Kyrie leaped from her horse and drew her sword. The worn b*stard sword made a heavy tearing sound as it severed an assassin’s neck. Red blood scattered across the white snow.

One. Two. Three.

Kyrie’s swordplay was desperate. She moved like a beast. There was no elegant swordsmanship. She bit, slashed, and kicked. While the imperial knights floundered in confusion, she alone guarded the carriage like an iron wall.

“Who are you bastards!”

Kyrie roared. The assassins didn’t answer. They simply charged like machines. Their swords bore the crest of a fallen kingdom.

Remnants of the rebel army? Or perhaps political enemies within the Empire opposing Isolet’s return? It didn’t matter who they were. Anyone trying to harm Isolet was an enemy.

Clang! Crash!

Kyrie’s shoulder tore open. A blade grazed her thigh. Pain flooded in, but rage and tension suppressed it. Her amber eyes gleamed like a predator’s.

That’s when it happened. An assassin who’d been hiding on the opposite side of the carriage leaped toward the door. The distance from Kyrie—five steps. Too late.

“No!”

Kyrie threw herself forward without thinking. Instead of swinging her sword, she blocked the carriage door with her own body.

Thunk.

A dull, terrible sound.

She vividly felt cold metal pierce through her abdomen. Something hot gushed out. A clump of blood burst from Kyrie’s mouth with a cough.

“…Hah.”

The assassin seemed flustered and tried to pull the blade out. But Kyrie grabbed it with her blood-soaked hand. She gripped it tight enough to expose bone. Refusing to let go.

“Where do you… think you’re going.”

With her remaining hand, she drew a dagger and slashed the assassin’s throat. As the assassin fell, Kyrie’s body collapsed limply as well, and at that moment, the carriage door burst open.

“Kyrie!”

Isolet jumped out. He froze at the scene before him. In a pool spreading red across the white snow, Kyrie lay collapsed. The assassin’s black blade was embedded in her abdomen.

“Ah… ahhh…”

Isolet’s lips trembled violently. The sounds of the world seemed to cut off. He heard neither arrows nor screams. Only Kyrie’s labored breathing tore at his eardrums.

“Your Highness… don’t… come closer. It’s… dangerous…”

Even while coughing up blood, Kyrie tried to push him away. That sight snapped the thread of Isolet’s sanity.

Isolet’s eyes flipped in an instant. Fear transformed into rage, grief into madness—it happened in a flash.

He picked up Kyrie’s fallen sword. That worn, chipped blade.

“I’ll kill them all.”

A low growling voice.

The next moment, Isolet vanished. No—he moved so fast he seemed to disappear. His silver hair traced an arc like a meteor.

Slash. Thud.

It was a massacre. The instincts of a demon swordsman hidden beneath the prince’s shell awakened. He didn’t just cut down the assassins—he butchered them. Arms flew, heads rolled. 

His face and white ceremonial clothes became drenched in blood in an instant.

“Mon… monster…”

One surviving assassin stumbled backward. Isolet approached with an expressionless face and stabbed his heart. No hesitation, no mercy.

When all enemies had fallen, silence returned to the gorge.

Isolet threw down the sword and ran to Kyrie. He knelt in the snow and lifted her into his arms. His hands trembled violently.

“Kyrie. Kyrie! Open your eyes! Don’t close them!”

“Your… Highness…”

Kyrie’s amber eyes were growing dim and unfocused. Through her blurred vision, she saw Isolet’s blood-soaked face. He was crying. That noble prince was bawling like a child.

“Don’t… cry. You look… ugly.”

“Shut up! Who told you to die! Who gave you permission!”

Isolet tore his cloak to stanch the wound. Blood didn’t stop—it flowed between his fingers. He screamed at his own helplessness.

“Please… please, God. Take everything from me, just spare this person…”

His ambition to reclaim the crown, his thirst for revenge—none of it mattered anymore.

Right now, at this moment, Isolet needed only one thing: her breath. Kyrie struggled to raise her hand to wipe the blood from his cheek, but her hand fell without reaching it.

To reassure Isolet, Kyrie forced the biggest smile she could manage and said:

“I’m… glad… Your Highness… is safe.”

With those words, Kyrie’s head dropped limply.

“Kyrie!”

Isolet’s scream became an echo reverberating through the gorge. Snowflakes began falling again from the ashen sky. Cold and indifferent like a white shroud over the two blood-stained figures.

The night was long and viscous.

In a shabby inn room near the border, a burning smell filled the darkness where even candles couldn’t properly light. It smelled like wet firewood burning, or perhaps like flesh burning.

Isolet sat beside the bed.

His silver-white hair was disheveled, soaked with blood and sweat, and his once-noble ceremonial clothes were torn like rags. But he didn’t care about his wretched appearance. His entire world had contracted to the pale woman lying on the bed.

Kyrie was like a ball of fire.

She’d avoided the assassin’s poisoned blade, but the wound was deep. The imperial army medic had given emergency treatment and left, but the fever wouldn’t break. She sweated coldly and made sounds of pain. Weak, delicate moans she would never normally make.

“Ugh… Your Highness…”

Isolet wiped her forehead with a cold, wet cloth. His hand trembled faintly.

“Yes. I’m here. Kyrie.”

He held her hand. A rough hand covered in calluses. A hand that had given up a woman’s life to grip a sword. Isolet pressed his forehead against the back of that hand and held his breath.

Guilt coiled around his neck like a snake.

You did this to her.

Because of your greed to become king.

Because of your selfishness in refusing to let her go.

Isolet’s pupils shook. He didn’t believe in God. He’d thought God died the day the palace burned. But right now, at this moment, he was praying more earnestly than anyone.

Please, just let her live.

If you spare her, I’ll pay any price, even if I have to sell my soul to the devil.

* * *

Near dawn, Kyrie’s condition worsened.

She was having nightmares. Was she wandering through the palace turned to ashes? Or dreaming that Isolet was abandoning her? Her lips trembled as they expelled incomprehensible words.

“No… don’t… don’t go…”

Isolet’s heart sank.

“I’m not going. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Don’t… abandon… me…”

Those words gouged out Isolet’s chest.

She knew. She knew that someday Isolet would leave her for his own sake. Or abandon her for her sake. The fear of abandonment lodged deep in her unconscious flowed out on the fever.

Isolet bit his lip. He tasted bitter blood.

“How could I abandon you. How could I…”

He brushed back Kyrie’s damp hair.

“You’re my breath. No one lives after abandoning their breath.”

But that confession was hollow because it couldn’t reach its listener.

When day broke, he would have to wear the mask of a cold prince again. To save her, he’d have to drive her onto the battlefield of death, and to give her stability, he’d have to become another woman’s husband.

What a terrible contradiction.

Isolet whispered in Kyrie’s ear. A vow that no one would hear, with only darkness as witness.

“I promise. When all this is over… I’ll throw away the crown and return to your side. Then even if you tell me to leave, I won’t go.”

Kyrie’s pained sounds stopped. Her breathing became just a little easier, seemingly in response to his words.

Isolet didn’t release her hand all night. Until dawn broke outside the window and faint light seeped into the room, he stood guard like a statue.

If a shadow couldn’t covet the light, then the light would simply enter the shadow.

Once they crossed the border, the landscape changed like a lie.

The northern snowfield called the land of death was nowhere to be seen—instead, blindingly green meadows and fertile farmland stretched out. The wind carried the scent of flowers and earth. It was the smell of life, but to Kyrie it felt nauseating like rotten perfume.

She sat inside the carriage with her body not yet fully recovered. It was because of Isolet’s insistence.

“Lie down. If your wound opens, I really will tie you up.”

Isolet was firm. He sat in the opposite seat, looking out the window. His expression was cold. Not the eyes of someone returning home, but a general entering enemy territory.

“We’ve arrived.”

The carriage stopped with the driver’s voice.

The capital of the Holy Empire. The place called the Golden City.

The gates were massive.

The marble walls gleamed brilliantly in the sunlight, and the streets overflowed with people dressed in silk. They were splendid, noisy, and above all, arrogant.

In their eyes, Isolet’s party looked utterly shabby. An old, broken carriage. A small escort of guards in blood-stained armor. It was the procession of defeated soldiers.

“Look at that. That’s the prince from the fallen kingdom, right?”

“He looks no different from a beggar.”

“How pitiful that Her Highness the Princess has to marry such a man.”

The people’s murmuring penetrated into the carriage. Kyrie clenched her fists tight. Her face burned with humiliation. She couldn’t bear seeing the lord she served treated this way.

As she tried to rise, Isolet stopped her.

“Stay still.”

“But…”

“A lion doesn’t respond when dogs bark. If you get angry, you’re lowering yourself to their level.”

Isolet propped his chin indifferently.

“Just watch. See how much ugliness hides behind the gold they’re so proud of.”