The Abandoned Prince’s Ghost Bride - Chapter 109

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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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The Abandoned Prince’s Spectral Bride — Episode 109

Perhaps this was the first time Lucian had ever felt trust between parent and child.
‘……They’re not such terrible people, after all.’
He’d been so consumed by resentment over their abandonment that he’d refused to see them clearly, refused even to face them.
He’d only thought of severing ties the moment this wretched charade ended.
That’s why he’d never bothered to cultivate any warmth between them. But now, watching Ruber’s face……
‘……Did he have this side to him?’
Honestly, he’d expected Ruber to rage like Serena did, to rant and rave. But instead of anger, the man stood by him, said he believed in him—and Lucian found himself doubting whether this was truly the Ruber he knew.
“I have something I’d like to ask you,” Lucian said, taking the initiative to speak privately.
Ruber’s eyes widened.
“……Why didn’t you kill me?”
But at the question that followed, Ruber felt his heart wrench.
“……Are you resenting me for that?”
“No. I’m simply curious, purely speaking.”
His voice carried no trace of emotion—no lie in it either.
“To be precise, I’m curious why you disguised me as an orphan and sent me to a mansion in the forest. If you’d meant to kill me, there would’ve been no need for such trouble.”
“…….”
“You could have killed me at birth, or before sending me to the mansion. Or perhaps even after I’d been there, you could have sent assassins…….”
“Enough!”
Ruber burst out, cutting off Lucian’s words. He heaved for breath, his face contorted.
“Enough…… stop it.”
His hands, clasped over his face, trembled uncontrollably. It was unmistakably fear.
Lucian leaned back, settling his spine against the chair.
After a long silence, Ruber finally opened his mouth.
“No matter what I say, it will only sound like an excuse—something unforgivable in your eyes. So…….”
“Then all the more reason to speak honestly. What were you thinking when you kept me alive, and why did you send me to that mansion?”
Ruber’s lips trembled. The son who would not let the truth rest seemed almost cruel to him.
‘No—I made him this way.’
Lucian’s gaze, unmarred by resentment or reproach or hatred, seemed to speak another language altogether.
Face what you’ve done. Don’t turn from your sin any longer.
Ruber surrendered at last. As he always did.
“As you know, twins are a symbol of misfortune. It’s commonly said that they bring ruin to a family, that all manner of calamity follows. But in the Imperial Family, the meaning runs deeper. There is a prophecy: if twins are born to the Imperial House, the gods will be angered and bring down the throne.”
“A prophecy?”
“A prophecy, so it’s been called—though it’s nothing more than words passed down by ancestors. Yet regardless, because of that prophecy, whenever twins were born in the Imperial Family, both children were killed without exception.”
For reasons he couldn’t name, Lucian felt a chill creep through him. He clenched his fists.
“You can see it in our ancestors’ Official Records. Not only the twins themselves, but emperors who slew even the mothers who bore them, and everyone present at the birth—everyone, without exception.”
“……What exactly were they so afraid of?”
“Who knows. I couldn’t tell you. It happened hundreds of years ago.”
Hatred perpetuated without reason proves darker than reason itself. It made Ruber, who had let both Leopold and Lucian live, seem like an outlier.
“Even I was startled when you two were born as twins.”
Ruber found his mind drifting back to the day Serena had delivered the children.

‘Your Majesty! Congratulations! A fine prince you have!’
‘Our deepest felicitations, sire!’
At the sound of the child’s cry and the word “son,” Ruber couldn’t conceal his joy. But it was short-lived…….
‘Ahhhhhhh!’
‘Your Majesty! In all the heavens……!’
When Serena’s scream pierced the air, Ruber’s face went rigid. He demanded to know from the midwife what had happened.
‘There’s… there’s another baby, sire!’
The news struck like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. But there was no time to panic—Serena had to deliver the second child at once.
And so, amid the chaos and horror of all present, Lucian was born.

“I had four brothers, all told. But I later learned that there were two older still, above those four. Yet those brothers…….”
“Were killed because they were twins.”
“……Yes. The one who killed them was the Sixteenth Emperor.”
Julius Odelion. He and Leopold had fallen victim to an attack from unknown assailants, falling into a state like idiocy, and within days, perhaps a month, he died.
Lucian’s only memories of him were from the days before his death and from seeing him laid out at the funeral.
‘And it’s common knowledge that Julius and Ruber had a poor relationship.’
Harry had once given him a rough sketch of the deep rift between father and son.
Indeed, Ruber had shed not a single tear at Julius’s funeral, merely standing through the ceremony with an expression of perfect indifference.
“The moment I held you in my arms, Lucian, terror seized me. More than fear that ruin would befall the throne, I was gripped by dread that the previous emperor would kill you both.”
This answer came as a complete surprise, and Lucian’s lips parted slightly.
“In the end, I decided to treat you as if you’d never been born, and sent you to an ancient, crumbling palace.”
The Imperial Palace was vast, as befitted a dynasty of such long standing, and there were many compounds left abandoned and unused. Ruber had chosen the smallest of these, a place where no one’s feet ever wandered, and left Lucian there.
“After that…… well, as you know, I sought to distance myself from you. If I’d allowed myself to care, I feared I’d grow attached. And moreover, there was the risk that Leopold himself might come to harm.”
Ruber had meant to add that it had been for both their sakes, but it sounded too much like an excuse, so he let the thought die.
“Then why transfer me to the mansion later?”
“……Because you couldn’t stay there forever as you grew.”
Just as Leopold had grown day by day, so too would Lucian. The truth of it was plain as day.
No matter how carefully one hid a child in the crumbling palace, away from all eyes, there were limits.
So he’d decided it better to raise him beyond the palace walls instead.
“At eight years old, I thought you could manage on your own somehow. It was the arrogance of Imperial bloodline—people for whom self-sufficiency has never been a trial.”
“And disguising me as an orphan was…….”
“To blind people’s eyes when I sent you there. That mansion had long carried rumors of being haunted. If I claimed that Imperial bloodline was being offered as a sacrifice to the ghost, no one would think it strange to see your face. And should word leak elsewhere, it would serve as a veil.”
No matter how he altered Lucian’s eyes and hair, his face remained identical to Leopold’s. Surely someone would find it strange to see another face like his.
By creating a story—a tale of sacrifice to a vengeful spirit—he scattered the attention, keeping people from remarking on the twins.
“And perhaps…… perhaps it was the last kindness I could offer. Before I sent you away, I wanted to give you what I could.”
Lucian suddenly remembered the luxurious days before he’d been taken to the mansion.
It was selfish love, clumsily expressed.
Though the question had come at Lia’s urging, Lucian found that in having it answered, he could finally settle the curiosity that had festered since childhood. His heart felt lighter for it.
But only for a moment. Then Lucian caught on to something strange.
“That sounds to me as though sending me there was purely to protect me?”
“……Protect. Can you truly call it that? Lucian, I resent myself for that time. For being cowed by the previous emperor and those around me, I could not cherish you as I should have…….”
“No, that’s not what I meant to say.”
As Ruber fell into brooding, Lucian pulled him back to the present.
“Was there truly no other reason for sending me there?”
“……What are you asking? I confess I don’t follow your meaning.”
Lucian’s mind churned with confusion. According to Lia and Kaiser, the mansion was where the Imperial Family sent criminals as offerings—a place where they were ultimately sacrificed.
Yet Ruber seemed entirely unaware that such things had occurred there.
“……Why that mansion in particular? There must have been other options.”
“Hmm…… I suppose there were others.”
Ruber realized that Lucian was seeking a different answer, and he began to think.
“But there was no better choice. It lay within an Imperial forest, within my sight yet beyond the reach of prying eyes.”
A reasonable answer, yet somehow unsatisfying. Lucian’s head grew heavy with questions.
If Ruber spoke truth, then his being sent to the mansion had been nothing but chance.
‘But then how did the Temple people know I was there?’
Surely Habier and the other priests had sought him out. If Ruber hadn’t sent them, then who had……?
“Come to think of it, when I had the mansion investigated, I found certain oddities.”
At Ruber’s next words, Lucian looked up.
“……Oddities?”
“It was built in the earliest days of the Empire. According to the Official Records, the First Emperor often visited it.”
At the mention of the First Emperor, Lucian’s brows twitched.
‘He appears everywhere.’
When it came to the witch Aria, the First Emperor was a figure who never failed to surface, regardless of where or when.
“But I heard that shortly before the First Emperor passed, there was a massacre at that place.”
At Ruber’s words, Lucian’s breath caught.
“In his final years, the First Emperor changed. He grew angry at trifles, suffered from sleeplessness, and killed so many that the Imperial Palace ran with blood.”
Everything Lucian had learned painted the First Emperor as a sage-king, the great founder of a magnificent empire. Yet now, hearing this, it seemed the great hero was nothing but a madman.
“And before the First Emperor’s death, he slaughtered countless people in that mansion. This is a secret known only to the Imperial Family—no one else knows.”
“Do you know why he killed them?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I can only suppose it was the madness of his final days. In any case, it’s such an ill-omened place that no one has set foot there since the First Emperor’s time. Though very rarely, someone driven by curiosity would venture in—and every single one of them spoke of seeing ghosts. Perhaps the vengeful spirits of those slain by the First Emperor.”
In truth it was Lia who was that ghost, but Lucian could just as easily believe Ruber’s explanation of vengeful spirits.
“……Is it possible no one ever lived there?”
“Lived there?”
“Yes. When I stayed there, I found traces of habitation.”
“Hmm…… I wouldn’t know. When I sent investigators, they did mention the mansion was cleaner than one would expect of an abandoned place.”
Ruber seemed entirely ignorant of the fact that people had lived there. Yet this conversation had made clear that he’d sent Lucian there with no intention of harm.
And that he held some measure of affection for him, however he might deny it…….
“Who knew that I lived in the mansion?”
“Only myself, Serena, Dain, and Duke Sevans. Everyone else who saw you has been…… removed. If word had reached the previous emperor, the consequences would have been dire.”
Among those Ruber named, there was no one Lucian needed to fear. Duke Sevans was wary of him, perhaps, but had never shown hostile intent.
‘If anything, the fact that he silently tolerated my existence for so long makes him an ally.’
Then who had directed Habier to the cellar? The odds seemed greater that it was tied to the Imperial Family than to the Temple’s independent action…….
“Wait—when you mentioned the previous emperor just now, you meant Julius, didn’t you?”
Lucian felt something odd in Ruber’s words. Why did he keep mentioning Julius?
“Julius didn’t know of my existence, then?”
“He was a man who killed even his own twin sons without mercy. If he’d known you existed, he would have killed not only you but Leopold as well.”
As Lucian watched Ruber’s jaw clench at the mention of Julius, his own heart began to race.
For some reason, the moment felt charged with tension, and something in his nature was screaming.
“One final question, if I may. Did Julius…… have any special connection to the Temple?”
“He was closely tied to the Old Faction. Even after ceding the throne, his bonds with the Temple remained firm. That’s why we clashed constantly over Temple matters.”
The Old Faction was currently opposed to the New Faction that Lucian supported, a black magic cult with Habier embedded as a spy.
Until Lucian joined forces with Habier, Sebastian, who led the New Faction, hadn’t known the Old Faction was a black magic nest.
Which meant Ruber didn’t know either…….
‘If…… if my hypothesis is correct.’
This could be the key to everything he’d been searching for.

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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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