The Forgotten Field - Chapter 6

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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 6
It had been less than two weeks since I left the Taren Family Castle and entered the Imperial Palace.
Mother rejoiced that my name had finally been inscribed in the Imperial Family’s genealogy, but I despised being in this unfamiliar place. As Senevir’s attention fixated entirely on renovating the castle, my anxiety deepened into something almost unbearable.
The Imperial Palace was nothing like what Mother had described—it was barren and terrifying. Wherever I went, sharp gazes followed me, and the servants attending to my needs were far colder than those from the Taren Family.
I felt like a child who had lost her way. So whenever the opportunity arose, I would slip away from my chambers and wander near the Separate Palace.
I frequented the Garden in particular, but Senevir had uprooted every flower and tree throughout the castle to erase all traces of the former Empress, leaving the entire Garden in utter desolation.
Rose trees and colorful shrubs had begun to fill the empty spaces at the entrances of the Main Palace and Separate Palace, but the Backyard, where landscaping work remained unfinished, was cluttered with nothing but mounds of earth. Because of this, no one ever visited that place.
Whenever I grew weary of the servants’ whispers and their piercing stares, I would spend hours lost in thought in one corner of the ruined Garden.
That day, too, I had ventured to the Backyard of the Separate Palace to escape the bothersome Nursemaid and the maidservant who insisted on grooming my hair, jabbing my scalp roughly with her sharp comb.
Because of the rain that had begun falling since noon, not a single worker was visible in the Garden. I crouched in a desolate corner of the empty Garden and gazed endlessly at the falling raindrops.
I had been sitting there for some time when I heard a faint whistling sound from somewhere.
Bewildered, I looked around, and as if drawn by something, I moved toward the outer edge of the castle, drenched by the steadily falling rain. Where a massive, ancient tree had stood just this morning, there now gaped a deep Pit.
I approached the towering mound of earth beside it and peered down. A small bird was struggling in the muddy water below, emitting pitiful cries.
‘Did it fall from a tree?’
The bird looked as though it could die at any moment.
Heavy raindrops relentlessly battered its drenched brown body, and thick, tar-like reddish mud clung greedily to its skeletal legs and pathetic wings. The bird’s persistent cries gradually transformed into feeble tremors.
As I knelt and gazed down at the scene, I found myself stepping into the Pit without thinking.
It was a foolish thing to do. Despite my careful steps, the bottom, saturated with rainwater and transformed into a swamp, swallowed my shoes in an instant.
I twisted my body to free my feet, but I lost my balance and slipped into the mud.
As I tumbled forward into the puddle, I felt bitter mud seeping between my lips and irritably shook my head.
The green dress the Nursemaid had recently made for me was ruined, and mud clung to my neatly braided hair.
Frustration surged within me.
I pushed myself up and muttered a small curse.
What do I care about some bird? I’ve done something stupid for nothing….
As I grumbled and tried to climb out of the Pit, I heard the feeble cry again. It was so faint that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been listening carefully, but to me, it sounded like the bird was screaming.
I took a few more steps across the black puddle. Then I saw a shabby brown wing submerged in the mud and a small head drooping limply.
‘…Is the bird dead?’
As I carefully picked up the young bird, I felt its tiny, waterlogged body faintly pulsing. It was still alive.
I cradled its lukewarm body in both hands and breathed warm air onto it. The limp bird opened its small brown beak and flapped its skeletal wings pitifully, struggling desperately to survive.
Watching it, something tightened in my chest.
I didn’t know what emotion this was. I couldn’t understand why the sight of a young bird—one that had lost its home and been abandoned by its mother, struggling in the mud—taking refuge in my hands caused my heart to ache.
I carefully cradled the bird and held it against the warmest part of my neck. Then I looked up at the steep, slippery muddy slope with helpless eyes.
The increasingly heavy raindrops had made the mound of earth even softer. I tried taking a few steps to test it, but it seemed impossible to climb out. To escape from here, I would have to crawl up on all fours like an animal.
I clenched my lips. I couldn’t abandon the small bird I had just rescued, nor could I cast aside my dignity as a princess and crawl through the mud like livestock.
So I stood motionless for a long time, drenched by the soft, cold raindrops.
That was when a boy emerged from the misty, pale rain.
He was very tall and wore a black robe like those worn by monks, with a hood pulled over his head. But through the veil of the pouring rain, I could clearly see his pale, luminous blue eyes. They were strikingly beautiful.
“What are you doing down there?”
The Blue-Eyed Boy bent toward me and asked. His voice was cool and detached, at odds with his delicate face that still retained traces of youth. I felt a shiver run down my spine.
At the time, I thought it was merely from the cold. But looking back now, I realize that in the moment I heard that voice, I had dimly sensed it—that this boy, with his indifferent gaze looking down upon me, would push my life into hellish torment….
Had Talia recognized the true nature of that distant sensation in that moment, she would have cast aside the small bird gasping pitifully in her grasp, drowning it in the murky water, and crawled across the mud on all fours like a pig devoid of shame or dignity—fleeing far, far away from the Blue-Eyed Boy, erasing even the memory of ever having seen him from her mind entirely.
But the eight-year-old Talia could not have foreseen that the boy who appeared in the rain would become her undoing, her despair incarnate.
And so she gazed up at him, her voice sharp and barbed as always.
“Can’t you see? I’ve fallen into the Pit and can’t climb out.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed, as though he wished to ask why she had ventured into such a place in the first place.
But rather than voice the question, he descended into the Pit without hesitation, his well-tailored trousers and expensive leather boots muddying without a second thought.
Talia stared at him in astonishment, unprepared for such an action from a boy whose cold, austere face seemed incapable of bleeding even a single drop.
He walked across the murky water that had become a swamp, each step deliberate and assured. Up close, he appeared even more slender than when she had gazed up at him from below—a full head taller than herself.
With long, graceful strides, the boy approached her and extended one hand.
“Take it.”

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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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