Chapter 0: Prologue

The early summer of this year was consumed by a long, lingering rain.

Humid raindrops began to fall upon the bowed flower buds of the orange trumpet creepers. The sound of the downpour was a tumultuous roar.

Raindrops accumulated steadily atop Ahnok’s pale, water-colored robe and the white hands extending from his sleeves. The water traced the ridges of the bumpy burn scars on the back of his hand as it streamed down.

“You will catch a chill if you stay like this.”

A lady-in-waiting standing nearby spoke cautiously, but Ahnok’s face remained expressionless, as if he hadn’t heard her. It was a cold detachment rarely seen in a master who had lived his life curled up in a constant state of anxiety and restlessness.

The systematic movements of the palace attendants, who were lowering the folding doors to keep out the rain, stopped at the one window where Ahnok leaned. Ahnok, who had kept his hand stretched out beneath the railing carved with chrysanthemums, finally withdrew his arm and stood up.

Only after he moved aside did the attendants close the final remaining door.

“I will prepare clothes for you to change into.”

The dampness at the ends of his sleeves did not particularly bother him. Ahnok shook his head. It was not the sound of rain or a trivial dampness that was disturbing his heart.

With steps that looked as though they might scatter like smoke at any moment, Ahnok headed toward Yangwan Pavilion—a small hall located behind the main building of Gyoyeong Palace.

That place was a sort of shrine. A shrine built to commemorate his child, who had died before even reaching a hundred days of age.

There was no one in the palace who did not know that the Empress of Daejin spent most of his day here. The attendants guarding the inner chambers of Gyoyeong Palace watched in silence as Ahnok entered the pavilion with feeble steps.

The shrine was humble. Ahnok lit incense in the burner placed before the memorial tablet and sat down on his knees.

The child belonged to the man he adored. However, because that man’s sins were too great, it was also a heart that was not permitted in this lifetime.

That man had completely decimated Ahnok’s hometown. In doing so, Ahnok was utterly shackled to the cycle of an unhappy fate that had been prophesied since his birth.

He was someone Ahnok could neither fully love nor fully hate, but there was no need to hate his child as well. Therefore, he had intended to pour all his affection into the child.

Though he himself had never been happy for a single moment since birth, he wanted to raise the child without knowing such misfortune or shadows.

But in the end, even this child had died.

Killed by someone who coveted the position of Empress—a position Ahnok had never even desired.

It felt as though a massive hole had been torn in his heart, one that could not be filled even if he were to cut out the sky and cram it inside.

‘If they had just said they wanted it, I would have given it to them… I could have given up this trivial position and left whenever they liked.’

The incense, nearly half-burnt, snapped and dropped its white ash. Ahnok took off the golden crown that had been weighing heavily on his head and set it down.

On the face of the twenty-seven-year-old man who had carried the burden of misfortune his entire life, only sorrow remained.

“Your Imperial Majesty, a message from Seonghwa Hall. His Imperial Majesty the Emperor is arriving at Gyoyeong Palace shortly.”

It was the voice of the head eunuch of the inner chamber, who did not dare to step inside the shrine. Ahnok suddenly looked back.

He had looked back once before, when he left the house where he had lived for twenty years following his half-brother, after the funeral of Chusan—the woman who was like a grandmother to him.

It was spring then, and pear trees were in full bloom, their branches stretching over the clumsy brushwood fence that surrounded the lonely thatched house.

Suddenly, he wanted to see that pear tree.

‘If I could return to those days… could I change something?’

Biting his lip, Ahnok looked forward again. A lethargy, thicker than a swamp and more distant than an abyss, seemed to gently push his entire body into the mire.

He had heard that before giving birth to him, his biological mother, a priestess, received a prophecy: if the child in her womb saw the light of the world, the tribe that had barely integrated into the Great Empire would be completely annihilated.

And eventually, according to the prophecy, Ahnok’s tribe vanished entirely. Only the frozen land named after their tribe, Baekya-bu, remained on the map.

Things that are meant to happen will eventually happen. Therefore, even if time could be turned back, certain things were destined to occur.

If that was the case, he did not want to repeat it again. A life where only pain continued was enough at twenty-seven years.

He didn’t want to live anymore. He did not want to repeat any of the agonies of this life ever again. If he could just die and scatter like a wisp of wind, he would wish for nothing more.

Ahnok took out a small bottle he had hidden inside the sleeve of his robe.

This was a deadly poison passed down only among the priestesses of Baekya-bu. It had no scent, no taste, and left no trace, but it took a life perfectly.

Staring at the child’s memorial tablet, Ahnok swallowed the poison in one gulp.

It wouldn’t be painful. He had experienced countless agonies throughout his life. This couldn’t possibly hurt more than that.

“Let us not meet in the next life…”

Standing up, Ahnok placed a new incense stick in front of the child’s tablet to replace the one that had burnt out. When this incense finished burning, he too would no longer be a person of this world.

“Your Imperial Majesty, the Emperor will arrive momentarily.”

The eunuch urged Ahnok with an increasingly anxious voice. Ahnok, who would have moved listlessly at any other time, simply sat back down with a dazed face.

He is coming.

Ahnok closed his eyes and tried to recall that man’s face.

The man who had hastily draped the framework of ‘family’ over Ahnok’s desolate life after he had lost Chusan.

The man’s eyes were not double-lidded, but they were large and wide, possessing a sharpness like a bird of prey hunting its quarry. The bone structure of his face was distinct and his features were bold; he was a handsome man who stood out even among a crowd.

Yet his face was not entirely cold; when he curled his lips playfully, a small dimple would indent only his right cheek. He possessed a frame as solid as a tiger’s, so no one dared treat him lightly.

Moreover, he was tall, always looking down at Ahnok from half a head above.

Looking at him, Ahnok often thought the man was composed of things entirely opposite to himself. Even his heart.

For the past seven years, he had been Ahnok’s husband and his only family, but at the same time, he was the person who had inflicted the most wounds.

Since their marriage, their relationship had never been equal or smooth. On their wedding night, he had shunned Ahnok simply because he was an Eumin.

He had left Ahnok alone in the unfamiliar land of Sanggyeong to go on an expedition, trampling his hometown under the pretext of suppressing a rebellion, and in return, he gained the position of Crown Prince.

Even when he heard the news that Ahnok was pregnant, he did not rejoice. And when he learned that the child had died, he did not grieve deeply.

Yet, despite the countless reasons why he should have been loathed, Ahnok adored him. To Ahnok, he was his only family.

The incense in front of the tablet was now nearly half-burnt.

The blood flow, which had felt like it was simmering inside him, seemed to reverse in an instant. Ahnok’s straight back bent forward slightly.

“His Imperial Majesty the Emperor arrives!”

At that moment, the voice of the head eunuch rang loudly through the entirety of Gyoyeong Palace. Ahnok, who would have normally hurried to rise, remained kneeling.

Due to the rain falling diagonally, traces of water remained on the Emperor’s noble black dragon robe. Disregarding it, the Emperor entered the pavilion, looking down at Ahnok with a cold gaze.

The incense in front of the tablet had already burnt well past the halfway mark.

“How long do you intend to keep the Prince’s tablet here? It should have been moved to the Royal Ancestral Shrine by now.”

The voice, devoid of any affection, was icy. It felt colder and more agonizing than the rain. At that moment, Ahnok felt a lump of blood welling up from deep within his chest.

The incense had not finished burning yet, but death was already at his doorstep.

‘Just one last time…’

Ahnok lifted his head.

In his field of vision, he saw the face of the man he knew so well—the one he had adored, and yet the one for whom he had to fold away his unreachable feelings over and over again.

“…”

“…”

It felt as if a lump of blood would spill out the moment he opened his mouth. Ahnok gritted his teeth. He had no room to think about how he might appear.

If only you had come a little earlier. Then he could have vented his resentment, or poured out the feelings he couldn’t hide no matter how hard he tried.

Streams of water flowed beneath Ahnok’s eyes. The Emperor’s eyes wavered, but Ahnok, whose vision had blurred, did not see it.

“Ugh…!”

It happened in an instant. The lump of blood he thought he could hold back was spat out. Ahnok’s body leaned completely forward. Dark blood began to spread over his water-colored, elegant robe.

The Emperor, startled, hurriedly leaned down, but Ahnok pushed away the arm reached out toward him.

The incense was now almost completely burnt out.

“Empress!”

Ahnok despaired quietly at the voice piercing his ears. The man might have forgotten his name.

But it didn’t matter now. For he would now disappear from the man’s side, settling his pain-filled life and fading away.

Ahnok’s blurred eyes turned toward the incense burner where only white ash remained. He felt someone’s arms supporting and holding his body, but he knew it was useless.

Life was rapidly draining from his body. Ahnok took his final breath and closed his eyes.

“Ahnok…!”

It felt as though his name had been called by the voice of the person he loved most. Only then did the corners of Ahnok’s lips faintly turn upward.

It is the end.

The tiresome cycle of fate, the pain that repeated amidst affection and hatred—now, all of it…

After a sensation of floating in a pitch-black abyss, everything vanished.

Or so he thought.

Until he opened his eyes again.