Episode 60
A slender finger slowly traced Kierne’s cheek.
Brushing the frozen man’s face, she spoke faintly in a fading voice.
“Nothing at all…”
Kierne couldn’t move.
As if someone had bound him with a spell.
His rigid face gradually softened, then a sharp laugh burst forth.
A laugh so cutting it could hold a blade.
Kierne, laughing like a madman, flashed a wide smile.
A beautiful smile, like a flower laced with poison.
“Then die in front of me.”
He seized the hand touching his face.
Gripping the bony, fleshless fingers, he roared.
“Even if you die, die in front of me!”
Shouting as if vomiting blood, Kierne trembled.
In the sweltering room, heated by fireplace and brazier, sweat pouring down,
he shook alone, as if banished to a blizzard-swept winter plain.
“Please…”
A powerless plea in a tiny voice.
“Please… don’t say you’re leaving.”
Karha slowly backed away.
He couldn’t listen anymore.
No—he didn’t want to.
His heart throbbed with unbearable pain.
Mother wanted to leave?
Abandon them?
Father, Belzeon, Ishuel—all of them?
His head felt like it would explode.
The pain spun his vision, and he didn’t know what to do.
When he came to, he was deep in the black forest.
Eerie cries echoed in the gloomy darkness.
Barely regaining his senses at the monsters’ howls, Karha gasped.
Cold chills ran through his sweat-soaked body.
Goosebumps prickled, and he shuddered uncontrollably.
After panting for a while to steady his breath, Karha parted his lips.
“Why…”
An incomprehensible question slipped out.
But no answer came.
Only the monsters’ sinister sounds slowly crept closer.
Karha recalled the scene.
Kierne, rubbing his face messily against Mother’s hand, begging—he looked infinitely weak.
No one would think him the arrogant ruler of the black forest.
Yet Mother remained unshaken.
She simply watched Kierne, who alternated between shouting madly, pleading, raging, and begging.
Her gaze was calm.
Endlessly serene despite his frenzy.
Karha had always been unusually perceptive.
He understood instinctively before logic or reason.
Those were eyes that would never waver.
Mother had made up her mind.
No matter what they did—even if every Basilian man took his life before her…
Mother would not change her decision and would leave the Basilians.
“Ugh.”
His vision spun.
He collapsed to the dirt and vomited violently.
He expelled everything he’d eaten all day, then stomach acid until nothing remained.
Tears welled from the intense retching.
Wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he suddenly looked down.
The flowers he had picked lay there.
Entangled in slimy vomit, rotten leaves, and black soil—disgustingly ruined.
The flowers were no longer fragrant or fresh.
‘I can’t give Mother her gift.’
That was his first thought.
Then another followed.
‘Why does that matter?’
Perhaps Mother never wanted gifts.
She might have only pretended to smile at forced affection…
It was just speculation.
If she truly disliked the gifts,
his sharp senses would have noticed long ago.
But Karha couldn’t trust himself.
Blinded by one-sided love for Mother, he might have misread.
While she lived in cold, colorless reality,
he might have been lost in rosy delusions alone.
“…….”
Staring blankly at the ruined flowers, Karha squeezed his eyes shut and backed away.
Leaning against a fallen tree with a broken trunk, he tried to calm his raging heart and thoughts.
But he soon had to open his eyes again.
The black forest was no place for quiet peace.
Growls—the monsters’ cries drew nearer.
Karha’s instincts sent endless signals.
Where, what, how many, how they approached.
Warnings prickled his skin relentlessly.
He frowned.
The thickening stench of monsters stung his nose.
Slowly rising, he drew his swords.
Holding them in both hands, he stared into the darkness.
Then he realized.
What he wanted now wasn’t quiet peace.
The black forest could give him what he needed most.
Karha didn’t cry.
Instead, he smiled.
His sharp fangs gleamed between grinning lips.
His small body shot forward.
The late countess abandoning the Basilians.
Chesha had vaguely imagined a beautiful tragedy.
A sick, fragile countess parting from husband and children—a sad but lovely tale.
But Karha’s words, and Kierne’s reaction today, were anything but normal.
“If I did nothing wrong…”
“Why did you abandon me?”
At Chesha’s words, recalling some past,
Kierne’s already fragile mind crumbled like a cookie.
Thanks to that, in front of countless holy knights, priests, and the inquisitor,
he nearly unleashed black magic flamboyantly inside the temple.
“Anyway, that’s how it is.”
Karha, who had detonated a verbal bomb just as Belzeon had blown up the count’s residence, shrugged as if it were nothing.
“So let’s take our sister and go home.”
He unilaterally concluded with refreshing decisiveness.
Belzeon, who had been silent in stunned silence, slowly countered.
“…But the inquisitor.”
“If Father’s revealed as a black mage, it’s over in a flash?”
Utterly correct.
While Belzeon was at a loss for words, Ishuel picked up Karha’s thread.
“Even if the Basilian house is destroyed, we can at least get our sister out safely.”
Ishuel persuaded Belzeon in a gentle voice.
“Brother, how long will you keep running? You saw it earlier, right? Father’s really going to lose it. He’s already not normal.”
“Exactly. Father can never succeed anyway. And I didn’t want to say this, but honestly, since she’s not even human, it’s way harder. Guaranteed failure. My gut says so.”
The twins chattered enthusiastically.
Listening to their tag-team persuasion, Chesha felt something off.
‘Wait.’
She raised one hand brightly.
The chattering twins shut their mouths.
“What’s not human?”
Pointing out the phrase that had caught her ear, panic flashed across all three brothers’ faces.
“…Ah.”
Karha, who had blundered, sweated coldly.
“Babies wouldn’t know, huh.”
Under the glares of the other two, he rolled his eyes, then suddenly turned brazen.
“But shouldn’t the baby know now? She’s a Basilian.”
She had never agreed to that.
But curiosity won, so she waited without rebuttal.
Belzeon sighed and nodded his chin.
Just tell her.
“Actually, our mother…”
Karha shrugged and spilled the secret.
“She’s a fairy.”
“…?”
Chesha blinked.
And just before fully grasping what she’d heard—
**BOOM!**
A massive explosion rocked the temple.
