Ch.0Prologue

* * *

Soviet Yekaterinburg

A group of people was moving corpses.

These bodies had once belonged to the sacred imperial family, revered by the subjects of the “Empire” when they were alive.

A man watching those bodies, soon to be burned, smiled bitterly.

“How truly fleeting.”

“Comrade Yakov. What do you mean by that?”

“Look at that. The imperial family, who should have been under the Lord’s protection, met their death by our bullets.”

The last Tsar (Emperor) of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II, along with the Empress and their children.

The God who was supposed to protect them was nowhere to be found, and the imperial family had met their end by Bolshevik bullets, now reduced to cold corpses that would rot with time.

“Indeed, comrade.”

“In the end, they were humans just like us. Yet they enjoyed all the wealth and glory as royalty until now.”

Yakov Yurovsky of the Ural Soviet of Workers, who had led this execution, sneered as if his anger had not subsided.

“You have a point, comrade. If they were truly under God’s protection, wouldn’t they have resurrected right here?”

“Heh heh heh. If they came back to life, they’d kill us first, but this once again proves that religion is the opium of the people.”

If the Lord truly existed, would He have allowed the death of this imperial family of the Russian Orthodox Church?

In the end, that God was nothing but a fantasy.

And that religion of God was nothing but a lie, merely an opium for the people.

Yakov wore a sardonic smirk.

Well, at least they were going like this.

“Hmm, when we’re done, comfort those comrades who regret not being able to rape the grand duchesses. We can’t afford to tarnish the party’s reputation.”

If they had remained alive, they would have suffered a terrible fate at the hands of comrades with bad intentions who wanted to violate the grand duchesses.

Thinking this, he turned his back, hoping for this wretched time to end quickly.

Now they just needed to strip the bodies, burn them, and bury them carelessly.

The reason for their haste was simple.

Though they had killed the imperial family, reactionaries were marching toward Yekaterinburg to secure them.

It would be meaningless now that they were dead.

It was as clear as looking at the dead imperial family that the city would soon fall into the hands of the reactionaries.

All that would be left for them would be corpses damaged beyond recognition.

But then. The Cheka agents handling the bodies began to scream.

“What’s happening?”

Did someone come back to life?

That shouldn’t be possible—even the grand duchess who had once survived thanks to jewels hidden on her body had surely been killed by bayonet stabs.

And yet.

“The… the grand duchess. The grand duchess is alive!”

That impossible event had actually occurred.