CH 2

A young girl received a gift from her fiance.

It was a gold coin engraved with a man’s face she didn’t recognize.

“What’s this?”

Her fiance became extremely cautious and looked around them. The only things there were the rocky mountains and sheep, yet he seemed afraid someone might hear him.

“It’s the ‘Emperor’s Golden Coin’.”

“Emperor’s Golden Coin?”

“Yeah. Um, do you know about the Messenger Clan?”

“Ah, you mean those soulless ones?”

The Messenger Clan was part of folklore and was branded with a variety of hideous names, such as Murderers of the Heavenly Kings, the soulless ones, the ominous ones, and so on.

Even uneducated young girls knew of these names as they were part of common wives’ tales that were told to children to scare them.

“Exactly. This golden coin can summon the soulless ones. But be careful with it. Anyone who possesses it is charged with heresy for going against our God by the heresy investigation officials at the King’s church and then executed.”

“Eh?”

The girl was so shocked she almost dropped the coin.

“Why would you give me something so dangerous?”

“Haha. Shocked, huh? But we never know, right. If, by any chance, something bad happens to us… draw a triangle in the ground, and place the coin at its center. Legend says that the messengers will come to help you if you do that.”

After saying that, her fiance smiled.

“Just pray something like that doesn’t happen.”

In that same year, during the spring, a harsh drought spread over the land. Not a single drop of rain fell as all of the wells dried up. This continued until the time when the peasantry needed to begin to sow for the next harvest, causing the panicked people to flee in desperation.

As the villagers fled, the ruler of this land, Magrave Casel, considered this act a serious crime and sent out his soldiers to punish them.

The soldiers were led by Margrave Casel’s son, the Young Master Kozel. He was said to be a remarkable wizard who had the blood of a Heavenly King flowing through his veins.

They hung people who tried to flee the village from a tree and seized all their possessions. They also set up a camp in the village’s assembly hall and called over a young married woman from the village to help.

The soldiers that had come with the young master were no different than a band of bandits. They dragged away the young woman and violated her. When she left the hall in a pathetic state, the villagers were left even more petrified in fear.

The young girl with the golden coin planned to escape with her fiance and his family. However, the Margrave’s son, Young Master Kozel, was blocking the alleyway they were escaping through, appearing like a real wizard.

“See, this is the problem.”

Kozel acted as if he was trimming his mustache with the blade of his long sword. He looked down at the petrified farmers with a condescending gaze.

“It-It’s not what you think.”

“Please, just the children…”

The elders of the families came forward to beg while the soldiers kept laughing. Then their laughter stopped, and they sent the children flying through the windows in one swoop.

“Stop!”

The Young Master Kozel stopped them at that moment.

“You morons, how come you can’t even think, huh? You really don’t know how to have fun, do you?”

“Ah, Young Master.”

“We’re ignorant, so we don’t know as much. What do we do to make it fun?”

The soldiers were acting like evil brats. They laughed as they kicked the dead children stuck through the windows and picked them out.

“First, you hang the people on a tall tree. And then, for the parents, use the children to support their hanging bodies, and for a husband, use his wife. See?”

“Ah!”

The soldiers thought over the Young Master Kozel’s words and expressed their admiration. Soon, a trap was built on the Cottonwood tree along the village’s boundary using skillful workmanship.

The branches of the tree weren’t even that sturdy, yet they managed to hang people with ease. Exactly how many people had they hung for them to be so good at it? They wouldn’t have this kind of idea by just hanging one or two people.

“No…. No. Safia! Run away!”

Her fiance was terrified as the soldiers approached them and told the young girl to flee. However, a sharp blade pierced his skin at that moment and made him cry in pain.

Kozel sliced his back into two parts.

“Ah! Oh, if we do this touching up now, you might die too quickly… My bad.”

The Young Master Kozel drew closer while laughing as he held the blood-stained sword.

“That’s okay. For this punk, tie the rope around his waist to hang him so that he’ll be able to last as long as the others.”

The soldiers, who kept talking and laughing, tied the rope along her fiance’s waist. His back was bleeding, but he was still alive. They then suspended a sack of sand to his ankle and hung him from the tree.

The families of both the young girl and her fiance were hung from the trap by their necks. Below them were the little children, who supported them while panting heavily.

“Okay now, the peasant woman. Come and support your partner now, or else he’ll die. He won’t last long, and his veins will burst, hanging like that.”

They made the young girl stand under her fiance’s feet.

She couldn’t even move an inch to lessen the pressure on her fiance’s body.

“That’s right, keep supporting your fiance, okay? Don’t move. Got it?”

“Hihihihi…”

Just then, among the soldiers, a knight with a firm expression spoke in a low voice.

“Please don’t shed the Heavenly King’s blood so carelessly.”

“Um?”

The Young Master Kozel stopped laughing. With his silver-gray hair, the soldier looked old for his age. He was a northerner in his early 30’s. Silver hair meant that one was a close descendant of the Heavenly King Yaegas, but the man’s hair was closer to just being salt and pepper hair or simply gray.

With eyes that had a more grayish tint than blue, his gaze always seemed to be looking somewhere far, not at the person in front of him. His whole body gave off the feeling of prolonged fatigue. However, the man had hidden extraordinarily keen senses, which made him similar to a sword kept inside its sheath for a long time.

“Oh, look who it is. Isn’t that Sir Zebec? The one who trained me in swordsmanship.”

“Do you really have to go that far to punish them? As a noble who inherited the Heavenly King’s blood, at the least, you should maintain your dignity.”

“Maintain dignity? You shouldn’t be saying that to me. As long as the news of the incident here doesn’t leak, wouldn’t that protect my dignity? Or else what? Will you, Sir Zebec, go around talking about me? You, a royal knight, would smear the name of a noble from a family recognized by the King’s church. Is that what you’re saying?”

“The truth always finds a way to reveal itself. Is it that hard to protect one’s dignity?”

“See, the thing is, I’m quite a hot-blooded person, so I get easily excited. I prefer those who speak when I want them to and shut up when I don’t. So what I mean is…”

“How about we wrap this up?”

Armed soldiers started to gather around the man named Sir Zebec.

“Oh, don’t be like that. Look here, teacher, I’ll save your life as a token of affection for our bond in my childhood. Okay?”

“…”

The insulted knight’s expression changed to one of shock and dismay.

“Whip.”

The moment Young Master Kozel asked for a whip, a soldier handed him one.

He used it to strike the young girl.

-Snap!

The pain of her skin being slashed made the girl groan and wobble. Despite that, she didn’t collapse and endured the pain while struggling to support her fiance’s weight.

“See, satisfied now? Relax your face, teacher. Let’s have some fun while we live, yeah.”

“…”

“Okay then, let’s last as long as we can, okay, my dear peasant woman?”

The Margrave’s son, Kozel, and his soldiers left the young girl’s family hanging from the tree to attempt to flee and left with their possessions.

The young girl withstood the horrible pain, endured the weight, bore the suffering and humiliation of it all, and kept standing there.

“Safia, there’s no hope for me… just run away.”

“Ifan.”

The young girl shook her head after calling out her fiance’s name.

Blood kept dripping down her feet. The pain from her wounds kept getting worse.

The girl felt she could no longer live, even if she were to abandon her fiance and escape.

“…”

All of a sudden, she realized that she still had the emperor’s golden coin on her. She had kept it in a pocket sewn to the inner part of her clothes.

“Will the Emperor’s messenger, the people of the Messenger Clan, really come?”

Her curiosity got the better of her, and with barely any strength left, she grew a triangle in the dirt with her toe.

All she did was draw a triangle in the dirt, yet her blood continued to drip on the dry, barren ground as she did.

After drawing the triangle with difficulty, she used the sandbag as support, took out the golden coin, and threw it over the triangle.

When the coin fell inside the triangle, a soft light shone from it.

“Ah!”

The legend was true. In her bewilderment, the girl called for her fiance.

“Ifan, did you see it?”“

“…”

But she didn’t hear a reply from her fiance.

The golden coin slowly slipped away and was sucked into the sand. After a few moments…

An owl, a rarity in that place, flew and sat in front of the Cottonwood tree.

[The one who requested the Emperor’s Justice.]

A sound came from the owl.

[The closest messenger will arrive after two days. Kindly bear with it until then.]

“Tw-two days?”

The girl was shocked to her core.

It was nearly impossible for them to last that long, considering the state of her and her fiance.

“What if we can’t last that long?”

[The request shall be canceled, and the golden coin will be given to the messenger as a deposit.]

“Ho-How…”

Far from feeling happy at this magical event, the young girl realized she would need to last through the two gruesome days of her life.

Standing in the dry winds that parched the lands and made even stones brittle, the girl endured circumstances more painful than death.

She stood there while lifting a sandbag, unable to sleep with wounds all over her body. When the sun began to set, she could see the traces of a person’s shadow approaching her.

She couldn’t see the person clearly because of either the darkness or her own murky vision. A cold liquid then wetted the girl’s lips.

It was water.

“Wh-Who…”

“Shh.”

A person she didn’t recognize signaled her to be quiet and gave her a cane to reduce the weight of her burden. The woman collapsed on the ground after feeling the weight suddenly leave her shoulders.

“Can you eat?”

“…”

“It’s unfortunate, but it seems your husband won’t be able to survive. His wounds are too deep. But with the proper treatment, you may be able to live.”

“What about you?”

“I came here secretly. If I get caught by the Young Master, he’ll strip away my title as a knight.”

“…”

The girl realized that this was one of the soldiers, the one who had objected to the young master’s actions, the one called Zebec.

“Eat this.”

The man fed her dried fruit and settled down next to her.

“Is it okay if I treat your wounds?”

“…”

The young girl was shocked. The fact that one of the enemies was showing mercy was something she couldn’t understand. Her head was fuzzy, and her senses were completely gone.

But the one thing she knew was that she had to endure till the messenger arrived.

“Yes, please.”

“Okay.”

He wiped her wounds with a wet bandage and applied ointment to them.

“If I tie the bandage, it’ll be too obvious. Sleep for a while. I’ll be here with you till sunrise and be on the lookout.”

The young girl didn’t trust this man, but before she knew it, her eyes closed, and she fell into a deep sleep.