In the dungeons of the Palace of Administration, an old man was being held captive—the same man who had been a war criminal nineteen years prior and had repeated the same misdeeds just recently.
The old man’s tongue had been burned and his eyes gouged out. These measures were taken to prevent him from utilizing his special ability.
In immense pain, his mouth foaming with blood, the man’s ears caught the sound of quiet, familiar footsteps.
“You seem to be in a lot of pain, Marquis of Lagarea.”
The voice belonged to King Joachim of Fanoren.
“…ngh…ngh…”
As the man struggled, the chains attached to his hands and feet jangled.
“Are you surprised I’m here?”
“…ugh, gghh…!”
The sound of footfalls approached him. Joachim’s cool, woody scent hung faintly in the rotting dungeon.
“Oh, how you’ve fallen, Marquis of Lagarea. For so many years you took pride in your power as a relative of the king, and now here you are chained up in a wretched place like this.”
Joachim’s dispassionate voice echoed through the dungeon. The Marquis of Lagarea was the only criminal currently imprisoned there.
But the dimly lit dungeon, illuminated only by the occasional candle, was filled with the smell of blood and filth from the many criminals who must have met their end there since the founding of Fanoren.
That smell was now wafting from the old criminal before him.
It was the scent of death.
“Oh. You’re going to die soon, aren’t you?”
“…gghh!”
His wrinkled hands, chained and trembling, clawed at the stone wall.
“I have come to tell you a story from the past before you die.”
The Marquis of Lagarea’s wrinkled face was now that of a nightmare. There was no trace left of his gentlemanly appearance. His mouth, where his tongue had been burned, was swollen and blackened. The bandages over his eyes were also stained with blood.
Joachim stared quietly at the man and murmured, “Bruno Henckel. You are a traitor who betrayed this country in revenge for the loss of my mother to my father.”
“…Gahhhh…!”
“You never needed to betray your country, but you were too foolish to realize that.”
Joachim’s voice echoed quietly through the dungeon.
Bruno Henckel, the former Marquis of Lagarea, recalled the violent emotions of his past.
The memory of the whore who had abandoned Bruno as if their love had never existed and became the king’s concubine with a pleased smile on her face.
“You once slept with my mother, didn’t you? You hated my mother for abandoning everything you had, pretending that those memories had never even existed. Isn’t that right?”
“Ghh, ughhh!”
The memory of his grudge came back to the Marquis of Lagarea in the darkness filled with his immense pain. But the next moment, Joachim’s calm voice tore that darkness to shreds.
“You could not forgive my mother’s choice, could you? You said she was a power-hungry whore. Did you truly resent the woman you had once loved? You are certainly half brothers with my father. You have much in common, even in your presumptions.”
Lagarea’s swollen face turned to the ground.
“But you knew that. My mother was the simple daughter of a minor nobleman. Did you truly think that such a woman would have such wild ambitions as to become the concubine of the king who had just made a Francourian princess his queen?”
With empty eye sockets, Lagarea desperately followed Joachim’s voice. His groans seemed to ask him for an explanation.
“You should have questioned it then. You should have trusted my mother to the very end.”
“…gh.”
“You’ve been by my side all these years and you didn’t see a thing. Did you not wonder why Gravis and I look nothing alike? …Oh, you can’t see anymore. Then imagine it.”
The Marquis of Lagarea could no longer see. But the image of Joachim, whom he had served for many years, was still vivid in his mind’s eye.
King Joachim’s hair had begun to turn gray in recent years. But the original light brown hair and eyes of the son of the woman he loathed and loved to the point of madness were…
“You yourself would have recognized my hair and the color of my eyes better than anyone…every day. In the mirror.”
The criminal began to tremble.
Consumed with jealousy, his mind refused to look at it objectively.
But King Joachim’s hair and the color of his eyes…
“…Ughhh…ugahhhh…!”
Lagarea shrieked wordlessly.
No, no, nononono.
“Like I said, you betrayed this country when there was no need for revenge.”
At that moment, the man once known as the Marquis of Lagarea screamed hard enough to split the corners of his mouth open. He coughed up so much blood that the striking coppery smell filled the air.
“The same blood you now spit has been staining the throne for nineteen years already.” Joachim continued to speak in his calm voice.
“…What is the meaning of this, brother?”
Joachim looked behind him with a gentle expression. There stood Gravis, whom Joachim had summoned himself.
“Gravis, you’ve arrived.”
“Brother…please answer me. What do you mean by what you just said?”
Joachim turned away and looked at the old man behind the bars of his cell, coughing up blood in agony.
“Exactly what you think. My mother, Brigitte, had secretly slept with this man. Our father knew that she was not a virgin, but he still forcefully took her and made her his concubine.”
“But Lady Brigitte…”
“Yes, she adored our father. Do you know why?”
Gravis felt his throat tighten.
“You know what this man can do. Our father also possessed the power to manipulate memories. Coincidentally, it’s proof he’s related to our father. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Gravis was shocked. He had never known about his father’s ability. That was just how estranged he had been from his father, King George.
“How…? How did you learn of this, Brother?”
“Because my mother found her own diary. Mother’s wet nurse had hidden away her diary from before she lost her memory.”
“…!”
“Mother did not die of illness. After discovering her diary and regaining the memories that our father had stolen from her, she chose to commit suicide in despair…after confessing everything to me, that is.”
Joachim gave a small smile.
“Before she hanged herself, she looked at me and said: ‘How glad I am the blood of that devil does not flow through your veins, my dearest son.’”
Gravis’s face paled.
So Joachim’s real father was…
“Mother despaired at having betrayed this man, even though she did it only because she had been robbed of her memories. She turned to me and said, ‘You must avenge him. You have that man’s blood in you—you must succeed the throne.’ In the end, however, my mother failed in her attempt on her life and became bedridden, unable to speak. Six months later, she died without ever regaining consciousness.”
The old beast’s screams echoed from inside his cell.
“That’s what I meant when I called the man a fool. There was no need to betray his country—his vengeance would have been accomplished by my ascension to the throne. He could have replaced Fanoren blood with his own, even if only for a generation.”
Gravis’s fists shook with the fury welling up from the depths of his heart.
Could what his brother was telling him really be true? Or was it all a fantasy of the late concubine?
Then, before he knew it, his brother’s eyes were fixed behind him.
“…Isn’t that so, Queen Dowager Adele? That’s why a strict woman such as yourself wanted Gravis to take the throne by any means necessary, even if it meant bending the rules of first-born succession. Because he was the legitimate heir, the only one carrying our father’s blood… Is that not so?”
Gravis turned to look behind him with a start. Why hadn’t he noticed her presence?
There stood Adele, Gravis’s mother and the late King George’s wife. Like Gravis, she must have been summoned by Joachim.
“Mother…”
Her chilling beauty bore a striking resemblance to Gravis’s. But now, perhaps because she had seen the wretched state of the criminal chained in the dungeon, her face was pitifully pale and she appeared very old.