Chapter 37: The Weight of Unyielding Fate

When Zeimer burst into the room, he placed his hands over my ears. Unlike his usual self, his palms felt incredibly cold. He must have just returned from somewhere outside, as he was still wearing his traveling cape. I was about to tease him that his hands were colder than the draft in the room or my own earlobes, but the moment I felt the flow of mana, a gentle warming magic enveloped me. I quietly relaxed and let him hold me.

Zeimer softly massaged the area around my ears and down to my cheeks, moving his hands as if scratching behind a cat’s ears. The sensation was soothing and made me feel comfortably drowsy, so I lightly closed my eyes and leaned into it.

It took me a few moments to realize that something was going askew. The atmosphere in the room had shifted, growing incredibly tense. I raised my hands and pulled Zeimer’s away from my face. This rascal—he had used the excuse of warming me up just to block my hearing!

Having finished whatever conversation he was having, Zeimer let his hands drop without a fight. It was almost absurd how both Felix and Zeimer immediately acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred. The only one showing even a shred of agitation was Ilya. Although his facial expression remained largely composed, his eyes were darting back and forth between Felix and Zeimer, completely unsettled.

Whatever they had spoken about in that brief window, it was undeniably about me. I offered Ilya a silent apology in my heart, then gently took Zeimer’s hand and tugged it to signal him to sit down next to me. Without letting go of my hand, Zeimer rounded the couch and slid into the seat at my side. The moment he sat, he claimed that my hands felt like ice too, trapping them securely between both of his palms.

“What were you guys talking about?” Zeimer asked.

Knowing very well that he had broken in precisely because he already knew, his innocent act felt entirely unconvincing. I answered him rather bluntly.

“I don’t know. We were just about to start.”

Zeimer surely didn’t think I was completely oblivious. He was incredibly sharp and brilliant. His mind functioned like a massive, interconnected library, and I was certain his thoughts were spinning at a frantic pace even in the time it took for me to blink.

He paused for a fraction of a second, then offered me a bright, beaming smile. When he spoke next, his voice carried a strangely innocent, high-pitched tone that anyone would have recognized as artificially forced.

Using my hands trapped within his own, Zeimer brought them together to clap once.

“Well, then we can just start right now.”

With Zeimer by my side, I felt a wave of relief wash over me, allowing my posture to relax. If I had been left entirely alone, I would have undoubtedly been swept up by Felix’s momentum in this conversation. Agreeing to follow Felix’s path—or rather, the will of the world—was entirely separate from letting myself be dragged along passively. Ilya had always promised to be on my side, but realistically, he was the Chancellor of an entire empire and a servant to the crown before he was my friend. While his heart might belong to my cause, his position inevitably forced him to act in accordance with Felix’s desires.

As the tension left my frame, Zeimer picked up on my emotional shift and leaned back against the couch, relaxing his own posture. In fact, he made himself a little too comfortable, to the point of borderline disrespect. Despite being in the presence of the Emperor, he crossed his legs, bounced his foot idly, and draped his right arm casually over the backrest behind me. Since he was sitting to my left, his arm naturally formed a protective, enclosing shape around my shoulders.

Felix stared at Zeimer with a look of sheer disbelief before letting out a heavy sigh.

“Get out, Zeimer.”

“I’d rather not.”

“This is my office, and I never invited you in.”

Zeimer lifted his chin defiantly at Felix’s words, wearing a deeply displeased expression. His posture practically dared Felix to try and make him leave. Ilya and I exchanged anxious glances, watching the two of them warily. In the entire empire, Zeimer was the sole individual capable of treating Emperor Felix with such blatant disregard.

To be fair, it was an insolence that shouldn’t have been permitted even to Zeimer. Felix wasn’t a tyrant who strictly enforced empty formalities, but he was still the sole Emperor and sovereign of this world. Zeimer’s current behavior stripped away even the barest minimum of courtesy due to a monarch.

Zeimer brought his arm down from the backrest, firmly wrapping it around my shoulder to draw me closer.

“Let’s just continue like this.”

With a terrifying current of raw hostility flowing between the two of them, I could only sit perfectly still, my eyes darting back and forth nervously.

It was always like this. Whenever Zeimer intervened in my conversations with Felix, I felt immensely reassured, but another part of me felt deeply uncomfortable. I was the Hero, after all. If I squeezed my eyes shut, ignored everything, and simply acted spoiled by relying on Zeimer, it would be incredibly easy—but choosing that path was no different from turning my back on everything. I had to move forward alongside Felix.

Noticing the faint vein throbbing near Zeimer’s temple, I placed my hand gently onto his thigh. I couldn’t let them provoke each other any further. Because I was hesitating despite having already made my choice, the friction between them was continuing to escalate.

“It’s alright, Zeimer. You know it, and I know it too.”

We both played along in our mutual pretense. Zeimer’s features twisted into a grimace, but I forced a hollow imitation of a smile onto my face.

After that, everything proceeded with relative smoothness. Regardless of what stirred beneath the surface, it was decided that I would accept the peerage on the first day of the banquets, while the matter of the fiefdom would be placed on hold. It was entirely thanks to Zeimer fighting with everything he had that the forced territory had been successfully stalled. Yet, as the intense debate continued between Felix, Zeimer, and now Ilya, a sudden cough tore its way out of my throat.

“Cough—”

Being forced to shoulder things I never wanted, combined with the suffocating war of nerves between Zeimer and Felix, had placed an immense amount of stress on my body. Perhaps the firm resolve I had only recently forced myself to adopt was pushing my physical limits.

“Cough, cough!”

Once the coughing fit started, it refused to subside, tearing through me relentlessly. A familiar sense of dread began to crawl up my spine. Giving in to that dark instinct, I raised my hand to cover my mouth.

“Heave—”

And as fate would have it, my darkest premonitions were never wrong.

I stared down blankly at the thick clot of blood that had just splattered heavily into the palm of my hand. Dark, viscous blood was still surging up past my throat. Though no more heavy clots tore free, a stream of deep crimson slipped past my unyielding lips, tracing a dark line down my chin before dripping rhythmically, drop by drop, to stain my sweater.

I watched the blood flow with a strange sense of detachment. Then, looking at how the dark liquid filled my hand to the brim and began leaking through the cracks of my fingers, a sudden wave of anxiety hit me—what if it ruined the expensive calfskin sofa? Panicking, I quickly shifted my hand so the blood would drip over my lap instead, and raised my head. With my vision blurring and my focus fracturing, I looked around the room, utterly lost.

“Ian!”

The scream came from Ilya, who was sitting directly across from me.

“Dammit.”

Muttering a low curse, Zeimer had already reached out and gently forced my head down. Simultaneously, Felix grabbed a massive handful of fabric napkins from the table and pressed them against my lips. The thin linen was instantly soaked through with blood, proving entirely useless. With an irritated click of his tongue, Felix threw the drenched bundle back onto the table.

I fought to control my body, which had begun to shudder violently against my will. It seemed I detested this room and this conversation far more than I had consciously realized. A meeting where people casually bartered over titles and territories was never going to be comfortable for me. To make matters worse, Felix and Zeimer had unleashed an invisible war of nerves right over my head. The mental exhaustion was staggering.

A deep, creeping chill began to spread through my limbs. It felt exactly like the familiar sensation of having all the blood drained entirely from my body. The surrounding room dissolved into absolute chaos. Shouted commands and the frantic scuffling of footsteps echoed in my ears like a distant, distorted hum.

“Confound it, not again…!”

I heard the sharp, visceral sound of Felix grinding his teeth. Even through the haze obscuring my mind, I stole a glance at him; his strong jaw was clamped so tightly that his jawline stood out in sharp, rigid relief.

Between the intermittent tremors wracking my frame and the coughs tearing through my chest, I found it impossible to keep myself upright. Come to think of it, because I had spent all my time confined to a bed until now, I hadn’t realized how incredibly difficult it was to hold my body up while sitting down.

If the blood splattered any further, this pristine sofa would be completely ruined. Clutching onto that single, trivial thought, I forced strength into my muscles to keep myself from collapsing entirely. My jaw trembled so violently that I accidentally bit my tongue, but because my senses were fading, it didn’t even hurt.

“Fe—Felix.”

Even though Zeimer was holding me securely, I felt like my body was sliding into an abyss. Flailing my arms, I reached out and gripped Felix’s forearm. In my disorientation, I completely forgot that my palm was pooling with blood, leaving a stark, crimson handprint smeared across his immaculate sleeve. Panic forced Felix’s name from my lips. A profound wave of guilt washed over me. The luxurious, heavily adorned fabric of Felix’s imperial uniform began to corrode and wither the moment my blood seeped into the threads.

“I’m—I’m sorry… cough.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

I had directed my apology to Felix, but the response came from Zeimer. Feeling a damp, spreading wetness across my features, I reached up to touch my face. Without me even realizing it, an immense volume of blood was now pouring not just from my mouth, but streaming steadily from my nose as well.

“Don’t touch it.”

Zeimer brushed my hand away and immediately bundled his own traveling cape, pressing it against my face. The protective magic woven into the fabric crackled violently, emitting a sharp blue light the moment it made contact with my blood. Letting out a low curse at the sight, Zeimer tossed the ruined cape aside and used his own sleeve to wipe the blood from my face.

“I ordered you to bring hot water and clean linens immediately!”

The attendants in the office were running around in utter disarray, completely paralyzed by a crisis they had never witnessed before. Seeing their incompetence, Ilya lost his temper, his voice booming across the room in desperation.

I watched the entire spectacle unfold with an eerie numbness. The timing had simply been terrible. The constant, misaligned variables of this world were relentlessly closing in, suffocating me.

There is a thing called destiny. And every attempt to stand against it had ended in magnificent, catastrophic failure. Because I was the Hero, I had ultimately made the exact same choice once again.

Though it didn’t hurt, a tight, choking sensation gripped my throat, forcing a faint groan from my lips.

“I can’t… breathe…”

My breath hitched, the air catching painfully in my throat. Zeimer, who had been holding my shoulders firmly while rubbing my back, suddenly lifted me in a frantic motion and thrust me directly into Felix’s arms. By now, the fronts of both Zeimer’s and Felix’s clothes were thoroughly saturated in deep crimson.

“Someone keeps…” I gasped for air, fighting through the dark fog. “Keeps… cough… strangling me.”

As another ragged cough tore free, a spray of blood splattered across Felix’s cheek. In this entire room, it felt as though I was the only one who remained perfectly lucid; it was simply that my physical vessel was refusing to obey me anymore. Deep down, a bitter resentment toward the Goddess bloomed in my chest. Destiny was physically wrapping its fingers around my throat.

My body had grown so profoundly cold that Felix’s embrace felt scorching against my skin. In that split second, a jarring sense of alienation rippled through me, as if my flesh no longer belonged to my soul, and my eyes snapped wide open. Mistaking my expression for one of agonizing pain, Felix quickly brought his hand down to cover my eyes. A brilliant, blinding golden light flashed behind my eyelids.

And then, Felix forcefully dragged my consciousness into the dark.

Ilya gripped the fountain pen in his hand with white-knuckled intensity. The metal nib ground against itself inside his palm, letting out a harsh, grating screech of protesting iron.

The world was entirely heartless.

The glorious era that Ian had spoken of so highly—had it all truly been for something like this?

In accordance with the Hero’s wishes, the grueling, agonizing war was recorded in history as a magnificent, golden era. An era of unparalleled greatness where everyone had united to fight, opening the gates to a fresh dawn so that everything could be rebuilt from the very beginning.

Ilya stared at Ian, who lay completely unconscious and broken within Felix’s embrace, before slowly lowering his gaze to the floor.

His mind drifted back to the final day of the war.

The fateful day the Demon King vanished from this world.