Chapter 1: Curse – 1

As soon as I crossed the gates of Loctana, my hell began.

“Die!!”

“You spawn of a devil!! You deserve to die!!”

“Give me back my son…! Sob!! Give me back my child!!”

“Die, you bastard, Alan!”

The beautiful nature outside the castle had disappeared, and the crowd swarming like ants raised their heads as if they were a single living entity.

The name of this creature was hatred.

-Thud!

A stone flew from somewhere and hit my forehead.

“Ugh!”

Touching the sharp pain on my forehead, I found dark red blood flowing down.

As if it had been a signal, a barrage of stones began to rain down, showering so thickly that the sky momentarily darkened.

If you asked whether I personally had earned such hatred from them, the answer would be no.

To be exact, it was my family that had earned it.

I was merely the eldest son of that family.

Our family and the Rondor family, who ruled over Loctana, were mortal enemies.

A knight from Rondor, who had dragged me all the way to Loctana, quietly approached me and whispered.

“Look, Kailo Alan.”

As he slowly raised his arm, another heavy stone collided with his gauntlet and bounced off.

“Look closely at the grudge your family has accumulated… and never forget it. The fury of Loctana is no different from that of the Rondor family.”

Old people weeping tears of blood.

Children throwing stones with resentful eyes.

Peers my age, charging at me only to be trampled by adults pushing them aside.

Parents who had lost their children and children who had lost their parents unleashed their fury on me.

If you witnessed such a scene even once, you wouldn’t need to be told not to forget it.

You wouldn’t be able to.

It was horrifying.

No other word could describe it.

It was overwhelming just to try to understand the complex emotions swirling inside me.

But I lumped those emotions together and ignored them.

These were emotions I didn’t need to understand.

I had to remember one thing.

This was the Rondor family’s territory, Loctana.

The territory of our mortal enemies.

The only certainty was this:

Just as my father had, just as his soldiers had, I had to fight.

This was my battlefield.

If I lowered my sword and shield out of fear of my opponent, only death awaited.

If I showed weakness, I would be struck down.

My father always said: If you get hit, hit back.

So, I wiped away the blood roughly, swallowed my fear, and shouted.

“…You think we were the only ones who killed?”

I raised my voice even more.

“Are we the only devils? Do you even know how many of our people you killed?! We were just stronger, but you’re the same kind of people!!”

For the past five years, there had been a war between the Kingdom of East and the Kingdom of Delrum.

Our Alan family was part of the Kingdom of East.

Under the banner of the East, my father elevated the prestige of the Alan family, fighting countless noble families from Delrum.

And among those families, there was one we could call our greatest rival.

A family whose land size and combat power were almost equal to ours.

The Rondor family.

The Rondors were the first family to stand against my father, who earned the nickname “The Undefeated Knight.”

During the course of the war, we killed the most from the Rondor family, and they killed the most from ours.

The Alan family was based in the cold northern lands, and if you drew a straight line south toward warmer lands, you’d reach the Rondor family’s territory.

This geographical closeness was also a reason our two families were constantly entangled.

We fought bitterly.

The deeper the conflict, the deeper the emotional wounds became.

Last year, our family almost wiped out the Rondor family, effectively ending the rivalry between us in our favour.

But a war between kingdoms cannot be won by a single family.

In the war between kingdoms, the Kingdom of East, to which we belonged, was defeated.

A peace agreement was made, but as the losing kingdom, we had to offer collateral for the peace.

Many children of noble families from the Kingdom of East were sent to the Kingdom of Delrum as hostages.

Not every family’s child was taken, but… I was among those who were.

No, it was inevitable.

Considering my father’s significant role in the war, the Alan family couldn’t escape the wrath of the Kingdom of Delrum.

And my destination was clear.

A family that had fought loyally for the Kingdom of Delrum, but was ruined and in decline because of us.

A family that was our greatest enemy and rival.

I had to come to the Rondor family’s territory, Loctana.

I must have been out of my mind.

I thought, pressing my hand against my torn forehead.

I did have a choice, after all.

Before I was dragged here as a hostage, my father, with a bitter expression, asked my siblings and me.

“Which of you will go to Loctana? Who will sacrifice for the Alan family?”

…Honestly, I didn’t want to go.

Given the enmity between us and the Rondors, there was no way I wanted to go.

We had killed so many of their soldiers, or rather, the people of Loctana.

And that’s not all.

The Duke of Rondor died from a wound inflicted during a battle with my father.

Their eldest son… well, it’s complicated, but you could say he died by our hand.

So, what was left in Loctana?

Countless people mourning their lost husbands and sons.

The Duchess of Rondor and her daughter, likely in the same state.

And a massive amount of rage.

The person taken as a hostage would have to bear the brunt of all that rage.

That’s why I didn’t want to come.

I might die trying to bear all that anger.

I didn’t want to die.

There were too many things I wanted to do, eat, and see.

…So why was I doing this?

I had been foolish.

There were five of us siblings.

I was the eldest, fourteen years old.

The second and third were girls, aged thirteen and eleven.

If a girl was taken as a hostage, who knows what terrible things might happen to her, so they were excluded.

The fourth was six years old and still sucking his thumb like it was milk.

The fifth couldn’t even speak yet, only two years old.

…Both were boys, but they were too young to even understand what a grudge was.

As the eldest son, as a man, as my father’s son, as a brother, and as a member of the Alan family, it was clear who had to go as a hostage.

And that’s why I’m here.

I couldn’t bear to send my younger siblings away.

But now, I regret it.

Even if it pricked my conscience, I shouldn’t have come until the end.

The cries filled with resentment grew louder in response to my words.

“That bastard!!”

“Kill him!! Kill him!!”

“Knights, step aside!! I will kill him myself and go to hell!!”

I shouted back, not backing down.

I was up against thousands.

“Throw more! Is this all you’ve got to scare me?! Is this really all you can do?! This is why our Alan family trampled over you!!”

At my outburst, the square turned into chaos.

The crowd pushed the knights this way and that.

The barrage of stones grew fiercer.

Those who had run out of stones threw whatever they could grab, be it dirt or weeds.

I cursed even louder, driven by malice.

The more I gave myself over to the anger, the more the fear receded, even if only momentarily.

“If I return home alive!! I’ll bring soldiers back and kill you all!!”

“As if you’ll make it back alive!!”

“The Duchess will kill you!! The Rondor family will kill you!!”

-*H!

At that moment, the knight commander bellowed like thunder and drew his sword.

“Enough!!”

As soon as the knight commander unsheathed his sword, the other knights followed suit.

The commotion halted in an instant, and the square fell silent.

The knight commander spoke.

“The uproar ends here!”

After that, he gave a long speech, soothing the territorial residents.

He spoke of how there was still plenty of time, and how I at least had to be brought before the Duchess.

While he did that, I tried to catch my breath, stemming the blood flowing from the tear by my eye.

At first, the people couldn’t calm their excitement, but the sight of the gleaming swords gradually made them clear a path.

In the end, as the road widened, the knight commander sheathed his sword, and the other knights followed suit.

Then, up ahead, I noticed a presence.

As everyone stepped aside, one figure stood in the middle of the path.

It was an old woman.

Her hair was white.

Her face was full of wrinkles.

And tears streamed down her cheeks.

Amid her hazy appearance, her eyes shone brightly.

She, too, did not hide her hatred toward me.

“Kailo Alan, eldest son of the undefeated knight, Jade Alan.”

Her voice echoed through the now-silent crowd.

In the stillness, a whisper of “witch…” spread.

Even the knight commander was overwhelmed by her presence and couldn’t bring himself to tell her to step aside.

The old woman, known as a witch, slowly opened her mouth.

“…You may not care, but…your father killed my son in the war.”

“And my child…comes to me every night in my dreams, begging for revenge against the Alan family… He was always such a needy child from the start…”

“But really…what could an old woman like me do? To a powerful family from the North… What could I possibly do…”

Then, the old woman let out a laugh between her tears, a grotesque laugh that sent shivers down the spine of everyone who heard it.

“But still…I must at least try…”

Her wide-open eyes turned toward me.

“People called me a witch. I wasn’t a witch… But if I had that kind of power… If I really was the witch they said I was…”

She whispered, as if speaking directly to me, her tears dripping down.

“I curse you.”

Her voice was calm but laced with pent-up resentment.

“You will never have a child, and you will die before you turn thirty. And even if you do have a child, they will not be healthy…”

The longer her words dragged on, the initial discomfort I felt began to disappear.

As she rambled on, spouting whatever came to her mind, she didn’t seem like a witch at all.

So, just as I was about to interrupt her words.

“Northerners don’t believe in curses—”

“You will fall in love with someone you are not meant to love.”

At her final words, I froze without realizing it.

And soon after, her curse echoed in my mind over and over again.

“Sob… Sob…”

From the moment I met her, I started to question whether her curse was real.

Fiery red hair.

A small figure.

Big red eyes.

A beautiful face.

She, the one who should have been my enemy.

As I looked at her, my heart pounded wildly.

Whether it was from the tension or from the curse itself, I couldn’t be sure.

It was the first time my heart had raced so much just by looking at a girl, and I was confused.

Maybe it was simply because she was beautiful, or because she seemed so pitiful, or perhaps because the situation had turned out so differently from what I expected.

But one thing was certain: I couldn’t take my eyes off her.