188. First Snow

2024.04.05.

After wringing out the blood-stained cloak over and over again, Clade wrapped it tightly around Yuan and pulled her close beside the campfire.

Even that small movement caused blood to drip steadily from her trembling wounds.

Each time the hilt of the black sword pierced his vision, Clade sank deeper into endless despair.

“Don’t die…….”

His voice was half breath. A creaking sound, like an ungreased machine, poured onto Yuan’s face as he held her.

He rubbed the side of her ear, marked clearly with streaks of blood, and embraced her broken body, shattered beyond repair.

“Don’t die, please…….”

His voice trembled pathetically.

In response to that desperate plea,

her wet eyelids fluttered, then blinked open, revealing dark pupils.

Clade quickly gripped her cheek, struggling to meet her gaze.

Her black eyes, wandering aimlessly through the air for a while, twisted slightly before focusing, blurred, on his face beneath her damp golden hair.

“Where is Igor?”

Her faint voice was as weak as a gentle breeze slipping through a narrow crack.

Yet the name that escaped her lips struck Clade’s ears with perfect clarity.

“Is the Emperor dead?”

With dreamy eyes, as if wandering through a trance, she kept asking whether the Emperor had died.

Clade could not answer. He only tightened his arms around her.

After muttering for some time, Yuan’s voice gradually filled with a strange, gurgling sound.

Clade knew all too well what that sound meant.

He had heard it before—just before Alexei died, and just before Mount Leb Rev died.

Clade began gasping harder than Yuan, whose breathing was already ragged.

Yuan stared at his eyes, sharp with bloodshot veins, then suddenly jerked her body as if waking abruptly from a dream.

Like someone trying to flee, she dug her fingernails into the arms holding her and pushed against his thighs and the frozen ground with her frail legs.

As her small, wave-like movements grew more violent, her panicked black eyes fixed on the hilt of the sword—worn with fingerprints, yet still exquisitely antique—embedded in her chest, perhaps in unbearable pain.

She froze, holding her breath for a moment, then contorted her face.

No. No.

She must not die in front of Clade.

She must not die before him.

Why, why exactly……!

The moment the spear-like blade had been hurled into her chest flooded into her mind like a tidal wave.

Her numbed mind, staring blankly at the footprints driven backward by that immense force.

And Clade, shouting her name in that instant, choosing not to kill the Emperor but instead throwing himself toward her.

Thick tears streamed down her wet cheeks with every blink.

Only then did Yuan realize it wasn’t a dream. She bit her lip, fighting back her tears.

Clade, unable to answer her question about Igor’s death. And herself, collapsed against his chest, drenched in hot water.

Likewise, Clade—soaked, bare-chested in this freezing winter—was sharing his body heat with her.

He had abandoned over ten years of vengeance, plunging into ruin alongside Yuan, who had already been mortally wounded and had no chance of survival.

“Why.”

Her voice failed her. Hoarse and choked, it came out like retching—no longer her own voice, as if she had wept for nights on end.

“Why did you do it, why……!”

“Don’t speak. Just wait a little. You mustn’t move.”

He answered, pressing firmly on her chest.

“You should’ve killed him. You should’ve killed that man. Instead of me, who’s already dying, you should’ve gone after him.”

“Please, don’t talk. Please…….”

“I won’t die in front of you. I won’t, I won’t die in front of you……!”

Her voice spilled out like the whimper of a dying wild animal.

“You won’t die.”

Struggling to speak through a dull, crushing pain as if a house had been dropped onto her chest, Yuan looked up at his face—pulling her closer the more she tried to push away—and fell silent for a moment.

“You absolutely won’t die. I swear I’ll never let you die, you.”

Tears streamed from Clade’s eyes, murmuring like a fanatic worshipping a demon, and fell onto Yuan’s chin.

For a moment, Yuan thought they were droplets falling from his soaked golden hair.

“Don’t die. Don’t die, please. It’s all my fault…….”

“Clade…….”

“If you die, I won’t forgive you. I’ll never see you again. So don’t die. Don’t die, please.”

Tears, round like glass beads, swelled and fell without hesitation, streaming down his cheeks and endlessly cascading onto Yuan’s chin and neck.

Stunned into silence, she forgot her pain at the sight of his tears—tears she had never seen before.

Yet, contrary to his desperate wish, Yuan’s eyes, fixed on him for a long moment, wavered unsteadily, as if about to roll back.

The more desperately Clade pleaded, the tighter he held her, as if trying to grasp someone slipping further away.

Yuan’s breath broke and sputtered several times, then faintly continued.

Blood streamed once more from her damp ear, small nose, and bloodless lips before she could even try to stop it.

“……Let me keep my promise.”

The woman, briefly quiet in his arms, strained to keep her closing eyes open and whispered.

“The promise… that I’d never die in front of you… let me keep it…….”

Her mind, full of despair and confusion, froze cold.

The plea that had spilled out in regret and apology, without time to think, abruptly stopped.

His drenched violet eyes hardened, staring at the dying woman.

His mind, which had been still, now flipped through memories like pages helplessly opening in a strong wind.

The moment he had been excited like a teenage boy. The gift he had wished for—half sentimental, half sorrowful.

The only thing he had ever wanted from his wife, who had arrived uninvited, yet eventually became someone he naturally fell asleep beside.

The twisted man, who had witnessed countless deaths that others might experience only once in a lifetime, had carelessly spoken those words without knowing his wife was dying.

The promise he had emphasized over and over, every time he inflicted endless wounds after their separation……

His soaked face twisted as if being crushed. The agonized groans were now just breaths releasing regret and self-blame that served no purpose.

Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die, please.

He trembled at his own helplessness, repeating only the same word.

The sight of the frail woman, shrinking like Oliver, begging to die alone somewhere beyond his sight, was more agonizing and painful than having a red-hot iron skewer driven into his heart.

It was all his doing.

Her pale, trembling white lips asked,

Why.

Why did you come to me?

Why, instead of revenge, did you abandon your vengeance to save your wife—your useless wife, wounded by a blade and falling into ruin,

a wife who wouldn’t live long even if saved?

Why did you turn your back on your enemy to reach out with those calloused hands, hardened from over ten years of suffering,

just to grasp that pale hand?

Did you not even think of what would come after, shielding jagged rocks jutting from a steep cliff with your own back as you cried out in agony the moment your fingertips touched?

“…….”

Instead of a voice that wouldn’t come, he pulled her closer.

Her black eyes, struggling to see his face more clearly, repeatedly gained and lost focus.

“I love you.”

He had just barely managed to mutter “don’t die” as if clinging to fading light, but when the word “love” slipped from the woman who had only murmured “why,” his face flushed deeply.

“I truly love you so much, Clade.”

Yuan Pelliese whispered, gazing steadily at his flushed face, struggling to breathe.

Alexei Euphris’s last words had been the same.

So had Mount Leb Rev’s.

Though the curse-like agony that had tormented him for over ten years had momentarily vanished, he was still haunted by nightmares.

Most often, they replayed the day he heard his mother’s death, the day he watched his father pass, the day he fled alone from the black mansion leaving Apollini behind, the day he returned to hear of Apollini’s murder, and the day Igor Euphris’s black sword split his body in half.

But after Mount Leb Rev’s death, certain moments began appearing more frequently and intensely in his nightmares.

Alexei’s final words—his voice drenched in tears, telling his son “I love you” after losing his wife.

The repeated last words of his second father, Marquis Mount Leb Rev, who had stayed by his side his entire life, only wishing for his happiness—“I love you.”

“…….”

And his own image, failing to say those words of love in return, even at the very end.

He had never even realized he should have said it to his father. To his uncle, he had known, but memories had choked his throat, preventing him from speaking.

In his dreams, the foolish, idiotic Clade Euphris, unable to properly say those words even in sleep, was the protagonist of his nightmares.

That excruciating regret—never having properly said “I love you” before they died—now shattered his vision into blinding white.

Her bare, damp shoulders, trying to firmly support his completely broken self, eventually collapsed helplessly, trembling.

The wave of defeat and despair climbing up his wounded back made him shiver.

He knew what he needed to say.

And at the same time, he knew what words he must absolutely never utter.

He glared at her dark eyes, flickering like a candle about to go out, with hatred.

His bloodshot eyes and trembling lips moved uncontrollably.

Someone screamed inside his mind, shouting that he must never say that word—but it was too late to stop.

“……I love you.”

Like a dam bursting after overflowing, a sobbing voice poured out.

“I love you. I love you…….”

I love you, Yuan. I love you. I was wrong. I’m the bad one. I’ll take the punishment. Please don’t leave like this. Please don’t die. Please don’t die like this.

At the madman’s murmuring,

her black eyes, staring blankly at him, flickered with a faint glimmer—just for an instant.

Snow began to fall.

It was the first snow they had ever shared together.

Yuan gently closed her eyes.

Her expression seemed as if she were feeling the cold touch of snow spreading on her cheek, or perhaps recalling a scene from the past.

Then, opening her eyes, Yuan smiled—a light, carefree smile, like someone with no regrets left.

Her pale hand slowly caressed the face of the man twisted beyond control.

The hand that had gently touched the cheek of the man weeping like a child gradually slowed.

The faint joy reflected in her impossibly dark pupils faded slowly, very slowly.