CH 195

Castor’s toga was of a dark shade of black. It had been embroidered with gold threads to make it seem as if it had been woven with golden chains. The black felt heavy. Fear, darkness, terror, death as well as power. The colours were used to commemorate and mourn the deaths of the past rulers. The synergy between the colours was the bridge between death and rebirth. Because the Lord of the Gods represented both death and life. 

Gold and black. Wearing all the colours of the Lord, Castor was the perfect heir to the throne. The people who were watching them now were those who had been taught the tales of the Lord of the Gods as much as they had been fed rice. To them, Castor must have fit their image of the Lord of the Gods so well, he might as well be the Lord’s reincarnate. 

“Ashley.”

The Lord reached out to her. Ashley couldn’t help but to be reminded of the tales she had been taught. The god that loved the First Emperor to death. When that god stretched his hand towards the emperor, branches grew towards her too. Just as she imagined it to, the branches extended and wrapped around her wrist. The closer he stepped towards her, the darker their surroundings got. 

“You look beautiful.”

“You mean the dress?”

“… No, you.”

Castor held her hand before interlocking their fingers. He lowered his upper body before bringing his face closer to hers. 

“You look pretty.”

Just then, a gust of gold blew across Castor’s golden eyes as he transferred her his divinity.

“Urgh.”

“Hurry.”

A burst of green light shot out from their intertwined hands before the light turned gold. The light diffused past the edges of the stage before materialising as leaves that fell like snow. Someone started exclaiming in awe. And their starstruck eyes gradually shifted upwards. 

The power to control every living plant–the power of Tellus, the God of Plants–spread from Ashley. More miracles began blooming one after the other like flowers from the god wearing a black toga and the girl wearing a pure white dress. Flowers that had been out of season bloomed and their scents were more intense than that of the same kind found in the wild. They turned the stage into a field of spring. 

Woahhh. 

Cheers. Then, admiration. This was when acclamation and prayers mixed in the air. Ashley could feel her wrist burning. The pain which had always been there since the start of her performance gradually crept up her arm to her shoulders before she finally felt the burn in her head and in her eyes. It was as if there was a blazing fire in her skull. She had to endure it. Hundreds of specks of light flickered in her eyes. They must have been reflected off the monoculars in the sky. She shouldn’t reveal her exhaustion under the watchful gazes of hundreds of pairs of eyes. 

Ashley chose to perform the season of life in which the Lord of the Gods and the First Emperor spent together. And the Lord of the Gods whom she spent the season born from his madness with, tilted his head before smiling. 

“Seasons… You look like you’re having a hard time.”

He sounded arrogant. It suited this huge majestic stage. The music approached a section of intensity. Once the Lord of the Gods granted the nameless human a name, the girl became the First Emperor. 

“You just need to hang in there.”

Ashley pushed his chest away and stepped back. Nevertheless, her body was still stepping rhythmically to the beat of the music. Knowing how important this stage was, she couldn’t just stop.

The season after spring was summer. The fresh green leaves which grew from the season of green ripened powerfully under the intense sunlight. The Empire which initially started as a small nation consumed the surrounding tribes, unions and kingdoms. 

As the land got richer day after day, the people following the First Emperor increased as well. It was then that the love the Lord of the Gods had for the emperor grew from a gentle spring to something like the passionate summer sun. The Lord of the Gods gave everything he had and his unrequited love poured out like midsummer waterfalls. The two stood in front of a large lake. The Lord of the Gods had created the lake for the First Emperor. The clear water gushed and the sound of a child’s laughter could be heard from somewhere. It was a joyous sight. It was refreshing. The Lord of the Gods smiled in satisfaction.

“Was this how you interpreted the myth?”

Castor glanced at the golden orbs hovering around him without stopping before smiling. Gold. It was the sun. It was the power of the gods, a brilliant light, immortality and it was the colour of light before creation. It was the only colour symbolic for the Lord of the Gods. And it was the same colour that he gave the First Emperor. Under his protection, the Emperor gradually gathered a large amount of land. His golden eyes gleamed with madness. 

“It’s too heavy to call it love.”

At that moment, Ashley stumbled. She only tripped slightly so no one watching would be able to notice. However, since Castor quickly moved to fix her mistake, someone did seem to have noticed. Ashley gritted her teeth in response to the unfamiliar force.

“Who said that it was love?”

She remained cool and calm. Without trying to act anymore, she spoke truthfully. No, it was because it’ll be too much for her to continue to pretend to be naive. Somewhere in her mind, a voice was yelling at her to stop. However, the mask had already been removed and it was too late to put it back on. 

‘You and I?’

Ashley twisted her lips and smirked. She wondered why. She could not think of a reason why she was feeling this unprovoked hatred. Why did she hate Castor? It was not as if there had been no reason to.  One fine day, he had shattered her peaceful daily life, made her kneel before him and forced her to be his servant. Because she had talked back. But that had been all. 

‘Or was that the sole reason?’

Something was missing. What was missing? As Ashley’s thoughts traversed, so did the music. And before she knew it, the music crescendoed to its climax. 

“Looking at you now.”

The Empire soon consumed all that existed in the west. When the Lord of the Gods asked the First Emperor whether she wanted the east as well, the First Emperor refused. Instead of the young emperor, there stood a mature human. The Lord of the Gods had given the First Emperor everything he could. A powerful nation, gold, resources and mighty horses. 

To be under the leadership of the wise and strong emperor, outstanding officials flocked to the Empire. Now, it was autumn. The season of abundance. Autumn was ripe with abundance. The land was now too rich. The Empire had plentiful harvests every year, to the point where people could only lower their heavy heads. The lord spoke to the girl standing in the middle of the golden wheat field. 

“I’ll give you everything I have.”

“Amor…”

“Amor?”

Just as the music reached its climax, the dance was too. Her feet got to work. It was during this section of the piece that Ashley spent most of the time twirling without a chance to breathe. It was to the point where she found it hard to tell if she was still on the ground. Not looking exhausted at all, Castor whispered to her softly. 

“You must have wanted to see yourself grow.”

It was strange. Even whilst in pain from using divinity, Ashley noticed something strange. She only understood once her feet touched the ground. Her body felt heavy. It was as if the divinity was acting strangely only on herself. Soon, all she could see was Castor’s face close to hers. Actually, it wasn’t Castor that had gotten closer to her. Her body had grown. She could feel that she had gotten taller. Her body was heavy. Just like the seasons the Lord of the Gods and the First Emperor spent together, she looked at Castor with dignity. 

“That child might never be able to see what you look like now.”

He was talking about Amor. She knew that this maturity was what Amor wanted. Now, they were no longer a girl and the Lord of the Gods but a woman facing the Lord of the Gods as a grown adult. 

“Tell me.”

Castor tilted his head before smiling. An intense scent emanated from the man.

“If what the Lord of the Gods felt wasn’t love, then what is?”

As she spun around against the sky, her skirt fluttered along with her twirls. Her skirt drew a soft arc down her body which was starkly different from the cupcake-bottom that the kingdom saturates their culture with. The Lord of the Gods soon followed after her and grabbed her waist. The leaves that brushed against her cheek were now red in colour. 

As the music dwindled from its initial intensity, its tempo hastened. The Lord’s plentiful autumn passed in an instant. He found love in the First Emperor. However, the First Emperor did not love him back. The one the Emperor loved was human. 

“What on earth do you want?”

The Lord of the Gods demanded payment. Everything the First Emperor wore and the place where she stayed. The First Emperor’s life and her loved ones. The god asked her to pay for it all. 

“You.”

Ashley wondered. Was this love? Just like how numerous Imperial women had done before, he thought what they had was love. It had been a passionate and intense love. But she thought differently. Was it love to give everything they could and then ask for payment?

The First Emperor had rejected the Lord’s request. And for the first time since its founding, the Empire froze over. The northern winds blew across the sky, sprouts rotted and withered fruit burst open. The earth was dead. People suffered from hunger. They screamed at the endless blizzard. The emperor had to choose. What did the emperor want?

Finally, the emperor decided to pay the price. The emperor was not allowed to leave the palace for the rest of her life. She would never be able to step on the lands she had conquered, would never be able to see the lake she loved so much again and could only watch the sky through a single window. 

“The pain you’re feeling now, is the same as what Amor’s feeling now too.”

History had recorded the First Emperor as an arrogant human who challenged the gods. The one and only human who was loved by the gods. 

“Giving someone your divinity is like giving away half your soul.”

“Liar, that’s not what blessings are…”

“Blessings? Who would consider giving your life away a blessing?”

The final season blew across the stage. The wind was cold and chilling. Her golden hair and his black one fluttered wildly as their strands looked as if they were being woven together. The music gradually slowed down while approaching its final bars. 

The last section of the piece was a requiem of mourning that depicted the death of the First Emperor. In winter, grass dried up and the branches of trees thinned. Pure white snow was falling above.

“The heir to the Lord of the Gods can see the truth and the future.”

As the calm requiem played behind them, Castor muttered slowly. Without hesitation, he lifted Ashley and brought her forehead to his. Their foreheads touched as they faced each other. His long dark eyebrows flinched as his eyes blinked slowly and calmly. 

“In the ‘future’ I had seen, Hernan was supposed to be standing here.”

Cold snow piled under their feet. The snow matched the woman’s white dress nicely. The white symbolised sublimity, purity, simplicity, innocence and cleanliness. And the First Emperor’s white dress connoted solitude, emptiness and freedom. 

“And in another ‘future’, you were with Dane Lowell.”

The Lord of the Gods asked the dying emperor what he wanted. As he stared at the setting sun, the First Emperor muttered. He wished for an Empire that would not lose to anything. The Lord of the Gods granted his wish. 

“I will not allow that.”

The future. Ashley thought of something. The strange diary she had. Was she and Castor seeing the same futures? If that was the case, did he see the numerous crises she had gone through? Then, she wanted to ask him why. 

The piece ended in a low tone. And their movements gradually slowed. Ashley became the dying Emperor and lowered her head slowly as if she was worshipping him. The Lord of the Gods embraced the First Emperor as he mourned her death sorrowfully. 

“… I don’t think the emperor was free even after his death.”

However, will she be able to escape from this man even after his death? No. For some reason, she was strangely convinced that she wouldn’t be able to. 

The last season. The year the First Emperor died. That winter reflected the lord’s madness. The Lord of the Gods prevented anyone from getting close to the emperor even as she laid on her deathbed. There was only one person who remained on the emperor’s side. It wasn’t his loyal servants, his beloved companion or his children. It was the Lord of the Gods. 

“What the Lord of the Gods felt wasn’t love. It wasn’t love but obsession.”

Just like him. 

The dying emperor slowly removed his crown. Just then, roars rippled throughout the silent crowds. The crown of thorns made from two snakes coiled around each other. The snakes were the Lord’s representative animal and the thorns symbolised the price the lord demanded from the First Emperor. And with one swift movement, the girl returned her coffin to the god. 

‘I don’t know why you’re doing this but I don’t want to live like the emperor.’

“I don’t know why the god did such things, but I don’t want to live like the Emperor.”

Something flashed in Castor’s eyes. His eyes were so golden it stood out in the dark. A gust of golden wind blew around them.

“Are you disobeying the god?”

“I’m not the emperor.”

As the piece ended, the two faced each other. Instead of using long words, they used their silence as a mask as they locked gazes. Though their eyes were telling different stories. 

T/N:

Was this the best chapter the author produced writing-wise? Yes.

Did I do it justice? Lol hopefully.