There was no sight of the magnificent imperial palace adorned with gold and jewels, only an underground prison. Gathered there were high-profile criminals guilty of treason, regicide, and other grave crimes. The dungeon was filled with the sounds of agonizing moans, fear, and the aura of death.
Herald descended a stone staircase, his face impassive. The underground prison, dug beneath the palace itself, stretched so far that his footsteps echoed back to him.
As he navigated the dark corridors, barely visible without torchlight, thick iron bars as thick as an adult’s forearm lined each side. The air was thick with the peculiar, musty odor of the underground mingled with a faint smell of blood that pricked at his nostrils.
Herald halted when the smell grew especially dense. Ahead, others who had arrived before him conversed in front of the iron bars.
“You’re here sooner than expected.”
“Stand there. There’s nothing good about seeing blood for no reason.”
Haint kicked the ground lightly with his toe, while Sat, discarding bloodied gloves, greeted Herald.
“Any progress?”
“No. He didn’t know anything useful either. But now that we know who’s behind it, there’s no need to dig deeper.”
The informer, unable to withstand the agony of being stripped bare, had divulged everything he knew, yet it yielded little of value. He knew only about the poison used in the conversation and how it was meant to be employed, but not who was truly pulling the strings.
Sat had discovered more information than they expected from the informant, making him expendable. However, they kept him alive for potential future use—if even a drop of blood remained in his veins, he could still speak.
“Retina has awakened,” Herald said as he accepted the report handed to him by Sat. Haint, who had been showing signs of boredom from the repetitive interrogations, suddenly turned pale and exclaimed sharply.
“What the hell?! You should have told us sooner instead of coming late!!! What is Retina doing now? Is she still in a lot of pain? No, wait. I might need to go and rough that kid up a bit more.”
“Just a moment.”
As Haint raised his arm to enter the cell again, Sat intervened to stop him.
“How is Retina?”
“Fortunately, she seemed fine, like someone who had slept deeply and woken up. She ate and seemed restless, taking a walk around the garden before falling asleep again.”
“That’s a relief.”
Sat’s calm response showed that he had been anxiously awaiting Retina’s safe awakening more than anyone else. He removed his gloves and robe, revealing a once-clean magistrate who had transformed into a ruthless interrogator, despite pleas for death from those whose nails and teeth had been removed. Returning as the admired Sat Deneuve, he resumed his usual banter with Haint.
“Is that all? Don’t you want to see Retina? We need to go see our princess right away!!” While Sat continued with the interrogation, Herald, who had been adding his comments from the side, now swung his fist assertively.
“Finish it all.”
“All of it? There are several people involved here, and you expect to wrap it up just like that?”
“Retina has awakened,” Sat said solemnly to Haint, pulling out a new pair of leather gloves from his pocket.
“Now that Retina has awakened, she’ll likely return to society soon, won’t she?”
“Especially since she’s received a new title.”
“If Retina appears in society like this, what kind of rumors will follow?”
The current social circles were chaos itself. The division between factions who had driven Retina away and those who supported her had not only affected social circles but also influenced politics.
When it was revealed that those who drove Retina away were all nobles of the imperial faction, criticism from noble families who had been watching closely began to pour in.
The imperial faction nobles, unable to act due to the prominent position of the young heiress of the Heasting family, who had carried the Empress on her back, were eager to blame Retina without doing this or that.
“They’re still brazenly blaming Retina even now. If Retina appears, they’ll push even harder. Even among the aristocrats, there are those who are uncomfortable with Retina receiving treatment in the Crown Prince’s bedroom.”
“To be honest, I don’t like that either.”
“I agree.”
Sat and Haint, who gathered opinions fearing they might be twins, nodded and raised their heads.
“Anyway, what we need to do is gather all the clues to expose the mastermind by the time the envoy arrives from the north and root out any opposition,” Sat said.
“Kill them all,” Haint responded.
“Not kill them. Retina almost died. We can’t just kill them off,” Sat insisted.
Sat’s gaze, like capturing a growling beast about to prey, flashed brightly as he held onto Haint.
“Isn’t it a delicate decision to kill those involved immediately? It would have been a better life to offer death to those who threatened Retina,” he said.
“Now, if we use the evidence we’ve gathered and the corruption of Lord Heasting, which we’ve secured since before… we might be able to handle Helen Heasting,” he added.
Sat glanced at Herald rummaging through reports under the torchlight. As they handled each issue one by one, even the empress deeply involved in this matter couldn’t escape responsibility enough to remain aloof.
“Though not as significant as Lord Heasting’s corruption, her standing will surely be shaken,” Sat mused.
“Is there something on my face?” Herald asked.
“No, nothing at all,” Sat replied.
Herald had said that he needed to thoroughly investigate those who nearly took Retina’s life, but the empress was Herald’s mother. Despite the lack of mother-son affection, he couldn’t bring himself to punish his own mother.
“By the way, you’ve been uncovering corruption for quite some time,” Herald said after reviewing all the reports. The reports contained details of various wrongdoings and exploitation committed by the Heasting family over the years.
“Later on, information seemed to come to me without much effort,” he added.
Sat shrugged his shoulders as if it wasn’t a big deal. It all started when he overheard the story of the Marquis’s Estate, who said that the new Marquis had inherited the title and his life had become impoverished. With bases leading to various regions, merchants and travelers from all over the world were able to get a sense of the state of the empire after spending a few days in the duchy.
“It seems Marquis Heasting, who embezzled the most secure funds, was quite audacious. Whether it was due to his restraint in just collecting information from Deneuve without revealing it, Marquis Heasting increasingly engaged in blatant embezzlement as time passed. Furthermore, he even meddled with funds entering the Imperial Palace, committing every misconduct that nobility could possibly commit except illegal slave trading.
“I trusted too much that my daughter would become the Crown Princess,” Helen Heasting remarked. If Helen Heasting became the Crown Princess, and later the Empress, there would be no one to suffer repercussions even if their misconduct were exposed.”
“I’ll leave this to Sat. He’ll receive the imperial decree soon, so he’ll be in charge of searching for Marquis Heasting from the Second Knights Division.”
“It’ll be much easier once we receive the imperial decree… but are you sure about this?”
“Sure about what?”
Herald, who was sorting out the situation on the spot, questioned Sat’s concerns.
“If we touch Marquis Heasting, it will undoubtedly involve Her Majesty the Empress.”
“What’s the connection?”
“Well, Her Majesty the Empress is your mother….”
“Oh, I see.” He nodded as if he finally understood Sat’s concerns.
“She did give birth to me, but she lacks the affection of a mother. It’s likely the same for her. Following the Emperor and Empress’s wishes is merely respect for giving birth to me.”
From the beginning, he was not a child born out of love between a couple. They simply needed an heir, so they bore him. Herald was born not as an individual but as the sole Crown Prince of the Empire and was raised that way.
It wasn’t unreasonable that Herald, who never felt parental love from the moment he was born, also knew nothing of emotions like family and love.
“If the Empress’s actions hadn’t been problematic, we might not need to investigate. But since they are, we’ll have to. Whether she’ll face disciplinary action is a matter for later.”
There was no hint of hesitation in his order to investigate his mother. Sat, who had been reluctant to bring up the Empress’s story to Herald, humbly accepted his command to investigate.
“The envoy will arrive within a week, so we must finish within ten days at most.”
“Ten days should be sufficient.”
Having resolved all the issues at hand, Sat spoke confidently. While he might not match Haint in brute strength, he was the empire’s foremost strategist and interrogator.
How had he collected so much information over time? Torturing just enough to cause unbearable pain without death was his trademark.
“The princess’s debut must be as flawless as her return.”
Standing shoulder to shoulder with Herald, who loses himself at the sight of blood, and Haint, who pushes through with sheer strength, Sat’s true face was revealed in the subtle madness of smiling while hearing the screams of agony from the guilty.
