Sion bit his lip as he stood at the entrance of the orphanage.
The door was reinforced with wooden planks, making it impossible to open from either inside or outside.
Sion threw himself against the door, breaking it down, to enter the orphanage.
“Cough, Mother! Father!”
Inside, the room was filled with smoke so thick that he couldn’t open his eyes.
Sion forced his eyes open and ran frantically through the smoke.
After a while, his eyes adjusted to the smoke, and he found his family lying in the living room, huddled together. He hurriedly approached them and tried to lift his parents first, but ended up bursting into tears.
“No…….”
The bodies he held were warm. But that was only because of the flames. His parents weren’t breathing.
“No, no, no…….”
Trembling, Sion checked the faces of the other family members in the room, excluding his parents.
Cassion, Adele, Asilli, Mike, Ray…
They were all there.
And none of them were breathing.
“No, no, no, no…”
Sion repeated the word over and over, like he was losing his mind, and at one point he cried out.
He screamed until his throat hurt, clutching his family’s bodies, which never cooled down due to the fire.
He cried and cried and cried until he could no longer make a sound.
“I’m going out!”
Sion got out of the orphanage just before it collapsed.
“Everybody, watch out! That kid, even if he looks like that, he’s not an ordinary kid…….”
“Cough”
“Ack!”
Sion emerged from the orphanage with determined eyes and immediately lunged at the men.
Despite being six in number and armed with swords and armor, they were no match for him.
The swords they swung cut through the air instead of Sion’s, and their leather armor easily broke under Sion’s punches and kicks.
When Sion had knocked them all down,
“Quite impressive!”
An unearthly clap was heard from behind him as he caught his breath.
Sion turned around.
How long has he been there?
A middle-aged man stood surrounded by knights, clapping lazily.
As Sion frowned at the incongruous behavior, the man spoke again.
“To turn my soldiers into this with that small body. Impressive.”
My soldiers.
The moment he heard those words, Sion’s eyes changed.
It’s him.
He’s the mastermind behind all of this.
The moment he realized it, he lunged at the man. He intended to tear the man apart, but unfortunately, Sion’s goal was thwarted.
“Let go! You bastards, let go of me!”
Before Sion could put a finger on the middle-aged man, the knights grabbed him.
The knights were of a different caliber than the men he had just defeated.
They easily subdued him, forcing him to kneel.
Even forced to kneel, Sion showed no signs of defeat, and the middle-aged man observed him with apparent interest.
“You look young; how old are you?”
“Die.”
“About ten? or even younger?”
“Go to hell!”
Sion spat at the man, but unfortunately, a knight standing beside the man swiftly reached out and blocked it.
The knight, removing his gloves and throwing them away, suggested, “He’s not going to be tamed, my lord. It would be best to deal with him here.”
“Hmm…….”
But somehow, it seemed a pity to kill him just like that.
The middle-aged man murmured to himself.
“Marquis, I found traces of a carriage nearby.”
A knight who had joined the scene a moment later reported to the middle-aged man.
“A carriage?”
“Yes. Judging by the wheel tracks, it clearly changed direction while heading towards the orphanage. Shall we pursue?”
“……no.”
As the man listened to the report, his gaze shifted back to Sion.
Unlike before, when he was glaring at the man, Sion, who had suddenly dropped his head to the ground, uttered a faint voice.
“D, don’t chase the carriage.”
It was an obvious plea.
Or perhaps a request.
The corner of the middle-aged man’s mouth curled up, as if he’d been waiting for it—the first sign of weakness Sion had shown in this situation.
“Don’t chase the carriage? Then what will you do in return?”
“……anything.”
“…….”
“I’ll do anything I can…….”
“Haha!”
After another round of laughter, the man turned to the knight who had reported to him.
“You. Follow the carriage and check the face of the person inside; don’t do anything else.”
“Understood, sir.”
“And you, release him.”
The knights holding Sion exchanged puzzled glances at the Marquis’ order.
“But…….”
“It’ll be fine. Let him go.”
With repeated order, the knights reluctantly and cautiously released Sion.
“Get up.”
“…….”
“You’ve become quite well-behaved. I like that!”
True to the man’s words, Sion became compliant.
Though free, he showed no signs of aggression towards the man, instead obediently following his instructions.
Crack.
However, a faint sound of Sion’s teeth grinding could be heard, but the man turned away, seemingly indifferent to such matters.
“Follow me. I’ll arrange a separate grave for you.”
The middle-aged man walked away with his knights by his side.
Sion gritted his teeth and forced himself to follow.
Sion was loaded into the carriage like an object, and after days of travel, the carriage arrived at a certain mansion.
As soon as Sion got off the carriage, he was imprisoned in a sunless underground cell.
It was only then that he learned the identity of the man—the Marquis of Hildegarde and he was now in the Marquisate of Hildegarde.
These facts were irrelevant.
Realizing that wouldn’t change anything, Sion had nothing he could do immediately.
He lay on the cold, damp floor of his cell and sobbed all day.
‘It’s because of me.’
He recalled over and over again the day the orphanage burned down and his family died.
‘If I hadn’t gone to the market that day, or even if I had and came back early…’
Few knew, but Sion had a unique ability.
Since childhood, he could naturally see things from a distance, hear faint sounds, and sense subtle movements.
He also possessed enough strength to single-handedly defeat six knights.
So, on that fateful day, the day his family died, Sion had been with his family from the beginning.
He could have gotten them all out of the orphanage before the Marquis blocked all the entrances and set them on fire, endangering them all.
Sion was sure. Without a doubt, that would have happened. Therefore…
‘They’re all dead because of me. I killed them. I killed them. I…….’
The amount of drinking water provided in the underground prison was woefully inadequate.
Sion suffered from intense thirst; his lips had long since become as dry as bark from the dehydration he had suffered since the carriage ride.
Yet, even in such conditions, tears kept flowing, seemingly from an unknown source.
Sion endlessly cried in the underground prison.
Once a day in prison, a very small amount of drinking water and a hard loaf of bread were served as meals.
Sion ate and drank them down and continued to live.
Did he want to live so badly that he would take what his enemies gave him?
No, he didn’t.
On the contrary, Sion didn’t want to live much.
Whenever he thought of his dead family, he felt a strong urge to follow them.
But the only reason he was still clinging to life in this barren environment, against his inner desire, was because…
‘Remember, your life is no longer yours. If you dare to take your own life, the person who was in the carriage will end up being thrown to the wild dogs as dinner.’
Recalling the vivid warning from the Marquis, Sion picked up the remaining half of the bread.
He managed to tear off a piece of bread that was too hard to bite into, pop it into his mouth, and chew.
When he couldn’t chew it, he just swallowed it in chunks.
If the bread got stuck in his throat and he died, would that be considered suicide?
Sion pondered the thought, barely finishing the bread before closing his eyes. Sleep poured in.
Sion counted the days by the number of times meals were served in the prison.
When a week had passed since Sion was trapped in the underground prison,
“Come out. It’s the Marquis’s order.”
A servant opened the iron bars of Sion’s cell.
