Chapter 1 · The Captive Princess

1 March, Year 319 of the Barentis Calendar.

The most radiant morning of Isadel Lacent’s life—First Imperial Princess of the Rastain Empire—had dawned.

Distinguished guests from across the continent had come to the imperial palace to bless the princess upon her coming of age.

Beneath a massive crystal chandelier, nobles clinked glasses, and the orchestra played a melody of blessing.

Everything was perfect.

Until God trampled her world without mercy.

At the sudden intrusion of the coup forces, the banquet hall was stained with blood in an instant.

Emperor Aderus, her father, had his head severed with a single stroke, and Isadel’s five younger half-siblings also breathed their last one after another.

The celebration honoring the princess’s nineteenth birthday turned into a slaughterhouse in an instant.

Only one person survived the banquet hall that had become hell.

The guest of honor that day, and the last remaining bloodline of the fallen Lacent imperial family.

It was Isadel Lacent.

* * *

The western tower of the imperial palace.

In the room of the imprisoned princess, only a desolate silence lingered.

Isadel Lacent leaned her head against the cold wall and stared out the window with unfocused eyes.

Her gray-blue eyes, once dazzlingly bright, had sunk dim and murky like a flame that had gone out.

Perhaps she had died with her family last night.

What remained here now was only a shell barely drawing breath; her soul had already passed away.

Knock, knock.

The door opened with a cautious knock.

Isadel’s maid Roshe entered cautiously carrying a tray.

“Your Highness.”

Roshe called cautiously, but Isadel showed no response.

The maid, as if accustomed to it, set the tray of porridge down on the table.

“You haven’t taken a single spoonful since yesterday… You need to eat at least a little to regain your strength…”

Roshe’s voice trembled faintly.

Her anxious gaze lingered on the princess, who did not stir at all.

“Your Highness.”

“……”

“Your Highness?”

After several calls, Isadel’s head turned slowly.

The familiar maid’s figure reflected in her empty eyes.

“Roshe…….”

“Yes, Your Highness. Are you feeling a little more lucid?”

“……Who launched the coup?”

Roshe looked at Isadel as if momentarily struck speechless.

“Pardon……?”

“Answer me, Roshe.”

Isadel opened her mouth with difficulty, her voice choked.

“Was it Marquis Valdema, that snake?”

“Your Highness…….”

“Or… could it be that bastard Admiral Pryer?”

“I—well, that is…….”

“Answer me!”

Isadel cried out.

“Who on earth launched the coup?!”

The voice that scraped out of her throat was terribly hoarse.

But the princess’s eyes, cloudy until moments ago, now gleamed with a vivid madness.

After hesitating for a long while, Roshe finally answered.

“E—Erhan, Your Highness.”

“……Who, did you say?”

“Lord Erhan Karhilen…….”

Despite the answer Roshe had forced out, Isadel could not say a word.

The moment she heard the name she thought she had forgotten, a splitting ringing spread through her head.

Isadel looked at Roshe with disbelief in her eyes.

“Erhan……? Not the Erhan I know……?”

“Yes…….”

“No, that can’t be……. How could that bastard have launched a coup…….”

Her voice trembled pitifully.

Erhan Karhilen.

He was a lowly Hwa-in (Flower People) who had been sold from a slave market in childhood and was treated like an animal even by the palace attendants.

She had heard that several years ago, while fleeing the imperial palace, he had been caught by the royal guard and killed.

Not only was that bastard alive, but he had launched a coup…….

How on earth.

By what means.

“Then surely not…….”

An ominous premonition flashed through her mind.

“Yes…… They say Lord Erhan will ascend the throne as emperor next week.”

Isadel froze in place as if her breath had stopped.

The words she had just heard would not leave her ears.

Erhan becoming emperor.

That lowly bastard, a man who had been nothing but a slave, daring to rise to the throne of Rastain.

At that moment, something in her mind snapped.

Crash!

The tray Isadel had hurled rolled across the floor.

“That’s impossible.”

“Your Highness…….”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Your Highness…….”

Isadel shook her head violently.

“It can’t be. That bastard Erhan as emperor…… Does that make any sense?”

She could not believe it at all.

No, she did not want to believe it.

Crash! Shatter!

Isadel began throwing everything in sight.

A lamp struck the wall and shattered to pieces, and the objects on the table spilled one after another onto the floor.

Roshe tried desperately to stop her, but Isadel did not stop.

When there was nothing left to throw, she clutched her head with both hands and wailed.

“No, no, no!!!”

This could not possibly be reality.

No, it must not be reality.

The Lacent family, through whose veins flowed the noble blood of the imperial house, and this Rastain Empire, the mightiest nation in the history of the continent.

The fact that they had been usurped by a Hwa-in worse than a beast was utterly unbelievable.

It was then.

The door opened with a creaking sound.

Someone stepped into the room, crushing the glass shards scattered across the floor underfoot.

Tap. Tap.

Isadel breathed raggedly and clenched both hands tightly.

After hesitating for a long while, she slowly turned her head.

“……You.”

The man she had thought dead appeared before her after several years.

Dazzling blond hair.

The unfamiliar man’s frame and tall, straight build were fully revealed beneath his uniform.

Not a single trace remained that could remind her of his childhood appearance.

But there was one thing that had remained stubbornly unchanged.

Limitlessly transparent blue eyes.

Yet like a sea hiding an abyss beneath its surface, a color all the more ominous because its depth could not be fathomed.

They were the very eyes she had loathed all her life.

Eyes she had never forgotten for even a moment—so clear that they seemed, instead, unclean.

A leisurely smile curved the man’s lips.

“It’s been a long time, Isadel Lacent.”

* * *

Isadel looked up at him, unable even to breathe.

Erhan Karhilen, who should have been buried in a grave, stood before her wearing imperial robes.

She was confused as to whether this was truly the Erhan she had known, or whether she was seeing an illusion.

Lips holding a metallic taste of triumph slowly curved and parted.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The light joke brushed through the air.

“……You were alive?”

At her barely squeezed-out question, Erhan tilted his head playfully.

“As you can see.”

Isadel could not speak for a while.

His composed smile was eerily alien.

The one standing before her was no longer the boy she had known.

The coward who burst into tears at the slightest thing and could not even meet her eyes properly.

Even when he had fled this place, he had been nothing but a worthless, insignificant boy.

And now he had returned before her as the slaughterer who had usurped the throne of Rastain.

“You…….”

Isadel’s lips trembled finely.

“Is it true that you launched the coup?”

“Yes. I did.”

The answer, given without hesitation, made her breath catch.

Isadel’s eyes, frozen with shock, slowly stained with anger.

“How could you…… How dare the likes of you…….”

“Bastard, you say.”

Erhan’s mouth twisted slowly.

“Isn’t that too rude a form of address for the man who will become emperor next week?”

“Emperor?”

Isadel’s brow contorted as if in disgust.

“A filthy Hwa-in like you…… A lowborn creature like you, emperor?”

A sudden dizziness washed over her.

Isadel barely supported herself by gripping the edge of the dresser.

Erhan looked down at the staggering Isadel and tilted his head.

“Why? Is there some reason I cannot become emperor?”

His low, sunken voice brushed her ear.

Isadel glared at him fiercely and twisted her lips upward.

“A runaway slave.”

One word.

“A Hwa-in not even fit to be treated like an animal…….”

Another word.

“Do you truly think the likes of you can become emperor?”

The sharpened words flew like arrows and embedded themselves.

“I swear, even if the world ends, that will never happen.”

But Erhan did not blink an eye.

Far from being shaken by her venomous words, he merely looked down at Isadel with a leisurely smile.

Then, slowly, he reached out his hand.

His slender fingers slowly brushed back Isadel’s hair.

Perhaps from a scratch by a glass shard, a drop of blood slowly welled from the cut on her forehead.

Isadel trembled.

Just the heat of that utterly lowly Hwa-in touching her body made her flesh feel as if it were burning.

“What are you doing?”

Isadel tried to strike his hand away, but Erhan was a step faster and caught her wrist.

“Let go. Can’t you let go?”

Isadel twisted her body and struggled desperately.

But the more fiercely she resisted, the stronger the grip crushing her wrist became.

Erhan held her fast as she rejected him with her whole body, and looked down at her.

Their breaths tangled at a distance of less than a handspan.

“You say I cannot become emperor even if the world ends?”

As if stroking a cherished doll, Erhan carefully smoothed back Isadel’s hair.

“Then watch closely from now on, Isadel. Watch how the life you took for granted, the world you believed was yours, all crumble beneath my feet.”

Erhan took in Isadel’s face, contorted with humiliation, slowly and carefully.

Then he offered a smile that was utterly cruel and beautiful.

“Welcome to hell, my captive princess.”