It took a full ten days to break through the collapsed entrance. Even if there were people who hadn’t escaped inside, it seemed unlikely they were still alive.
With food and even water cut off, how could anyone endure being isolated in a lightless underground prison?
Concerns became reality. After clearing the pile of stones at the entrance, a stale odor pierced deep into our lungs.
It was likely due to the corpses of those who either lost their lives in the explosion or, if they were fortunate enough to survive, perished from lack of air and water.
In the hot weather, the bodies began to decay. The horrendous stench was only just beginning.
We needed to swiftly recover the bodies left inside the prison and confirm whether any undiscovered corpses were buried under the rubble or had fled.
After relentless searching, the royal investigation team officially acknowledged that Duke Toskur had escaped. They could not determine who his accomplice was or how the explosion occurred.
However, the investigation team did not give up; they pursued the case tenaciously, determined to apprehend the culprits, regardless of whether it took months or years.
Meanwhile, time passed quickly. The sensational tales of the infamous villainess, Marina, and her son, Duke Toskur, faded as people began to seek new gossip.
People always desire new stimuli and fresh stories.
The fact that Archduke Toskur had made such a dramatic escape from prison and had not yet been recaptured was a hot topic of conversation for the first few days, but before a month had passed, it had fallen off the radar.
The new Emperor, Karl Johann Albrecht, who had vowed to capture the Archduke of Toskur, uncover all his remaining crimes, and punish him accordingly, decided after much deliberation to punish the remaining criminals first.
Marina’s execution day had arrived: she had deceived the court, dishonored the emperor, dabbled in the forbidden arts of black magic, and harmed too many lives in the process.
Even without Archduke Toskur as a witness, her crimes were already too horrific. There was no way she could be spared.
Transformed into a monster for tampering with the taboo, she had lost both her servants and the shaman who had tended to her, and she was rapidly declining.
She grew older and more withered with each passing day, until it was hard to imagine what she had once been.
“Strike the sinner dead!”
“Burn that witch to death!”
“Let’s tear the limbs off that horrible demon, that devil bitch who tried to devour the country!”
There was an evil-fueled cry from those gathered in the hall.
Screaming like they were spitting up blood, they were parents whose children had probably been killed by Marina. Black tears of blood streamed down their faces as they spewed venom that threatened to tear their vocal cords.
Even if they were to condemn the guilty now, their child would not return, but even so, they would see with their own eyes the horrible demon who had killed their child writhing in agony, and they stayed put.
“Huh, three, oh my.”
Marina was brought before the public. The crowd began to scream in horror as she was dragged up to the guillotine.
“That’s not a person……!”
The silhouette that slowly emerged was more of a mass than a person.
The waist was bent, the forehead was folded so far back that it almost touched the knees, and the joints of the limbs bent and popped this way and that, making it look like a giant spider.
That’s what happened to Marina, the beautiful woman who had bewitched the emperor and shaken up the state! Some of the ladies were so frightened by her ugly appearance that they fainted on the spot.
Dong, Dong, Dong. The drums sounded to announce the execution.
Raised to the top of the guillotine, Marina looked like an animal in a cage, reduced to a spectacle. Thousands of pairs of eyes gazed at her, stunned, cursing.
Through all the accusations, she couldn’t even see their faces. Her twisted spine, her distorted skeleton, forced her face to the ground.
Marina’s body shook and trembled as she stood motionless and endured the thunderous, earth-shaking insults.
“Sinner, Marina, listen.”
Presiding over the execution was Minister Lectus, the new head of the Ministry of Justice, his solemn, commanding voice echoing throughout the square.
It had been amplified by a magic stone to reach all those gathered here.
“Murder, poisoning, black magic…….”
Reading Marina’s sins slowly, one by one.
To reveal all her sins in front of the people, to show her dying, was to humiliate her as much as possible.
Instead of executing her immediately, he kept her alive for months, using the excuse of an investigation, so that she could suffer through a desperate and miserable time of hopelessness.
And in the end, the flame of hope was extinguished in front of so many people. It was cruel and heartbreaking.
The ropes binding Marina’s hands trembled slightly. As if she could smell her own death, Marina’s trembling intensified.
The Emperor Karl had the guillotine set up in Town Hall square so that thousands could watch the execution.
This was partly to ensure that Marina, considered the most horrible criminal in the history of the empire, would die a horrible death, but more than that, it was so that Franz could see his mother’s death.
Even if you’re a mere puppet, there’s no way you can watch your mother die in agony while being mocked by the public.
Karl was going to search every single person in the square.
The hardest time to find people is when they blend into the crowd.
But the most obvious way to spot the bad guys is to look where the common criminals gather. They’re like black pebbles in a pile of white sand.
Karl watched the execution site from a few blocks away in the square.
He stood atop a spire that claimed to overlook the entire capital and held up a telescope made of magic stones. The execution grounds were clear and close, as if people were moving in front of him.
Karl’s eyes scanned Marina’s form and then began to scan the faces of the people in the square.
It would be great if he could find Franz in this search, but he didn’t expect to catch them so easily.
“Your Majesty, the sentence will now be carried out.”
Karl nodded weakly. Seeing his nod, Clovis quickly passed it to Matthias, who waved it in front of the executioners in the square.
Round, round, round, round, round.
The drumming grew louder. Two executioners grabbed Marina’s body from either side and forced her to her feet. Her face contorted in pain, but not a single one of them seemed to care.
Slowly the rope was drawn and tied around her contorted body.
The wicked woman who shook the nation by carrying the emperor in her skirts was hanged in front of the people in such a humiliating manner.
Some people turned their heads and closed their eyes, either because of her ugliness or because they were too afraid to look away as their lives were extinguished before their eyes.
Others clasped their hands together and muttered a prayer. God, take this wicked person to hell. Even the praying ones didn’t feel compassion for her.
The rope snapped around Marina’s neck. Her round, distorted form dangled from the end of the rope as it was pulled upward and tautened.
“Sinner Marina. Do you have any last words?”
How could she speak to him with a rope around her neck, lifting her into the air, a mere trick to play on the great villainess?
Marina flailed her feet. As if even that feeble movement wasn’t enough, her range of motion was severely limited.
“I see. Hang her. Do it now!”
Lectus’s command was barely out of earshot as the executioners crushed the ground beneath Marina’s body.
“Uhhhh!”
A single breath. The dying scream faded into a sigh.
The rope shook mercilessly. Having killed countless people, death now confronting her was painful and terrifying; Marina thrashed wildly. She was struggling against the fading of her breath, shaking her body and glaring with wide eyes.
But there is no victor in the fight against death. Perhaps it lasted a whole minute; the rope, which was swaying left and right, soon grew still.
One body at the end of the rope hung limp. There was no movement at all.
Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum… The rhythm grew increasingly rapid. Then, at the point when Marina’s breath was surely gone, the drumming abruptly stopped.
The infamous femme fatale, the villainess who ruined the nation.
A demon destined to burn forever in the fires of hell. These were the final few phrases left at the end of her once-glorious life.
