Episode 2
Chapter 1
It all began with the headline of a news bulletin that suddenly appeared one day.
[Breaking News] Kalec Wintervald Returns Dramatically After 5 Years!
The public’s reaction was nothing short of explosive.
“What in the world?”
“Are they saying that Lord Wintervald, who was missing for 5 years, has returned?”
The sole heir of the Northern Duke’s family.
The master of the endless winter.
Kalec Wintervald has returned.
After being missing for a full 5 years!
Where Has the Lost Heir of Wintervald Been for the Past 5 Years?
Kalec Wintervald: “I’m not obligated to explain every single detail. And who taught you to shove a recording magic device in the face of a freshly recovered patient@#%@$…” Click for more after age verification.
“Hey! Don’t click ‘read more.’ It’s a magic phishing scam.”
“Gasp. I almost had my magic information stolen.”
“Look! Another special edition is coming out!”
The entire empire was in a frenzy.
Even third-rate gossip papers were using expensive magic devices to spread the news nonstop.
People, without exception, were laser-focused on one name: ‘Kalec Wintervald.’
So naturally…
[Advertisement] Looking for the Dad Who Left Home.
Articles like that had to be pushed back a bit.
“My goodness. Where was he found after all this time without a word?”
“They say it was the Southern Labyrinth! He was found there, collapsed and bleeding from the head!”
“What? The Southern Labyrinth? The one they discovered a few weeks ago?”
“Yeah. According to this, it was bigger than they expected.”
The murmuring among the crowd grew louder.
The ‘Labyrinth’ was like a monster den that appeared irregularly across the continent.
If left unchecked, the monsters would overflow and devastate the surroundings.
Thus, when a labyrinth appeared, it had to be conquered, usually by one of the four ducal families of the Etherion Empire.
“To sum it up, the Wintervald heir, who had been missing for 5 years, was suddenly found collapsed in a monster labyrinth…”
A man polishing an old farming tool muttered with a puzzled look.
“Isn’t that strange? If it was the Southern Labyrinth, wouldn’t the Summerain Dukedom have sent a subjugation force?”
“Yeah, that’s true. But for the Wintervald heir to personally intervene in the South? And judging by his injuries, it must have been a fierce battle…”
The families tasked with guarding the North, South, East, and West of the empire were established.
Wintervald for the North, Summerain for the South, Bloomzvark for the East, and Longfall for the West.
Each family dealt with the labyrinths that appeared in their respective regions, and they were compensated by the royal family.
“To put it bluntly, even if Lord Wintervald wiped out all the monsters in the South, the ones benefiting would be the Summerain family. Why would he do that?”
Moreover, given the animosity between the two ducal families, Calek’s actions raised even more questions.
“Did he hide a goldmine in the South or something…”
“But more importantly.”
At that moment, someone who had been quietly listening spoke up.
“What was the Wintervald heir doing for those 5 years?”
People looked at each other and shrugged.
“Who knows?”
***
My name is Lirin Balt.
Today, I turned 8 years old, and I’m crying my heart out.
“Boohoo…”
It was a dark night. Inside an old, shabby hut.
The wind howled outside, making the windows rattle menacingly.
I covered my ears tightly and buried my face on the table.
“Dad, why aren’t you coming home…”
A beautifully decorated cake was sitting in front of me, all alone.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t lit the candles.
Because the dad who had left for work in the morning hadn’t returned, even though it was now late into the night.
“Ta-da! Here’s your 8th birthday cake, Lirin!”
“Dad, it’s 5 AM right now… I’m still sleepy…”
“I know, I know. But take a look at the cake before you go back to sleep! I made it myself with Masha from the bakery.”
“Yawn.”
“Something really important came up, so I have to leave early. I’ll finish my work quickly and rush back so we can have a fun birthday party tonight! Okay? My little one, happy birthday!”
But then. But then!
‘Did I get punished because I didn’t properly look at the cake Dad had carefully prepared?’
Wearing a party hat meant for the birthday star, I cried bitterly.
“Boohoo…”
Next to me, my three-year-old brother, Theo, was looking at me with a pitiful expression.
Theo was a baby we found abandoned in the forest a month ago when Dad took him there to play. For some reason, he still couldn’t speak even short words.
They said there was nothing physically wrong with him, so it was probably due to the trauma of being abandoned. Or maybe he had never learned to speak at all.
“Uuh…”
His tiny hands flailed as if trying to wipe away my tears. But right now, I didn’t have the energy to take care of Theo as well.
It was a pitch-black night with even the moon hidden from view.
The chilly wind continued to rattle the windows, and in the distance, I could hear the howling of a hungry wild animal.
I had a terrible feeling.
“Dad’s not coming back.”
Not like this.
Absolutely not.
“He left because it was too hard to live with me and Theo…”
My heart ached as if I had been pricked by a thorn.
If that wasn’t the case, could he have been in an accident on his way back?
“That’s even scarier… Dad…”
I sobbed as I grabbed a sketchbook from the desk and began to write clumsily. I was in such a panic that the action was almost unconscious.
It was because I had recently heard that Uncle Bill from the general store had caught a relative who ran off with his money by doing something like this.
Looking for the Dad Who Left Home.
I thought I should ask to have it posted tomorrow when the sun comes up…
“Boohoo.”
Even as the tears flowed, I thought it might be more effective if I drew a portrait in the empty space as well.
Just as I was rummaging through the drawer, crying so hard that my eyes and nose were bright red, my hand brushed against a small box.
My sobbing stopped instantly.
“This is… the box Dad showed me years ago.”
I carefully took out the box, holding it in my hand.
As I did, my dad’s voice came back to me so clearly that I wondered how I could have forgotten it until now.
“Lirin, sweetie. This box is only for real emergencies. You should never give it to anyone.”
“What’s an emergency?”
“Hmm. It’s unlikely, but if I’m not around and you’re in trouble… Or, say, you feel like showing off a superiority complex with a power so overwhelming that others can’t see you as an equal. Understand?”
“That last part sounds weird.”
“Haha, you don’t know what power is yet. My cute daughter. Mwah.”
“Emergency!”
As soon as I remembered those words, I opened the box without hesitation.
Inside was…
“A ring?”
At a glance, it was a lavish ring with an intricately engraved emblem.
As I examined the design closely, my eyes widened in surprise.
“Huh? This snowflake emblem…”
Just as I thought it seemed familiar, the moment I held it in my hand, I felt a strange power constricting my entire body. At the same time, my eyelids moved slowly.
Blink, blink.
As the tears cleared from my eyes, the emblem on the metal ring became even more distinct.
At the same time, an uneasy feeling I couldn’t resist crawled up the back of my neck.
“This must be… the ring from my dream?”
In truth, I had a secret that I hadn’t even told my dad.
Since my 6th birthday, I had been having special dreams.
Dreams that showed me the future.
The first dream had started with something very trivial.
The sound of pages turning rapidly and a series of disjointed scenes.
In the dream, I was standing in front of a large, magnificent building I had never seen before.
The fountain with the angel statue was quite impressive, but the problem was that the fountain didn’t actually get sculpted until several months after I had the dream.
‘I was so shocked when I saw the drawing of that statue in the news!’
After a few more similar experiences, I realized that I was dreaming of the future.
‘The scenes appeared without any context, just random snippets… And often, I couldn’t remember them when I woke up.’
So, I hadn’t told my dad, but recently, the dreams had become a little clearer.
“Ah… I remember now.”
As I blinked in a daze, a voice of realization escaped my lips.
My gaze fell again on the cold metal in my hand.
“This ring… it was the one on the thumb of the man who died in my dream a few days ago.”
Kalec Wintervald.
Even someone like me, who had never left this rural village, knew that name—it was one of the most famous in the empire.
“Well, I heard he’s incredibly powerful…”
To be honest, I didn’t know much about him.
Whenever I tried to practice reading by sounding out the newspaper articles about him, Dad would appear with a very flustered look and take all the papers away.
But the strange thing was that, contrary to his current reputation, the Kalec Wintervald in my dreams was a terrifying villain.
He even met his end by facing justice for some wrong he had committed…
“Wait, wait a second.”
My eyes swirled like a tiny boat caught in a storm.
But why… why did Dad…
Why did my kind, gentle, and sincere Dad have this ring?
It didn’t look like a fake, with its shiny and elaborate design…
“No way… No way!”
The realization struck me like lightning.
I clapped my hands over my mouth in shock.
Thud.
The emblem of the Duke of Wintervald fell from my hands, rolling until it hit the leg of Theo’s high chair and stopped.
There was only one person in the world who could possess that ring.
“No, no way…”
My jaw dropped open in shock.
“Dad is that ‘villain’ Duke Wintervald…!”
‘Now that I think about it, he does look a little like him, doesn’t he?’
That’s right.
The ordinary wooden spoon I thought I had been born with was actually a golden spoon in disguise.
Although it was a bad spoon, the kind that would soon snap off at the neck!
• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •By Esraa• ❁ • ❁ • ❁ •
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