Chapter 1

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Translator: Harry Potta

Chapter: 1

Chapter Title: Prologue

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A night of drizzling rain.

The emperor set foot in the prison, thick with damp humidity.

Medea, who had been gazing up at the black sky through a window just a handspan wide, turned around.

Her gaunt frame, like bare tree branches, showed through her shabby dress.

Her face was pallid, her eyes sunken deep. She resembled a corpse managing only the faintest breaths.

The emperor frowned. Even so, she was a woman with whom he had shared half a lifetime.

A woman who had remained steadfast even amid grueling expeditions, now reduced to this pitiful state.

"Jason."

A hollow echo reverberated through the air. The knight standing behind the emperor bristled in outrage.

"How dare a criminal utter His Majesty's name—!"

"Let her be. Before she dies, do you think I can't grant her that much mercy?"

Medea turned her glazed gaze away, as if oblivious to their exchange.

"I did everything for you."

She looked upon the emperor.

"Princess of Baldina, please call me Jason."

That tender greeting lingered vividly in her mind.

He was the man Medea had loved her entire life.

She had thought she would give anything to have him—and she had.

She stole her kingdom's treasure and offered it to him.

She sacrificed her youth to sever the evil dragon's neck.

She yielded her homeland's soldiers to place him upon the throne.

Yet the return she received was bitter betrayal.

Her brother was slain, her country fell.

Her husband wed another woman.

"You cast me aside and welcomed the saintess as your empress."

She had learned of her husband's marriage while cradling her swollen belly with their second child inside.

"It was all because of the oracle, I tell you. In its stead, did I not name your son Lian as crown prince?"

And Lian was dead.

Half a year after she had sent him alone to the imperial palace, if only to secure legitimacy for her child.

"That was when I knew. Next, it would be Lea and me."

They say the hunting hound is boiled once the hunt is done.

She had grasped that truth far too late.

"A new oracle has come. A revelation that you and your daughter will bring ruin upon this land!"

The emperor rebuked her in turn.

"Medea. Rather than burn you at the stake as the oracle decreed, out of our old bond, I grant you a gentle death. And yet all you hold is resentment."

The man's brazenness—driving her to her end and demanding gratitude—no longer surprised her.

"Oracle or whatever else, it makes no difference."

Medea spat her scorn.

"Your Majesty always stood one step back, watching idly. When I stole the national treasure, when I beheaded the evil dragon to topple the late emperor, when our child died—always, the fault was never yours."

The gentle man with his hazy, radiant smile was no more.

Only the vile wretch, blinded by ambition, who betrayed her and cast her into the mire, remained.

"Get it over with quickly. I have no desire to witness more of this ugliness."

She lifted her chin proudly. The knight uncorked the vial hanging at his waist.

'Lea will survive. Thank goodness.'

Three days prior, evading the emperor's eyes, Medea had entrusted her young daughter to her cousin, with whom she shared a particularly close bond.

She sold her entire fortune, converting it to jewels. At the very least, it would sustain Lea until adulthood.

Having exhausted every coin and connection to secure her escape, Medea herself had been captured here—but she harbored no regrets.

"...The children are regrettable. But with you there, they won't be lonely. How fortunate."

Children?

Medea's face froze like ice in an instant.

It was akin to a mother's primal instinct sensing her child's peril.

"Lea... not Lea."

At that moment, strands of pink hair fluttered behind the knights. Medea went rigid.

"I'm sorry, Medea."

"Birna, why are you here...!"

Her cousin should have been crossing the border by now—why was she here?

Medea's body began to tremble with shock.

"I couldn't betray His Majesty. I'm sorry, Medea. But this... this can't be right."

Birna leaned delicately against the emperor's shoulder. Her pale hand trailed softly down his arm.

Thud.

Birna extended a small bundle toward Medea, who staggered and collapsed.

It was the pouch adorned with delicate floral patterns—the one she had pinned to her chest after prying Lea from her grasp. Now it was soaked dark red with blood.

"Aaaah!"

Unable even to clutch the bloodied pouch, Medea wailed, her fingers quivering helplessly.

Lea, my little Lea!

How terrified she must have been. How she must have resented her mother.

"The children will understand me as well."

The emperor's expression was utterly merciless—he bore no resemblance to a father bereft of his young.

"Jason, you beast worse than any animal!"

Her rage-filled eyes glared at the emperor.

"Even beasts don't harm their own offspring!"

The clank of armor soon eclipsed her vision.

"What insolence toward His Majesty—! Silence the criminal! Your Majesty, let us depart."

The emperor offered a faint smile and final words to the wife who had weathered a lifetime of trials with him.

"Medea, farewell. I shall remember your deeds deeply."

He did not forget to leave an endearment for Birna as he turned away.

"The night grows chill—Lady Claudio, do not linger overlong."

"For Your Majesty to show such tender concern leaves this lady deeply moved."

As Jason departed, Birna's saccharine smile vanished. A cold sneer settled on her face as she gazed down at Medea.

"How does it feel, having given everything—what a reward, eh, Medea?"

"What?"

"Ahaha! Strutting about as some grand princess—look at you now. Baldina lies in ruins, your brother torn to shreds by magic beasts. All because of a witless fool like you!"

Medea could not comprehend.

Birna was her cousin, her family—why speak such words? Why revel in this?

Why betray me? Why surrender my child?

"No, I shouldn't blame you. Thanks to you, we've come this far."

Why...?

"Baldina's loyalists, even your brother—they weren't pushovers. Without your idiocy, we would have failed."

"We...?"

Medea, gasping for breath, slowly turned her head.

Her eyes, dawning full realization, darkened profoundly.

"...It was your family who urged me to steal the Sage's Eye for Jason. Was that when it began?"

"Wrong. Far, far earlier than that. You never suspected a thing, did you, poor Dea?"

Birna cackled in delight.

"Your entire life—every moment—lay within our family's grasp."

"..."

"Thanks to you, my father will become Baldina's king, and I shall be this empire's empress."

How she longed to scream it at that innocent face. You were nothing but a puppet from the start.

"..."

Memories flashed before her like a montage.

And then she understood.

Rebellion. Ruin. Death.

At every turn of Medea's tragedy, her uncle's family had been there.

"Jason knew as well. He's been with us all along."

"..."

"You were merely a pawn on our chessboard. Do you see now?"

Her green eyes sank into fathomless depths.

An anguished moan escaped silently between her bitten lips.

"...Jason."

Rather than spewing blood at her beloved's betrayal, Medea whispered his name.

To remember.

Every lie he had uttered, every sacrifice she had made.

A single drop of dark red tear traced down Medea's cheek.

A chill prickled the knights, who straightened their spines.

Yet Birna made no effort to conceal her glee at her cousin's torment.

"Don't grieve too much. Soon you'll reunite with your cherished family. Aren't you happy?"

"Birna, you as well."

Her cracked lips curled slowly upward. Crimson pupils fixed upon Birna.

"I will not forget. You, your family—all of House Claudio. I will never forget."

Beneath that blood-wept glare hung a sneer. Birna finally recoiled.

"Wh-what...?"

Then fury overtook her.

What was there to fear from a discarded puppet now?

"What are you waiting for? Pour it in!"

She snapped at the knight.

The knight gripped Medea's jaw with brute force, clutching the black vial.

"Hold her! Don't let her budge!"

The knights seized her thrashing limbs with iron grips. They poured the vial's poison haphazardly into her mouth.

The toxin splashed wildly. Black droplets mingled with crimson blood, trickling grotesquely over her pale skin.

Even in the moment she shut her eyes, Medea repeated the vow.

The sin of my folly, blind to the beasts among men—I repay with death.

But your primal sins...

Through lifetimes uncounted, I shall return to demand reckoning.

Be it as vermin reborn, or across eternities endured.

Those who heed fate, those blessed by gods—none shall evade me.

Not until my path gleams bright, woven from your blood,

shall I ever cease.