47 The Choice 🔴

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Volume 3 – The Choice

1

And just then, as Ozdin was about to stop Laud, he halted altogether.

Vendel clasped his hand together tightly and held his breath. Zorg clung to Vendel’s calf.

“Oh, my God!”

Laud ran towards Leshak awkwardly, grasping a sword that didn’t even fit in his hand.

“Your Majesty! Stand back!”

Shouted Sidris as he drew his sword.

The cramped entrance was stifling.

The second prince of Kemened was a young man who seemed to have never taken an hour of knightly lessons. It wasn’t that he intended to kill Leshak but to kill himself.

It was obvious that he wasn’t threat enough to snicker at.

However, Leshak had a different idea.

Kagang!-

He didn’t step aside and let Sidris deal with Laud.

Standing there, blocking the men behind, he took on Laud’s sword.

The point of Laud’s sword came to a stop right over Leshak’s heart. That’s because Leshak stopped the blade by squeezing it between his bare hands, with some of it placed on top.

“… …!”

Laud’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. His hand which was holding the sword was shaking.

“Radan.”

Leshak called out to Radan.

Radan closed his eyes as hard as he could.

“Ma…… jesty.”

Blood was dripping down Leshak’s hand. The scarlet sound gave him goosebumps across his pure white skin.

“Do you want to kill me?”

Radan shook his head.

“N……No. No, Your Majesty.”

“Do you want to kill me in order to save your brother?”

Tears leaked out and stained the corners of his eyes. Radan pursed his lips and bit down, then shook his head.

“No…..I don’t.”

“Can you choose one over the other?”

His heart split into pieces and acted as a net. And the net imprisoned Radan so that he could not move his limbs.

His tears fell despite that. No matter how painful it was, the answer was fixed.

Radan lowered his head.

“……Yes, Your Majesty.”

It was the answer Leshak wanted.

He laughed briefly. An unstable, imperfect, absurdly intense laugh.

“Then it’s alright.”

Leshak pulled the blade away and threw it to the ground. The smile that spread across his lips contrasted strangely with his bloody hands.

He said with a giant smile,

“Come here, Radan.”

If you’re reading this anywhere other than FoolishtranslationsS.wordpress.com, it was stolen from the translator’s website. Reading this anywhere other than the translator’s website ensures that the translator may never translate any other works. Thank you.

2

“Radan, no!”

Ozdin stumbled to his feet and grabbed Radan’s hand.

“Let go of that hand!”

Sidris thrust the blade toward Ozdin’s throat. Vendel, Hadir, and Laud were also brushed by the sword.

Zorg was screeching and running back and forth between Ozdin and Vendel but no one paid him any heed. There was nothing one little monkey could do.

“I can not.”

Ozdin grabbed Radan’s fingers hard enough to break them.

“Don’t go, Radan.”

His voice trembled desperately.

“Don’t go. I can make you happy, many times more than he can. I will pile all the riches of the world before you. I swear.”

Radan held back a groan with all his might. He thought that he shouldn’t show how much this was hurting him.

“Don’t go.”

Instead, Radan had to say something hurtful.

“Please, leave me here.”

“No. No matter how much you try to fool yourself, he is the Crown Prince of Ibeden. He can’t do anything for you. All he can do is lock you in a room for the rest of your life and treat you like a mistress. You will have to live in hiding without a name. No one wants a life like that, Radan.”

“I want to stay.”

“If you go to Amboia, you can be free. You can live any life you want. You will know a happiness that you never dreamed of, Radan.”

Radan knew that what he said was all true.

What it would cost to stay by Leshak’s side, and he could also see that the life he would have in Amboia would be completely different.

But he also knew that his heart wouldn’t change.

He didn’t need happiness if that was the price of staying by Leshak’s side.

“Leave me here.”

“No. I……can’t. I can’t, Radan.”

“Leave me here.”

“I can’t. No,”

“That’s enough.”

Leshak’s voice cut between the two of them.

At the same time as Leshak, whose patience had been obliterated, moved his feet, Leshak’s men split in two onto both sides of him to make way.

Leshak walked over and held out his hand to Radan.

“I can’t allow any more than that. Come here, Radan.“

“No,”

Ozdin held fast to Radan, but Radan reached out to Leshak’s hand first.

Radan found Leshak at once as though he knew that his hand was there.

Once their fingers entangled, they never unraveled, as though that were their natural state.

“It must……”

What was let loose, was Ozdin’s grip, which had refused to yield Radan’s hand.

“……not,”

“Your Majesty.”

Since when was Radan embraced by Leshak Caliph? Since when did Leshak Caliph hold Radan tightly?

It felt as though his world was being torn apart.

From a world he had no doubts about, to a world that would forever be incomprehensible.

Leshak held the sides of Radan’s face and brought their foreheads together. Radan lifted his heels to meet him.

Leshak whispered, “You couldn’t keep your promise, again.” Radan replied, “Your hand is wet.”

He said in response, “The moon has gone,” and he asked in return, “Are you hurt again?”

When he said, “I’m not sure I can wait until the next moon rises,” Radan rubbed his cheek against his wounded hand.

Ozdin couldn’t understand.

Sidris twisted his blade low, “Get down on your knees. There is nowhere else for you to go,” Ozdin didn’t hear a word he said.

Ozdin shook his head.

The blade grazed the skin beneath his chin drawing blood, but he didn’t even notice.

“You……you are my destiny. I didn’t come all the way here to give you over you to him. I came here because I believed in the prophecy, that you were my destiny!”

Ozdin shouted to Hadir the Prophet.

“Isn’t that so, Prophet Hadir! Isn’t this different from your prophecy?! The prophecies haven’t been fulfilled yet! Isn’t that so?!”

Siddris automatically turned his head.

“Prophet ……?”

There was a blind man among the group from the Gett who was kneeling on the floor.

The prophet of the Imperial Palace who was exiled for false prophecies, and was blinded on orders of the Emperor.

“You’re the prophet from the Imperial Palace?”

Even now, Veroz was wandering somewhere outside the borders of Ibeden trying to find him. Yet here he was.

The Prophet Hadir raised his black pit-like gaze.

Leshak walked toward him holding Radan. Hadir faced Leshak with eyes that could not see.

“What did you see with your eyes?”

Asked Leshak. Hadir licked his lips slowly.

“……something that has to be.”

When asked what his fate would someday be, Ozdin had once answered just like that.

“It’s something inevitable. Something can’t be denied no matter what the cost. Isn’t that what fate is?”

Hadir looked like a very different person than the one that forced Radan to remove his blindfold and shouted for him to open his eyes.

At that moment, he was the vengeful man who had been brought to ruin and had his eyes burned out. He didn’t tell any lies. What was revealed was real! As he saw, Prince Leshak would follow that path and know death from the serpent’s bite.

All of it, the fact that the two met without knowing each other, the fact that they met and formed an uncontrollable attachment, on one side the Crown Prince of the Empire, and on the other, the abandoned Prince of Kemened.

It was fate, it was meant to be.

However, although Kemened’s blue-eyed serpent did bite the Caliph’s heir, he failed to kill him.

That was also destiny.

No matter how much he wished for it, and no matter how hard he pushed toward it, it could never come true.

So it was destiny. But it was the second destiny that he saw.

Hadir turned his head toward Ozdin and said as though sighing.

“No matter what is done, the Blue Snake will not kill the blood of the Caliph. It is your destiny and mine.”

Ozdin denied it.

“No……it’s not. It’s impossible. Why are you saying this now!?”

Hadir’s words continued.

“I, the Prophet Hadir, had a dream in which the Prince of Ibeden was bitten by a snake and met his death. The Prophet’s dream revealed it too soon. I prophesied, and the Emperor of Ibeden made me disappear. I couldn’t acknowledge it. A prophecy is a prophecy because it must happen. The revelation my eyes saw is something that must inevitably happen.”

The blind prophet then had more dreams, as though they were compensation for his lost eyes.

They were all about the Blue Snake and the Caliph’s bloodline.

The Caliph’s bloodline was consistently bitten by the Blue Snake, but the results were always slightly different. Sometimes there was a death, sometimes there was not.

The Prophet Hadir was confused.

A true prophet did not see false revelations. Everything the Prophet saw was a fact that will happen.

He realized it in a recurring dream.

That what he sees is not always the future. He was looking back and forth between the mixed-up messy past and the future.

He did not know what was in the past and what was to come. He didn’t know why a Prophet would see the past instead of the future. That fact made it unbearable.

So he broke the Prophet’s greatest taboo. He, himself was trying to fulfill his own prediction.

He forced Ozdin Gett to meet the Blue Snake. He borrowed his power and hid in Cythern’s basement. He pulled at the only string he could move, the Blue Snake.

Now, as long as the Blue Snake kills Crown Prince Leshak, the prophecy is complete.

However,

What went wrong?

Prince Leshak did not die. It was like in another dream that he saw a few times and was confused by.

Was the revelation he first saw indeed going to happen, or has it happened in the past?

Was the Emperor’s gouging out his eyes a merited punishment? Could it be that he, a true prophet, prophesied a lie?

Ruin covered Hadir’s face.

“The prophecy has come true. My prophecy was not wrong, it was just at a different time. It must have been a prophecy of the distant past.”

Hadir stretched his neck and groaned.

“Therefore, there is only one prophetic taboo that I broke. Cut my throat, Lord of Ibeden.”

Hadir saw many things beforehand, but he did not see Leshak after he survived. So he didn’t know how Leshak would treat him.

“Let’s slow down.”

Leshak was not interested in punishing false prophecies.

It was not something to be postponed for his subordinates to do, but it was not something that was urgent.

Leshak felt good now, like a madman. Radan eventually chose him. He walked to him on his own two feet, putting his brother’s life behind him. The rest was insignificant.

The madman from the Gett who caused him to gnash his teeth was now just like a speck of dust. The same was true of the Second Prince of Kemened, who survived till the bitter end.

Besides, they were still useful.

Leshak said that if the doctor saw his hand, he would say he needed treatment right away, so he pulled Radan along with his hand which could function fine.

“Keep each one separate. Keep an eye on him. Do not let him end his life without my permission.”

His voice was unnecessarily sweet.

Leshak turned Radan’s shoulders around.

“Shall we go back?”

The fatigue that accumulated from the battle, which had lasted all night, weighed heavily on his head. But even that felt good.

Because it meant it was time to sleep.

Leshak put his chin on the back of Radan’s tiny head. His breath penetrated straight through his hair.

“When we get back. put me to bed.”

Radan didn’t answer, but Leshak took the trembling downy hairs on the back of his neck as an answer.

It was the beginning of a day that was not dictated by prophecy, so it was one that was unknown.

3

Thunk-

Light leaked in following the sound.

Laud barely lifted his teary eyelids.

The door was opening.

“… … !”

Laud ran to the door.

Because the shackles were binding his feet, it was only his mind that flew ahead, but the reality was that he had to crawl on his knees after walking a couple of steps.

“N,Now let me out……,”

Thunk-

Instead of an answer, a bowl was placed on the floor.

The sliding door closed again.

There was only a chill, and a slight fishy smell in the basement where only the darkness remained.

Laud groped blindly on the floor for the bowl.

There was no knife and fork, only some dried meat on a blunt wooden plate. The fishy smell was coming from the dried meat.

The hunger made him seize the meat. However, Laud couldn’t swallow the fishy smell.

“Oghh!”

A few pieces of meat that he’d swallowed crawled back up his throat.

Laud spat his sick out of his empty stomach and began to cry aloud.

“Please…Please let me out…”

How long had it been?

Rattle-

The door opened.

Laud now felt pain in the slightest light. He covered his eyes with his hand as the door opened.

Thunk-

A bowl was placed on the floor.

Laud stopped trying to stand and walk. He found it easier to crawl on the floor now that he was shackled anyway.

Laud fumbled on the floor for the bowl. He picked up what was in the bowl with his hand quite naturally.

It was the dried meat this time again. Laud chewed the familiar taste, and swallowed it. He knew that the longer he chewed, the more salivated the meat would become and the softer it got, and if he swallowed it quickly because he was hungry, he would vomit it back up.

He was munching on the dried meat.

Klang, Klunk!-

“… …”

Laud cocked his head.

The whole large door was opening, not just the side door in order to push in the bowl.

“……huh”

Laud didn’t know what to do as the light poured in, so he closed his eyes tightly. He dropped the meat he was eating and covered his head with both hands. His crouched body looked very small.

“It’s only been a week.”

“… …”

Laud heard someone muttering. It was familiar. Laud carefully lowered his hand and looked up with his eyes.

“Ah…?”

The silver hair with the light behind it was dazzling.

Prince Leshak stood before him.

“Uhh, uh.”

Laud hesitated and retracted his body. His face, which was stained with fear all over, had been pale for the past week.

A drop of saliva flowed over her bruised bloodless lips.

“Ah, ahhh……”

Laud cried.

“I wondered if this would have been enough of a lesson, Your Highness.”

”Those were Sidris’ words.

“Is that so?”

The uninspiring reply seemed to mean that it was still far away.

Leshak had no reason to sympathize with Laud. Affixing one’s life to your own and forgiving were very different things.

This time, Abadd spoke.

“Yes. Wouldn’t it be troublesome if he becomes more broken in here? He has to look fine on the outside to be installed at the coronation ceremony.”

“Ah, that’s right.”

Leshak went to the farthest corner and approached the trembling man.

Laud stammered out.

“D,Don’t……..come…… k,kee… keep away……… go…… go away……”

Laud knew.

To Leshak, he was the filthiest and ugliest being in the world. He hated him.

Tears poured out.

I couldn’t figure out why he thought that way. He wasn’t that bad.

“Sp, spare…me……help me..e… Lord, don’t…… don’t kill…… don’t kill……”

Laud was crying, and barely spitting out the words to save him. From the moment he was able to chew and swallow the fishy dried meat, Laud’s pride also melted away in his stomach, without a trace.

“Sa,save me..save……,”

Laud begged on his knees.

Leshak looked at him without any emotion.

“Unfortunately, you have work to do.”

“… …?”

Laud lifted his bowed head. As Leshak spoke in a flat tone, as though he were talking about something mundane.

“Be the king of Kemened.”

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