Chapter 109

What He Could Not Let Go

Ferda stood there in stunned silence, unable to utter a single word.

Erembalt Rosnova.

The head of House Rosnova.

Ferda's father.

And the very source of the hatred that had driven him to become a mage.

"What are your orders?" Luri asked.

The answer should have been simple.

Just send him away.

Ferda had been cast out of House Rosnova. He no longer bore that family name. They were strangers now.

Whatever the man had to say, there was no reason to listen. Hearing him would only dredge up painful emotions that should have remained buried.

Under normal circumstances, the decision would have been obvious.

"Show him in. I'll prepare myself."

"Understood."

Ferda chose to meet him.

Even if it proved to be a mistake, there was something he had to confirm.

Whether that hatred still lived within him.

"...What do you intend to do?"

Luri couldn't help but ask. The request felt unusual.

"I have a favor to ask."

***

After spending about twenty minutes preparing himself, Ferda walked down the corridor toward the reception room.

Once he stepped through that door, the man who had driven him from his home would be waiting.

His feet felt impossibly heavy.

"Luri."

He spoke to the woman standing behind him instead.

"Yes?"

"I'm going in alone."

"As you wish."

"And make sure that whatever happens inside remains unknown to everyone—including you."

A favor.

Far heavier than an order.

That was precisely why Luri became even more uneasy.

"...Understood."

Silently, she erected a barrier that sealed off the room.

Feeling the space become completely isolated, Ferda stepped inside.

There he is.

The man who had treated him with relentless cruelty before throwing him away.

The man to whom Ferda had returned even greater wounds than the ones he himself had suffered.

The moment the man saw him, his face lit up.

"Oh! My son! My son has come!"

No.

It was only an act.

Even a child could tell how forced his behavior was.

Perhaps that was why it felt all the more pathetic.

And strangely...

Ferda was relieved.

Instead of reigniting his hatred, that pitiful display calmed him far more than he ever expected.

"Welcome, Lord Rosnova."

Maintaining perfect etiquette, Ferda drew a clear line between them.

Erembalt's expression stiffened.

Whatever he had hoped for, it certainly hadn't been this cold reception.

Taking a seat across from him, Ferda quietly watched his face.

Avoiding his gaze, Erembalt pushed a small jar across the table.

"It's honey from the bees raised in House Rosnova's territory. I thought... Your Highness the Regent would know..."

"Yes. House Rosnova's honey is excellent."

"Y-Yes."

"But I don't care for it anymore."

"Ah... That's understandable. You'll soon be nineteen, so your tastes must have changed—"

"No."

Ferda's eyes turned icy.

"I almost died after eating it once."

They bored straight into Erembalt.

"Your second son, Huren Rosnova, poured it down my throat until it blocked my airway completely."

The color drained from Erembalt's face.

"If I hadn't shoved my fingers down my throat and dug it out myself, I would have died."

"Ever since then, the mere sight of a jar of this honey makes me tremble."

"I... I didn't..."

He looked ready to claim he hadn't known.

"Five servants witnessed what happened that day."

"It seems none of them ever reported it to the head of the house."

"I'm... sorry. I have no excuse. If you wish to punish someone, I'll do it myself. No... if that isn't enough, I'll bring Huren here personally and—"

"No."

"That's enough."

"Let's get to the point."

Leaning back in his chair, Ferda lost all interest in pointless pleasantries.

"...Recently, Big Sister paid House Rosnova a visit."

Big Sister.

The nickname of Erdes Roton—a title of respect and, at the same time, a mocking epithet.

"She went there to ask about me."

"Yes. She questioned us about Your Highness."

"And you told her everything."

"N-No. Not everything..."

"Don't lie to me, Lord Rosnova."

Ferda's voice dropped.

"Erdes already knows that I practice side magic."

"Anyone who uses side magic faces extermination at minimum."

"The fact that House Rosnova still stands means you denied my existence while telling her everything there was to know."

Erembalt flinched violently.

His dry lips moved soundlessly.

"Am I wrong?"

Ferda pressed him.

Cold sweat streamed down Erembalt's face as he lowered his head.

"...No."

"You're right."

I already knew.

Ever since the day he had been cast out.

The man had never considered Ferda his son.

I already knew that.

The past clawed its way back into his mind.

His chest tightened.

A splitting headache crushed his skull.

"So you traveled all this way just to confess your sins?"

Ferda still couldn't understand why the man had come.

"...No."

"There's one thing I never told you."

"I came to tell you that."

"Go on."

"...Your Highness..."

"Do you remember Anna Rosnova?"

What?

Those few words alone were enough to shake Ferda.

Seeing the change in his expression, Erembalt quickly corrected himself.

"No... what I mean is..."

"Do you truly remember your mother, Anna Rosnova?"

Even his attempt to rephrase the question failed to suppress Ferda's irritation.

"Of course I remember."

"She was my mother."

"And she was your wife."

"...She should have been."

"She had to be..."

Erembalt forced the words out.

"But... all of it feels so unfamiliar to me."

His words drove deep into Ferda's heart.

It felt like the cruelest joke imaginable.

Anger welled up inside him.

At the same time, he wanted to laugh.

He felt as though he were losing his mind.

Forcing himself to remain rational, Ferda answered.

"My mother, Anna Rosnova, had golden hair and blue eyes."

"You used to praise her as a woman far too beautiful for someone like you."

Every memory flooded back in vivid detail.

Sharing meals.

Laughing together.

Holding hands.

Whispering words of love.

He remembered every moment as clearly as yesterday.

He even remembered how those displays had made his skin crawl.

How could the man who had lived through those moments claim not to remember them?

"The only thing I remember with absolute certainty..."

Erembalt said.

Or rather, he spat the words out.

To Ferda, they sounded no different from being spat upon.

"...is a wandering beggar walking in while carrying a child."

"I've thought about it."

"There was never any reason for me to accept that woman."

"Yes, I had lost my wife..."

"But I already had two sons."

"I wasn't lonely."

"It wasn't until after she died that I finally remembered that."

"So..."

"So what exactly are you trying to say?"

Looking at Ferda with fear written across his face, Erembalt answered.

"I wanted to tell you..."

"...that you and I were never related by blood in the first place."

"So please..."

He lowered his head.

"...sever all ties with House Rosnova."

Ferda couldn't speak.

Words formed in his mind, yet none would come.

Everything inside him was chaos.

Why...?

Why do I have to hear this?

He had believed he could bury the past and move on.

Yet this man had come all the way here only to rip open wounds that had finally begun to heal.

He had let everything go.

So why...

Why drag it all back before him?

Why...

Of all people...

Why was the man he hated more than anyone hurting him once again?

Ferda felt his consciousness beginning to fade.

His emotions threatened to consume him.

Slowly, he closed his eyes.

He tried to calm his heart.

Instead...

He felt something else stirring.

Something moving through the circuits within him.

Then came a sweet whisper.

Ferda recognized that voice.

It was the same one he had heard when Luri had been in danger.

Kill him.

Kill him.

Last time you left him an empty shell.

This time, strangle him to death.

Make him suffer as much as he made you suffer.

Why are you hesitating?

Killing someone is only difficult the first time.

The second time... it's easy, isn't it?

Those words jolted Ferda back to his senses.

The circuits within his chest were spinning.

They whirled so violently that it felt as though he might reach the Sixth Circle at any moment.

But that was not all.

When Ferda opened his eyes again, he witnessed something astonishing.

A pair of black arms stretched out behind the bewildered Erembalt Rosnova.

Could Erembalt use shadow magic as well?

Of course not.

Those shadows were limbs created by Ferda’s will.

They hovered right before Erembalt’s neck, poised to seize it at any moment.

Ferda quickly withdrew them.

Suppressing the emotions spinning wildly inside him, he spoke in a rational voice.

“Return home, Lord Rosnova.”

Even so, an ominous aura radiated from him.

Erembalt hurriedly rose from his seat.

Just before stepping through the door, he paused and looked back.

“Thank you for your mercy, Your Highness the Regent.”

With those words, he left.

Had he squeezed out the last remnants of paternal affection?

Or had he merely groveled in hopes of reducing the possibility of future retaliation?

Ferda had no way of knowing.

His mind was in complete disarray.

“Lord Ferda.”

As Erembalt left, Luri entered the room.

“What manner of conversation could have taken place for him to leave with such an expression...?”

Luri could not finish her sentence.

Ferda sat with his head lowered, staring blankly into empty space.

It was an expression she had never seen on him before.

“Luri.”

“Yes?”

“I want to... visit my mother.”

“Understood. Tell me where she is, and I will take you there immediately.”

“We need to go to House Rosnova.”

“Yes.”

The voice that emerged from his painfully parted lips was unbearably heavy.

“May I ask you for one favor?”

“Please tell me.”

Ferda spoke in a trembling voice.

***

Once they stepped onto the terrace, Luri wrapped Ferda tightly in her arms.

It felt less like she was carrying luggage and more like an embrace.

She shot through the sky like a comet, arriving before the front gates of the Rosnova estate in an instant.

“Where is the grave?”

Ferda did not answer.

Instead, he turned and began walking elsewhere.

He was not heading toward the Rosnova estate.

Luri had naturally assumed the grave would be somewhere on the estate grounds, but she silently followed him.

Ferda said nothing as he continued walking.

Luri knew better than anyone how abysmal his stamina was.

Before long, his ragged breathing and pounding heartbeat reached her ears.

“Lord Ferda.”

“...”

“You are out of breath. Perhaps you should rest for a moment.”

Ferda did not answer.

As though possessed by something, he simply continued forward.

Luri could have stepped in front of him and forced him to stop.

But she did not have the courage.

She could not bring herself to confront the crushing burden weighing upon his shoulders.

Nor could she bear to see the expression on his face.

Without another word, she continued following behind him.

Sweat poured from Ferda’s body as he gasped for breath.

Eventually, his feet finally came to a stop.

They had arrived at a plain.

A barren stretch of land with a single tree stump.

It did not feel as though he had stopped merely because he was exhausted.

“Is this the place?”

Ferda nodded.

“Where is the grave?”

Just in case she had missed it, Luri looked around several times.

But no matter how carefully she searched, there was no sign that anyone had ever been buried there.

“There is no grave.”

Ferda reached toward the empty air.

“This is where... I let my mother go.”

“You mean... she was cremated?”

Members of an old knightly family were traditionally buried after death.

Even if she had only been a concubine, once she became part of a knightly house, she should have been laid to rest in the family cemetery.

“When my mother died, they hurriedly burned her body.”

“They even tried to have the servants dispose of the remains as if they were throwing something away.”

“As though she were nothing but garbage.”

“...”

“So I gathered everything myself.”

“I carefully wrapped every bit of ash and placed it into an urn.”

Ferda looked down at his hands.

They were empty now, but the sensation of touching those ashes remained vivid against his skin.

“That day, I wanted to scatter her ashes somewhere my father would never know about.”

“Even if they vanished into the wind, I wanted to find a place where I could still remember her.”

“...”

“So I walked until it felt as though my soul would leave my body.”

“I came as far as I could barely manage.”

“And this was the place.”

Ferda raised his head and looked toward the sky.

The barren heavens and earth were cold and devoid of any trace of life.

His gaze descended toward the stump.

“There used to be a tree here.”

“It stood alone in the middle of the plain.”

“It reminded me of myself, left behind all alone.”

“So I secretly scattered her ashes beneath it.”

“Then why is there only a stump...?”

“A servant had followed me.”

“And afterward, they cut down the tree.”

“They did something so cruel to a son who had lost his mother?”

Luri was furious.

Because she knew how precious family was, she could not take such a thing lightly.

Her fists clenched tightly.

She regretted not threatening Erembalt before letting him leave.

“I thought it was my fault.”

Ferda’s voice trembled.

“If I had not been so weak...”

“If I had displayed the qualities of an exceptional knight within the family...”

“Then perhaps I could have protected the place where I honored my mother.”

His weakness.

A body so frail that no matter how hard he tried, even the traces of his effort would disappear.

Until the day he died, Ferda had never once possessed a strong body.

“That was how I was driven from the house.”

Luri already knew that part of the story.

What came after was known only to Ferda.

He began speaking without restraint.

“I trained as a mage.”

“In a short time, I surpassed even those said to possess talent.”

“I reached the Third Circle.”

Back then, Ferda had not yet been overwhelmed by hatred.

Inside his heart still lived a young boy who wanted to be acknowledged—and an angel.

The young boy thought:

Perhaps Erembalt would accept him now.

In truth, Erembalt had been a father filled with paternal affection.

He was devoted to his wife, generous with advice toward his sons, and once, he had even been Ferda’s idol.

He simply had never been that way toward Ferda.

The angel within his heart told him that the bonds of family still remained.

The boy believed that angel.

He wanted to believe that the world was not made solely of malice.

The young Ferda hoped his wretched father would ask for forgiveness.

—How dare you set foot here!

The moment he entered the mansion, he was met with a furious roar, as though he were a sworn enemy.

—You are no longer my son! You learned a few petty magic tricks, and now you dare show your face here again!? Get out this instant!

The words were hotter than fire and colder than ice.

His eldest brothers, Ellen and Huren, personally beat Ferda, who stubbornly refused to leave, and threw him out.

It rained that day.

Blood filled his mouth, and his entire body was soaked.

Half-dead, Ferda could have perished at any moment.

Had he not stubbornly crawled beneath some shelter and laid himself down, he undoubtedly would have become a corpse.

That day, the young boy finally understood.

Hope was nothing more than an illusion that prolonged a miserable life.

The young boy killed the angel.

What filled his heart afterward was only the voice of a malicious demon.

Whenever he begged for mercy, it left him with even greater pain.

At the end of hatred, he embraced yet more hatred.

Only when emptiness awaited him at the end of that road did he finally regret everything.

“I thought... that was the end of it.”

At the very end, he had regretted it deeply.

He had decided to live for a single, clearer purpose.

That demon had surely died.

Surely, the innocence he possessed that day would return to his heart.

“But I had not changed.”

“What had not changed?”

“Hatred.”

The tiny monster his father had created.

“The hatred that turned me into a monster.”

“The hatred that hollowed me out until I was nothing but an empty shell.”

Ferda clutched his chest.

“It is still here.”

“Still inside my heart.”

Luri looked down at him, unable to speak.

It was Ferda who once again broke the silence.

“Luri.”

“...Yes?”

“When I met my father earlier, I tried to kill him.”

“A father like that deserves to die.”

“It was not my will.”

That was what frightened Ferda most.

Just as he had unconsciously attempted to kill his father, perhaps he was unknowingly choosing a path that would lead him to kill Valdrova as well.

The possibility that such a future still remained was a burden far too great for Ferda to bear.

But how could he say that aloud?

He did not want to place an even greater burden upon Luri.

“Stop saying such pathetic things.”

Luri rebuked him with a sulky voice.

“You are the regent of the Valdrova Princedom, the ruler of Hestia Village, and the fiancé of the Great Flame.”

“Did you not choose to wear the crown knowing full well that it might break your neck?”

“...”

“You cannot speak so weakly.”

“Straighten your back and square your shoulders.”

“Wear an expression worthy of your position.”

“For Lord Ferda, even agonizing over such matters is a luxury.”

“You cannot waste time in a place like this.”

“Return at once and get back to work.”

Luri stepped closer.

“And if Lord Ferda ever loses his judgment and becomes a monster...”

Her small hands reached out.

“Then with these hands...”

Both hands wrapped around his neck.

The warmth of her soft skin spread across him.

Following her touch, Ferda raised his head.

Luri wore the clumsy mask of an adult.

“I will execute you.”

Yet despite her bravado, cracks began to spread across that mask.

“So...”

Sorrow washed over her face.

“Please leave that foolish expression behind in this moment forever.”

Ferda’s emotions were beginning to consume even Luri.

If Luri reacted this way, what would Valdrova feel?

She would suffer far more.

Ferda felt his mind clear once again.

“You have helped me again.”

A faint smile appeared on Ferda’s face.

“Thank you.”

***

Meanwhile, someone was watching Ferda and Luri from afar.

It was Olivia Arken.