TRLN 02

Chapter 02

Hemel Batyrenium. His last memory was hazy.

Iella. After being struck by an arrow fired by that damned queen, he had barely managed to escape the royal palace and collapsed in a secluded nearby alley. If he could receive treatment from a military physician, he might survive for the moment—but once the bleeding had begun, without a coagulant, his life was as good as over.

Go. Go and let them know that I simply… disappeared.

After sending away the aide who had stayed by his side to the very end, Hemel clenched his teeth and pulled out the embedded arrow. Blood surged violently through the gaping wound. The uniform he wore had long since been soaked through with his own fresh blood.

Hemel clenched the hand he had braced against the ground. Grains of sand slipped in, then fell helplessly through the gaps between his fingers.

Blood spilled by a malicious attack never stops flowing. It was a curse that would never fade, laid upon the immaculate imperial line of the Trahaput Empire—the bloodline of Batyrenium.

His mind had long since grown foggy, and he could not move even a finger. His heavy eyelids were too burdensome to lift, so he simply closed his eyes. Even breathing was painful.

There was no point in thinking back now. That damned Kingdom of Rosetheia had to be destroyed, and there was the perfect justification—along with His Majesty the Emperor’s command.

And so, even with death right before him, Hemel Batyrenium felt no regret. Not for his hatred, nor for any of his thoughts or actions.

Thus, he met his end alone on foreign soil.
—or so he believed.

By the time he had grown accustomed to the distant, tormenting pain, by the time he felt sick of this stubborn life that refused to end despite all the blood he had lost, astonishingly, all sensation left him.

As the crushing weight on his entire body vanished, Hemel Batyrenium clutched his throbbing head and barely managed to open his eyes. A dim, pre-dawn sky greeted him.

“You finally woke up?”

The sky?

Before he could even process the shock of seeing the sky again, a woman who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere spoke to him.

Only after the time it took to blink three times did Hemel begin to sense how strange this situation was.

First, he was shocked that a life that should already have ended still clung to him. Second, by the bizarre appearance of the woman before him. Third, by the fact that the royal palace in front of his eyes was completely different from the one he had seen just before collapsing.

No—looking again, there were tall streetlamps, high buildings that could never exist in the kingdom, and even the ground, which had been dirt before he lost consciousness, was now stone. The more he examined it, the stranger it all seemed.

“How does it feel to come back from death?”

As the woman tilted her head slightly, her long hair fell down over Hemel. He briefly considered putting his mask back on—the one he had been clutching through the pain—but decided against it. The woman had already seen his face anyway.

“I came here every single day for fifteen years, and you finally woke up!”

“Who are you?”

At his sharp question, the woman smiled gently.

“No need to be on guard. I’m on your side.”

Crouching down, she leaned against the wall and lowered herself to meet the eye level of Hemel, whose mind was still sluggish as he struggled to wake. Meeting her bloodshot eyes, he tried to make sense of the situation, which was filled with nothing but oddities.

“I asked who you are.”

“Your lifesaver?”

“Nonsense.”

“It’s true. Look at this.”

The woman suddenly held out her hand to Hemel.

“Can’t you see? Even the wrinkles on my palm are completely gone.”

Her emaciated hand bore neither palm lines nor even fingerprints. Is she even human? The thought crossed his mind as he looked at the woman, who radiated a gloomy aura.

“I exhausted every last bit of strength I had left to save His Highness the Crown Prince, and this is what I ended up like.”

“You saved me? How?”

At his low, restrained question, the woman brushed the dirt from the shoulder of his tattered uniform and whispered.

“Ever heard of a witch?”

It was a story passed down in the Kingdom of Rosetheia for quite some time—that witches existed.

Back when it was considered natural for each noble house to awaken its special abilities, before those powers vanished, there had been a princess who reached adulthood without awakening any ability at all. Pointed at and scorned by her family, she disappeared—only to awaken an immense ancient power later and begin cursing Rosetheia.

She was the sole blemish within the glittering royal palace of Rosetheia.

To witness the complete eradication of the Rosetheian bloodline that had abused her, she willingly became a witch, converting most of her power into lifespan. Over tens of thousands of years, appearing and disappearing at will, rumors and ghost stories spread about her.

“So you’ve heard of it after all?”

Hemel coldly slapped away the woman’s hand and let out a dry laugh. Only now did he understand her earlier words—that they were on the same side.

If the woman before him truly was the witch of legend, then they shared the same object of hatred.

“Not surprised?”

“Should I be?”

Considering the cruelty of the royal family members who had driven his mother to her death, Hemel had always thought that the rumors about the witch could very well be true.

“Then why save me? Why not use the little power you have left to settle your own grudge?”

“Because I needed you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. As you know, abilities are useless against those of the same bloodline. So I was looking for someone who could kill the surviving bloodline—and just then, you awakened the Batyrenium ability. A human awakening an ability after all this time… has it been a thousand years? Ten thousand?”

Having lived alone for so many ages, the witch tilted her head back and forth, counting on her fingers as her memory faltered. Her hair, longer than her own body, swayed along with the motion.

“I honestly thought those powers had completely disappeared. I was surprised.”

There had once been a time when each house possessed its own unique ability—so long ago it was practically myth. Hemel accepted even such an outlandish claim without protest.

He had lived an absurd life from birth—born between a kingdom’s maid and an emperor who stood in opposition to that very kingdom—so there was little he could not accept.

“So what you’re saying is: this is fifteen years in the future, I’ve awakened an ancient ability that should no longer exist, and you, a witch, saved me?”

With a changed expression, Hemel brushed the dust from himself and stood. The witch remained crouched, nodding as she looked up at him.

“Then what happened to the war? That damned bloodline—are all of Rosetheia dead?”

“That’s exactly what I wanted to tell you!”

The witch grinned widely, clasping her hands together with a sharp clap. Her pitch-black eyes gleamed through the darkness of dawn.

“The boy… well, he’s alive, but he’ll pay a painful price. As for the girl, I have no idea where she went. She must have run away, so she’s definitely alive—but it wouldn’t do for her to be hiding somewhere, living happily, now would it?”

Hemel silently watched the witch’s twisted smile. Even after all those years, the hatred born from the atrocities of the Rosetheian royal family had not faded. That hatred guided the two of them toward the same goal.

“Why me?”

“Hm?”

“There are countless people who want to hunt down and kill Rosetheia. So why save me? Why throw away your own life, scraping together every last bit of power you had left?”

“Well… I like certainty.”

The witch staggered slightly as she rose to her feet. Aside from her dark, funeral-like clothes, her long hair, and her sharply pointed nails, no one would be able to tell she was a witch.

“So many, so very many people have sworn to kill Rosetheia. But every single one of them was foolish. None of them even managed to truly try before dying.”

Her black eyes grew darker as she recalled the past. A faint smile crossed her face as she gazed through a history so distant it was beyond imagining.

“Do you want to know why you never realized you were born with the Batyrenium family’s ability?”

Suddenly, the witch stepped back two paces. The elegance in the gesture with which she pointed precisely at Hemel’s head showed that, even after all those ages, she had not forgotten royal etiquette.

Boom!

A compressed bubble of air shot from her fingertips. It flew straight at Hemel, then burst apart, powerful enough to leave a mark on the building’s outer wall—yet it did him no harm at all.

“Well?”

As if she had expected this, the witch smiled—brightly, like one who foresees the long-awaited death finally unfolding.

“The Batyrenium ability nullifies the abilities of other bloodlines. Until now, it was useless because there were no ability-users left.”

At her calm explanation, Hemel tilted his head slightly—a habit he had when thinking deeply.

The witch of legend had only awakened her power after leaving the palace. Then why, of all people, had she saved him?

Meeting her gaze, Hemel spoke.

“Are you afraid? Afraid that your surviving descendants might awaken their abilities later, like you did—and with that power, revive Rosetheia?”

“Well… to some extent.”

The witch readily admitted his guess.

“That’s why I’m on your side. I even looked into your story. For fifteen years, until time realigned and you woke up. You’ve got quite a tale yourself, Your Highness.”

Slowly approaching, the witch scratched the back of Hemel’s neck with the tip of her sharp nail and whispered:

“There’s a woman with that nauseating blood still alive. Kill her.”

His eyes, like fragments torn from the dawn sky itself, gleamed with chilling light.