“……Kun?”

Cloe murmured without realizing it.

Inyeong seen through the intense flames was familiar. The person who appeared unexpectedly right in front of her was none other than Kun.

“Cloe!”

She turned her head towards the sound of the man’s voice. However, due to the roaring flames, the interior was barely visible. Kun, too, was struggling to locate Cloe’s position.

Amidst the busy footsteps around her, she also became impatient. Shouting, she squeezed out her voice, demanding rescue.

“Here… I’m here!”

A sound of footsteps abruptly stopping from a short distance away was heard. Since her voice reached him, it was evidence that she needed to shout again to precisely convey her location.

“Here…! Cough, cough!”

As Cloe opened her mouth again to shout, a sharp pain struck her throat. It felt as if she were being stabbed with a knife.

The desperate cries eventually subsided. The urgent plea for rescue lingered lonely within her mouth.

If she couldn’t speak, she had to make some other noise. Desperation gripped Cloe, and she recklessly knocked down a chair.

Thunk, thunk, thunk!

With each collision, the worn-out legs of the chair began to shatter. Subsequently, the chair she had been sitting on collapsed into the flames.

“Ugh…!”

The scorching heat awaited her, seeming as if it would engulf her. Sensing the threat to her life, the frightened Cloe gasped for breath.

Her body stiffened in the strong wind, and there was no way for her to signal her whereabouts. The oil-laden flames continued to grow, and at this rate, the situation could become dangerous for Kun as well.

Then, a large figure approached her. Gradually getting closer, two eyes, thicker and more intense than the crimson flames, gradually overlapped with Cloe’s vision.

“Cloe.”

Kun.

It was truly Kun.

The man who had somehow found the cabin had miraculously found Cloe within it.

After glimpsing Cloe’s state, he frowned but chose silence, given the circumstances. He then knelt down, systematically breaking the ropes entwined around her body.

Cloe also acted accordingly to the situation. In response to his questions about how she got here or how he found out, she silenced them.

Finally liberated, Cloe’s gaze met his outstretched hand.

“Let’s go back.”

Staring at the extended hand, a sudden flashback to a moment in the past played in her mind.

‘Get up, Princess.’

‘…….’

‘Let’s go home.’

The hand reached out to me as I foolishly lay there. It was a rough hand guiding her as if her side were home.

“Let’s go home, Cloe.”

She, now free, took his outstretched hand. It seemed like it was time to go home, as his words implied.

With his arm around her, Kun gracefully stood up.
Afterwards, he turned his head to find the path back with Cloe tucked into his chest. The cabin couldn’t be navigated as it was collapsing due to the flames, so he couldn’t go back the way he came.

However, it wasn’t an option to just stand there recklessly. He decided to move to a place with fewer obstacles and less fire.

As he took a step forward into the scorching heat that seemed to burn his flesh, a scream echoed.

“Kun!”

A furious scream reverberated.

“Kun Freihed, you son of a bxxch!”

It came from Cedric, sitting on the opposite side.

“Where do you think you’re going? Don’t go, I sacrificed my life here for you. Sacrificed a noble life for the sake of ruining your life! For your despair, for your downfall, I did it!”

Cedric’s face, denying the overturned situation, was truly stained with frustration and gloom.

The victory was within his grasp. But at the moment he longed for, what awaited him was a sad reversal. It ruthlessly shattered the anticipated victory, brutally breaking the long-held hopes.

In the end, Cedric faced a miserable situation with nothing but defeat and loss.

Cedric, claiming to want to live, struggled on the chair, but the ropes firmly tied earlier stubbornly held him.

He, like Cloe, fiercely knocked down the chair. However, Cedric’s chair, recently obtained in the village, showed no sign of breaking.

“Ah, ah, darn! Y-you bxxch! Don’t go, don’t leave! Empress, we have to wish for that jerk’s misfortune, that’s what we have to do!”

Cedric, sensing misfortune, raved. His eyes, bursting with blood vessels, widened, and he stared at Cloe.

Kun, who had remained unresponsive throughout, finally turned his gaze to the back. Glancing at his wailing younger brother, he turned around again with a firm attitude, disregarding Cedric’s attempts at rebellion.

The direction of the searching head occasionally changed. Finally, he seemed to have found the way out and began moving steadily. A resolute attitude treating Cedric’s resistance behind him as nonexistent.

As he gradually moved away, a panicked Cedric shouted as if pleading.

“B-br, brother? Are you really going? Are you going to kill me…? Th-this isn’t right. If you’re taking that woman, I should go too!”

It seemed like, given the distorted plan, he was willing to abandon his life.

Kun, too, did not respond.