alongside Knox and Hayden, thrust his spear forward. The sharp tip of the spear, engraved with House Ludeta’s great white shark emblem, pierced through the queen’s side in one swift motion.

Blood flowed after the sound of the spear’s flight. The queen, who had charged forward with such momentum, crumpled without even managing a proper scream, just like her husband. The queen, who fell beside the headless king, barely managed to hold up her head while lying face down. In her blue eyes, as she looked up at the enemy who had trampled her lifelong kingdom and killed all her husband and sons, surged terrible emotions.

“Aah!”

Just as Knox, who had arrived a step behind Frederick and followed Roshan like a zealot, glared down at the queen as if to kill her immediately, it happened. A small figure burst out from behind the throne with a single scream.

“Princess!”

An elderly woman’s voice followed belatedly. However, the young woman who had emerged from hiding behind the throne ran toward the fallen queen without a moment’s hesitation.

“How dare you!”

Knox tightened his grip on his sword. He had dismissed the queen for being a woman, but seeing her get so close to his lord was unacceptable. Once was ignorable, but twice could not be tolerated.

However, upon seeing the woman’s face, Knox involuntarily flinched and stopped his hand. Long, undulating golden hair framing a pale face, blue eyes like a hidden pond in deep forest. Though the woman’s appearance was disheveled with tears and grief as she ran with her silk chiton wrapped around her legs, it didn’t diminish at all. Rather, her inherent melancholic beauty was enhanced by the tragedy she faced.

‘So this is the rumored princess. Indeed….. She’s worthy of being called the cause of this war.’

Knox inwardly marveled. But he couldn’t remain in admiration forever. He bit his lip and collected himself. Then he moved to stop the princess rushing toward the fallen queen before his lord.

However, someone moved before Knox could take a step. It was his lord Roshan, who stood closest to the bleeding queen. He slightly raised his arm to halt his subordinates’ movements.

The knights’ gazes, including Knox’s, turned to their lord. Yet despite the attention focused on him, Roshan’s eyes never left the subject they had fixed upon long ago. He had been steadily watching only the princess since the moment he had swung his sword at the king’s neck.

“Mo, Mother……”

Thanks to the restraint of the invasion leader, Roshan, the princess was able to embrace her mother’s body, though life had not yet fully left it. However, anyone could see that the queen had barely minutes left.

“Please wake up. Mother!”

Despite the princess’s desperate cries, the queen couldn’t properly voice her words. The blood rising on her lips seemed to have completely blocked her throat already. Gurgle. A chilling sound repeatedly came from the queen’s mouth.

“Ye, Yere…… na. My, my poor…… child.”

Though unable to properly speak even her daughter’s name, the queen continued whispering something to the princess. The princess, seemingly able to read her dying mother’s lip movements, kept shaking her head strongly while repeatedly crying out that she hated this. The sight was so pitiful that even Hayden, renowned among Roshan’s inner circle for being cold-blooded especially in such situations, slightly lowered his head.

“You can’t leave like this! I hate being left alone. Please……”

Despite the princess’s desperate pleading, the queen finally breathed her last. Her head and hand fell limply downward, quickly turning bluish. On the queen’s face, unable to properly close her eyes, grief and worry for her remaining daughter were evident.

The princess kept shaking her head and the queen repeatedly. However, the more she did so, the more stark the difference between the dead and the living became.

“Aah!”

Unable to accept the tragedy that had befallen her, the princess let out a piercing scream before beginning to wail. Her small body, holding her mother in her arms, trembled like a rain-soaked young bird.

The invader who had brought death to the king and queen stared blankly at the princess, then reached out his arm as she collapsed over the queen’s body, shuddering. The metal gauntlet stained with blood made a clattering sound as it approached the princess, somehow seeming eerie.

The princess, collapsed over her dead mother, instinctively turned her head slightly upon sensing the approaching shadow. And in that moment, the princess’s deep blue eyes collided with the invader’s bright red ones in mid-air.

However, this lasted only briefly, as changes occurred in the princess as soon as the two locked eyes. Though the clear color of her eyes remained as pure as the blue sky, her pupils hardened like those of the dead, and the vitality that had clearly existed even in despair gradually disappeared.

Roshan’s eyes grew wide as he witnessed the princess’s transformation up close, feeling an inexplicable chill for the first time in his life. He lifted his briefly still hand to the princess’s eyes.

However, before his hand could touch the princess’s eyes, her eyelids closed and the blue light went out. The princess, terrified of the approaching hand, suddenly collapsed to the side with a thud. The invader who had tried to reach for the princess withdrew his hand and straightened his slightly bent waist.

“……Have a physician examine her, then confine her in a suitable place.”

The invader commanded Knox, who stood right behind him, after silently watching the unconscious princess for a moment. The knight flinched momentarily at his lord’s heavily sunken voice but soon bowed while maintaining proper etiquette.

Thus the princess was seized by the empire’s soldiers who had invaded her kingdom and imprisoned in some small guest room, stripped of her original chambers. And that evening, the physician deeply bowed to Roshan, who had taken over the dead king’s bedroom, and reported.

“Your Highness. We can only know for certain once the princess regains consciousness, but……”

“……”

“As you suspected, something has happened to the princess’s eyes. From what I’ve examined so far, it seems she has gone blind.”

“……”

“……It must be due to the severe shock.”

That Yerena Sedas—the princess of the defeated kingdom, now reduced to merely the empire’s spoils of war and prisoner—had gone blind.

* * *

The blind mage lifted his head.

Blood streamed from his burnt eyes, and his broken limbs were grotesquely twisted and stiff.

But the blind mage could tell. Up there, where he could feel the warmth of sunlight, was the radiant princess who had been his lord and lover.

‘Helena…..’

The blind mage called out to the princess while dripping thick malice from the holes where his eyes had been. Then he spat at her feet. The saliva that flowed from his mouth had already turned pitch black from the dead blood inside his body.

‘You too, all your future daughters, all of Sedas’s princesses will be like me. The radiant princess shall be cursed. Going blind and drowning in tears flowing from those eye sockets, ultimately strangling their own necks with their hands.’

Ruthless curses poured forth unstoppably from his blood-filled throat. But the radiant princess silently listened to the curse of one who had once been both her lover and loyal subject.

Was it a trace of guilt for abandoning the most loyal of subjects? Or was it sympathy for a lover who had lost everything because of her and now crawled on the ground like an insect?

Whatever the reason, the radiant princess was confident. That there was no curse she could not overcome, having become a powerful mage by stealing the blind mage’s magical power.

However, the black saliva stuck to the diamond decorating the tip of her white shoe never disappeared, and the radiant princess went blind just before reaching the peak of her brilliance after ascending to the throne she had so desired.

It was the beginning of the curse.

—From Chapter 7 of The Radiant Princess—