The Forgotten Field - Chapter 167

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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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Chapter 167
Transparent tears drenched Aria’s face.
I gazed down at her with emotionless eyes before kneeling on one knee before her.
“As you said, I cannot understand your pain in the slightest. Yet I remember the despair of a child left with nothing to lean upon.”
Light gradually returned to eyes that had been hollow as a black void.
I slipped my hand inside my coat and withdrew a handkerchief, then gently wiped away her tears from her wet cheeks as she had once done for me.
“For the sake of the Crown Prince and the Princess, please steel your heart.”
The Empress’s face became marred with guilt and shame.
The woman, her gaunt shoulders trembling faintly, let her head fall weakly.
“Forgive me. I should not have spoken to you that way.”
I gently patted the Empress’s shoulders as she sobbed like a small child.
Shortly after, I carefully lifted the exhausted Empress, who had lost consciousness, and laid her upon the bed. Stepping out quietly, I saw Gareth leaning against the wall in the corridor.
“Follow me.”
The boy, his eyes bloodshot and gleaming ominously, suddenly grabbed and dragged me along.
I silently followed the Crown Prince.
“Look there.”
Gareth pulled me up to the watchtower connected to the Main Palace and pointed outside while pressing himself against the railing.
I came to stand beside the boy.
In the Retreat Palace Garden where the Emperor rested, a man and woman were engaged in a secret rendezvous.
I could easily recognize the Emperor’s dark hair and his broad, angular face. A man with disheveled hair cascading over muscular shoulders lounged in a chair, his hands groping at a woman’s waist.
I studied the slender woman leaning against the Emperor. Beyond her pale, long hair and an oddly balanced physique, I could discern nothing remarkable about her.
What was it about this woman that compelled the Empire’s Emperor to break his oath before God and abandon his honor?
As I sent a questioning gaze, the woman, as if sensing my stare, lifted her eyes.
In that instant, I felt the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. My skin grew cold as if I stood before something profoundly dangerous.
The woman, staring up at me, narrowed her eyes and offered a mocking smile. Then she seized the Emperor’s hair and pulled roughly, handling him as though he were a worthless possession rather than the most exalted being in the Empire.
In that arrogant grip, the ruler who had seemed forged of steel crumbled like a sandcastle. Two bodies, vital and bursting with life, overlapped beneath the bright sunlight, and wet lips clung together with ravenous hunger.
“Filthy beasts.”
Gareth muttered like a snarling animal.
“A week ago, he brought that woman to the Retreat Palace and started this depravity. And that whore dared to set her filthy feet in the Empress Palace Garden and insult my mother.”
Bloodshot veins bulged in the boy’s eyes as he glared at the entangled pair.
He gripped the railing tightly with both hands and spat out his words.
“That’s why Mother drank poison. Because of that filthy harlot.”
Gareth, trembling violently, kicked over a wardrobe in a fit of rage. Then he began trampling everything scattered across the floor indiscriminately.
The explosion of fury only ended after every object in the room lay shattered.
“I will become Emperor without fail. Then I’ll force that woman to her knees before me and pour the same poison Mother drank down her throat.”
The boy, breathing heavily amid the devastation, turned his tear-soaked eyes toward me.
“It’s your role to drag that prostitute before me and make her kneel. I will become the Emperor of the Empire, and you will become the ruler of the Eastern Territories and my closest confidant. Let us repay the humiliation Mother suffered.”
I turned my head and looked down past the railing again. Over the image of the two intertwined in broad daylight, the figure of Bernadette, growing ever more gaunt, overlapped.
She was the woman who had rescued me from a place no different than a prison and cared for me like a son for seven years.
Why could I not feel the same fierce rage that Gareth felt?
All he could feel was compassion for the Empress and revulsion at the vile acts they were committing.
Gareth seized my sleeve and yanked it urgently.
“You’ll do it, won’t you, brother?”
Barcas lowered his gaze to meet Gareth’s unstable eyes.
Though I could not share his emotions, I was acutely aware that I owed the Empress a debt I could never repay.
I reached out and gently smoothed Gareth’s disheveled topknot. Just as I was about to speak, the young boy’s form suddenly crumbled like sand, and the chaotic landscape surrounding us was engulfed in murky, dull colors.
The next moment, I stood in a dimly lit corridor shrouded in darkness.
Faint sobs echoed from somewhere. When I turned my head, I saw Handmaidens wiping away tears.
One of them offered me a respectful greeting.
“You’ve arrived.”
The Handmaiden’s voice was hoarse.
“Please come inside. Her Majesty has been waiting all this time.”
I immediately passed through the corridor and stepped into the Empress’s Chamber.
The room, brightly illuminated by candlelight, held Marquis Orisstein, his relatives, and the High Priest. Their dark eyes fixed upon me before returning to the bed placed in the center of the room.
I studied their faces for a moment, then slowly crossed the chamber.
“Barcas!”
A small girl lying on the bed threw herself toward me.
I wrapped the young Princess in one arm as the Empress had taught me long ago, and gently patted her back.
The girl wrapped her slender arms around my neck and shed hot, wet tears.
“Barcas, Mother is….”
I stroked the hair of the girl who could not finish her words and gazed down at the bed.
The Empress, who had become unrecognizably gaunt in recent months, offered me a hollow smile. She looked so lifeless that it was impossible to believe she was only thirty-one years old.
She reached out her skeletal hand.
“Come here.”
I set Aila down and knelt on one knee before the bed. The girl immediately rushed to her twin brother and embraced him desperately. Gareth held his sister tightly in both arms, fighting back tears with all his might.
I glanced at him briefly, then turned my gaze back to the Empress. She caressed my cheek with her ice-cold hand.
“You’ve grown even taller in these months. When you’re fully grown, you’ll be as tall as your father.”
“….”
“Strange, isn’t it? Though your appearance bears little resemblance to the Khan People, whenever I look at you, I’m reminded of the Eastern Steppes where I once rode horses as a child. Perhaps that’s why I kept you by my side.”
The woman’s face, which had worn a faint smile, suddenly became expressionless.
The woman, whose eyes were so dark they appeared almost black, gazed at me quietly before slowly lowering her hand.
“I didn’t summon you to ramble on like this. I called you here urgently because there’s one thing I wish to ask of you.”
“…I await your command.”
The woman did not speak easily.
After struggling internally for some time, she looked back at her children standing beside the bed. Only then, as if her resolve had solidified, did she speak in a firm voice.
“Protect my children.”
I furrowed my brow.
I could not understand why she would make such a request.
She was a member of the Sierkan Clan, and the twins were of the family’s blood. I had a duty to protect them both.
I grasped the back of her hand and replied in a measured tone.
“I need not be asked. I intend to protect you both to the fullest extent of my power. It is the will of the Grand Ducal House as well….”
“I am not asking for your intention, Barcas Laedgo Sierkan. I am demanding an oath.”
She seized his hand with all her strength.
“Will you swear by the name of God that you will protect Gareth and Aila until your dying breath?”
He gazed down at the Empress in silence.
What she demanded transcended the obligations he ought to bear as the future Grand Duke.
A covenant staked upon an entire lifetime.
Knowing the weight of such a vow, I hesitated to answer carelessly.
Yet even that hesitation struck me as peculiar. Was this not a life I had merely continued because breath still filled my lungs?
For the past seven years, I had felt neither joy nor even sorrow or anger. What value lay in mechanically repeating the motions of eating and sleeping, that I should hesitate to answer?
I turned my gaze toward Aila and Gareth.
The twins stared at me with frightened eyes. Protecting them did not seem so difficult a task. Was it not something I would do regardless?
Having resolved myself, I spoke calmly to the woman who had pulled me from the abyss only to bind me anew.
“By the name of God, I swear that I will protect you both until my final breath.”

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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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