Aya Ran Away - Chapter 21

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 21
Aya gazed at the scar for a long moment, then exhaustion overtook her. She leaned back against the headboard, her face drawn with weariness.
‘Find your voice?’
She furrowed her brow, turning the child’s words over in her mind.
What manner of absurdity was this?
Without her tongue regrowing, there was no way for Aya to reclaim her voice.
‘It must have been a dream.’
If it were real, the impossibilities would be beyond counting.
Perhaps it was nothing more than a dream conjured by her own desperate imagination.
Caught between reality and reverie, Aya closed her eyes.
Exactly one week after Aya’s ordeal, the King issued a command to strike down House Poros.
Hundreds of soldiers marched northward, and word soon reached the Capital that the house had been utterly destroyed.
* * *
The unrelenting rain had washed out the roads, and Nahal remained stranded in the Southern Region until repairs could be made.
By the time the flood damage was cleared and Nahal and his party finally departed the south, they were already a full fortnight past the return date he had promised the King.
Nahal worried the King might seize upon any excuse to fault him, but the other members of the Diplomatic Delegation laughed it off and insisted there was nothing to fear.
They had continued sending letters to the King, and surely he had heard of the rains in the south—they judged the situation optimistically.
Along the way, they stopped at a southern city to feed their famished horses hay and purchased supplies needed for the journey to the Capital.
The one blessing was that aside from the rain, there had been no attacks from Monsters, so the journey remained smooth.
Under normal circumstances, they would have faced any number of tiresome obstacles, but this time they did not.
Several members of the Diplomatic Delegation who had known of Nahal only by reputation came to understand that he truly possessed a Special Ability.
It was during their ascent from the Southern Region toward the Capital that it happened.
Terrible news reached them.
“The King has struck down House Poros!”
A rider who had galloped up with the news shouted toward Nahal, who sat mounted on his horse.
Nahal lifted one eyebrow slowly.
“What are you saying?”
The man dismounted hastily and pressed a parchment toward Nahal, panting heavily—a document he had received from Jeon Seo-gu.
The contents read as follows.
Believing Nahal to have defected, the King had sent troops to Nifer with orders to annihilate House Poros.
Given the time it had taken for word to reach them, the army had surely already begun its march northward.
Nahal’s expression shifted subtly.
It was as serene as if he were hearing some idle gossip about another house’s fortune, not his own family’s fate.
Behind Nahal as he read the letter, Bardal received the news from the messenger and his face grew troubled.
‘House Poros?’
In truth, anyone who knew Nahal even passingly would understand that he and House Poros had become nearly estranged.
During his entire time in the Capital, Nahal had never once stayed at House Poros’s residence there.
One could count on one hand the number of times he had visited the family estate in recent years—far too few to attribute to mere devotion to the Temple.
Only those truly close to him, such as Bardal, knew the details, but most of those who followed him understood that Nahal harbored no affection whatsoever for his house or his family.
But that was knowledge shared only among Nahal and his retainers; the King’s will was unmistakable.
“If matters have come to this, I cannot return to the Capital.”
Nahal seized the reins and turned his horse’s head.
“What do you intend to do?”
Snua, one of Nahal’s retainers, approached and posed the question.
They had become Wanted Criminals, all of them.
Not only Nahal, but the entire Diplomatic Delegation that had accompanied him—none could predict what awaited them if they returned to the Capital now.
“We move first. We discuss what comes after once we reach a safe place.”
Bardal gestured to those who followed Nahal.
“Move out!”
The horses veered from the road toward the Capital and galloped toward the mountains to the west.
The densely forested slopes offered excellent concealment.
Under ordinary circumstances, they might have worried about encountering Monster hordes, but Nahal’s presence eased that concern considerably.
With only wild beasts and men to fear, they made a large cave in the mountains their base and settled in.
Two months passed since the Kingdom’s Diplomatic Delegation had fallen into the state of fugitives.
Nahal sat with his back against a tree trunk, keeping watch, his eyes opening and closing slowly.
‘I boasted to the King that I had never learned how to flee, and now look at me.’
“Commander!”
At the sound of someone calling for him, he straightened and accepted the letter his retainer brought.
The letter from Jeon Seo-gu contained detailed accounts of the situation in the Capital.
Enclosed with it were declarations of support from nobles who had chosen to back him.
The final seal bore the Temple’s mark.
The Temple had declared its support for him.
The letter crumpled in Nahal’s grip.
It wasn’t even funny.
A man from the Northern Region, becoming king.
Nahal thought of the people in the Capital who called him the Prophesied King.
He remembered how the Temple had stood idle while the rumor spread, and had even deliberately lent weight to the false whispers.
Was their talk of honoring the Divine Will nothing but a lie?
If they truly believed in the Will of God, shouldn’t they have stopped rumors bordering on sacrilege?
The Prophesied King, the prophecy itself—all of it was fabrication, and the Temple was nothing but a collection of agitators.
Nahal felt an immense weariness settle over him.
“Did you see this, sir?”
Someone spoke as though in shock.
Nahal furrowed his brow and accepted the letter he hadn’t yet read.
“The king’s army has beheaded Kahran, the Ensí of Nifer, and his wife—hung their heads high—and gathered their children, burying them alive, they say.”
As Nahal listened to the account, he dragged one hand across his chin.
“He killed them all? The patriarch has three legitimate wives and several concubines besides. The children born to them number quite a few.”
Nahal’s reply came in a tone so measured that his thoughts remained opaque.
His bearing as he received news of his family’s tragedy was disturbingly calm.
It was his subordinates who seemed shaken instead.
Sensing that an answer was unlikely coming, Nahal swallowed a sigh and studied the letter more closely.
The letter stated that all the boys had been killed and the daughters sold into slavery.
Beyond that, he confirmed that two of the wives had escaped the chaos.
Nahal recalled two women among Kahran’s legitimate wives who had come from noble families in the Capital.
After a moment’s silence, Nahal spoke again.
“I cannot live as a fugitive like this.”
Yet neither did he have the heart to become a traitor.
Nahal touched the ring hanging at his throat and found himself wishing for rest.
“Commander!”
Someone called out to him.
Nahal opened his eyes slowly and rose from his seat.
“The ladies have arrived!”
“Which ladies?”
The people his subordinate mentioned were so unexpected that Nahal thought he must have misheard.
Before an answer could come, beneath the slope, between the sheltered trees, two middle-aged women stood visible.
Upon spotting Nahal, they removed the robes they wore.
They bowed their heads to him in greeting.
Nahal returned the bow lightly from where he stood.
His father’s surviving wives had come to find him.
‘They must have been smuggled out from their family before we struck at Poros.’
Based on the time it would take to travel such a distance, there was no other explanation.
Even if they had fled for refuge, they could not have found him so quickly.
He exhaled softly.
‘They’ve come to ask for something.’
It would likely be nothing more than protection.
That much he could easily provide.
Nahal approached and started to ask casually how they had fared, then closed his mouth.
Having lost their children, there was no way these women could have fared well.
Behind the two women, with their disheveled hair and faces wet with tears, he saw wagons and quite a number of people.
They appeared to have brought provisions.
He had no intention of refusing what they offered.
Just as he was about to offer his thanks, clawed hands gripped his arm firmly.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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