Ch.101The Weight of Vengeance (5)

“….You, you’re not a Praester anymore, right?”

All eyes turned to me.

I was trying to accept the situation.

Shallon Payne. I never expected her, whom I thought was missing, to appear in a place like this.

I groaned in disbelief.

“How are you here…”

“Hmm? Isn’t that quite a rude question coming from the very person who expelled me from the Academy?”

Her personality had changed a lot too. Well, perhaps her subservient demeanor back then was unnatural. This is probably her true self.

“….What I mean is, why are you stealing instead of returning to your family…! I may have expelled you from the Academy, but you were the one who ran away on your journey home..!”

There were many questions about Shallon’s actions. But since I was the one who cut ties with her, I didn’t dig deeper. I thought she disappeared because she decided running away was better than going home and revealing her disgrace.

“…Ah…you don’t know.”

Shallon grinned. Then she whispered quietly.

“I can’t return to my family. At least…not officially.”

“….What does that mean?”

“It means the punishment you ordered wasn’t the only one given to me. Your sister. Asena. Do you know what that bitch gave me?”

“………”

Asena. At that name, my body froze.

Shallon seemed to recall the situation, her eyes trembling as she swallowed her anger.

“……She gave me a letter. A letter to take to my father. That letter contained an order to cut off my head.”

“……What?”

“Well, I knew she gave me a choice. Either die or run away – that was the order.”

-Tick.

She took something from her chest and threw it at me.

A postcard fluttered down from the tree to me.

The postcard that fell at my feet clearly contained the order Shallon mentioned, in Asena’s handwriting.

“……”

“So I had no choice but to run away. Understand?”

“……”

Shallon spoke with a relieved voice.

“You and I have something in common now. We were both abandoned by Asena, and we were both expelled from our families because of her.”

She stretched her legs and pulled her hood back up, as if signaling the conversation was over.

“…But the difference between you and me is… I still receive love from my family. Officially I’m no longer a Payne, but look.”

She spread her arms to indicate her gang. Now the scale made sense. These weren’t thieves, but Payne soldiers.

“You, the former eldest son of the Praester family, are escorting a merchant caravan where flies buzz around. While I, merely the second daughter of the Payne family, have the power to crush you. Hehe.”

I gripped my sword tightly.

Shallon said:

“Direct your resentment at Asena, who tried to kill me. Though she probably doesn’t care about abandoning you either.”

Then she turned to her army.

“Kill them all. Loot the goods. Leave no survivors. Especially that man called Caden.”

For a moment, everything felt unreal. Fear and tension vanished all at once.

The moment Shallon Payne pronounced the death sentence, I had only one worry.

Asena and Kirsy.

If it was going to be like this.

If this was the end.

“…..”

In the face of death, everything becomes trivial.

After going round and round, it was always about them.

After remembering my promises to Daisy and Judy, in the end, it was about the twins.

People fled in panic, while Payne’s soldiers charged at them. In the first clash, three soldiers fell. It had become an unwinnable fight.

Without realizing it, I whispered.

“…..The kids will cry too much.”

And then, I raised my sword.

****

Asena and Kirsy were resting in Caden’s room. Their mood was still at rock bottom, but not quite at the lowest point.

The previous day, they had been poring over the letter containing news of Caden.

Though they didn’t say it to each other, they were imagining Caden’s appearance from the letter.

Even though they missed him, having this was better than nothing at all.

Though the fundamental cause remained unresolved, they were surviving through this.

Kirsy, lying on Caden’s bed reading the letter, quietly asked Asena:

“….Sister, when did you say the next letter would arrive?”

It was evening. They had finished their daily routine and were resting. Not that they had been doing much since he left.

Asena tapped her fingers on the desk and answered:

“….Night. Or maybe dawn. After all the daily tasks are done, someone beside brother sends a letter, and based on that, Vensrak sends it to us.”

“….”

Realizing there was still a long time until the next letter, Kirsy sighed. The waiting time was too painful.

-Crack!

At that moment, the weapon rack in Caden’s room collapsed with a strange sound.

It was one of the few pieces of furniture they hadn’t touched while turning his room upside down.

It had been polished to a shine, showing Caden’s effort. But now it had broken.

Asena and Kirsy silently stared at the weapon rack.

Kirsy wondered if it had been damaged when they ransacked the room yesterday.

She tried not to make a big deal out of it.

-Knock knock knock.

‘Asena, Kirsy. It’s Helen.’

At that moment, Helen knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Kirsy said. She turned her eyes back to the letter.

As Helen opened the door and entered, Kirsy said:

“Helen, if it’s a snack, I don’t want any.”

“Kirsy, that’s not it.”

When Kirsy rolled her eyes to look at Helen, Helen smiled and waved a letter.

“The news you’ve been waiting for all day has arrived.”

Kirsy’s heart skipped a beat.

“Huh? Sister said it would come late at night.”

Her expectations began to rise. What would be in it today?

“Isn’t it better this way? The news has arrived.”

Helen replied.

“….I’ll read it first, Kirsy.”

Asena, who was nearby, snatched the letter first. Kirsy was dissatisfied but knew her turn would come, so she endured a little longer.

Asena pretended to be nonchalant, but only Kirsy could notice the expectant light in her expression that had been dull all day.

With somewhat urgent hands, Asena tore open the envelope. Inside was a small postcard.

It was much smaller than yesterday’s letter.

Kirsy was a bit disappointed from the start.

She wished there had been more content.

Kirsy stood up.

Since the letter was so small, she thought it would be fine to look together.

She immediately stood behind Asena. Asena slowly unfolded the postcard.

Even before reading it, they could tell it was short. Just two lines.

The merchant caravan Caden was escorting was attacked by thieves.

Caden and all caravan members presumed dead.

The twins’ expressions froze simultaneously.

“……….”

“………..”

Time seemed to stretch infinitely for both of them.

Asena felt her heart grow pale. A cold pressure weighed on her chest. While her heart was reacting to what she read, her mind couldn’t accept its meaning.

Kirsy’s mind went blank. She had never seen such an incomprehensible arrangement of words before.

Neither of them moved first.

They remained still, like people waiting for a dream to end.

After a while.

The postcard slipped through Asena’s fingers.

-Thud.

“…….Huh?”

As the postcard hit the table with a sound, the twins’ frozen minds returned.

“…….Brother….is….dead…?”

At that bewildered murmur, Helen inhaled sharply and covered her mouth with her hand.

Kirsy, still unable to fully accept those words, felt nothing. There could be no death more unreal than this.

He was their brother. Who trained with the sword more diligently than anyone. Who was their support and reason for living. The end of his life was communicated through just this one postcard.

She couldn’t believe he was no longer in this world. It didn’t feel real that she would never see his face again.

Gradually, the terrible word “death” began to make sense. At the same time, her head grew hot and she felt the floor sinking. She couldn’t breathe and her eyes filled with tears.

“Haa….n-no…haa…!”

Asena’s blank eyes swept back to the postcard lying on the table.

Attacked by thieves.

This part was the most unbelievable. Not an accident. Not an illness. Caden lost his life to thieves. Because of human greed, her treasure had faded from life.

Her benefactor and love. The one she thought was invincible.

He had lost his life protecting goods worth a pittance.

Whatever goods he was escorting, they wouldn’t be worth even the chair she was sitting on.

He met his death for something of such little value.

“….Brother…?”

In a daze, Asena asks a question to the empty air.

And slowly, a realization creeps in.

No. He didn’t lose his life protecting goods worth a pittance.

He wasn’t crushed by human greed.

It was because of her.

Because she expelled him from the Praester family, he had to travel on foot.

That’s why he had to move while escorting.

Not being a Praester, he couldn’t receive proper treatment, and not being a Praester, he encountered thieves.

She had driven him to his death.

She remembered herself from just a few days ago.

Frantically writing letters and promoting all over the kingdom that Caden was no longer a Praester.

This was the result.

He, unprotected by the name, met his end at the hands of thieves.

That terrible fact hit Asena directly.

…..If he had been a Praester, this problem wouldn’t have occurred.

She had killed him with her own hands.

Riding on anger, she had driven him to death.

In return for a lifetime of care, she had stabbed a knife in his heart.

Asena recalled her last moment with Caden.

That day when she only spewed words of hatred.

That day when she said she would hate him for life.

And just as she promised, he couldn’t escape her anger.

What must he have thought? Did he resent her?

“No…..no…brother…”

A tear fell from her blank eyes.

“How….how could I hate brother…”

But he must have heard it too. Her declaration spreading everywhere. The news that Caden was not a Praester would have reached him wherever he went. It would have felt like her anger.

It was all a lie. With deep love firmly underneath, various emotions had temporarily manifested. Her love for him had never wavered.

But he can no longer hear that.

Words that cannot be taken back.

In their last meeting, Asena had cursed him, and he left this world.

He, for whom giving all of herself would be insufficient. He died lonely outside his homeland.

She couldn’t believe that their fight would be her last memory of him.

On the verge of madness, she dismissed this fact as a lie. No matter how realistic, she couldn’t believe this information. She shouldn’t believe it.

Still not fully accepting this fact and wandering in confusion, Asena calmed Kirsy, who was equally confused.

“….It’s a lie.”

“….Huh?”

“It’s a lie. It’s a lie so…don’t worry. Helen. Send a letter to Vensrak. Tell him to come meet us. And prepare to go to the Vensrak family.”

She crumpled the postcard and stood up on trembling legs.

“……Brother….”

Asena suppressed the tears that were about to burst forth.

“….It can’t be true. It must not be true.”