The Caliph was the leader of a group of bandits who believed that everything in the desert belonged to him, even the smallest grain of sand. He began to make a name for himself when the vast desert became home to mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.
Weary of destruction and massacre and filled with fear, one by one, the people crawled at his feet. After decades of slaughter and tyranny, he became Emperor of the Desert when, as he had hoped, all the desert sands belonged to the Caliphate.
“It was the beginning of Akhtan, the Empire of the Scorching Sun.”
In the banned book, Akhtan’s history, built on corpses and blood, was laid bare. Those who had risked their lives to write it down had their fingers cut off, their eyes and tongues gouged out, and their flesh withered under the scorching sun. Their bodies would be eaten by desert vultures and weathered until not a single bone remained.
“Kyle.”
I was flipping through the tattered and creased book when I heard a familiar voice behind me. Turning, I saw Mahir, the crown prince who would become Akhtan’s next great emperor, standing with his back to the light leaking through the window.
It was hard to make out his face in the backlight, but his expression must have been as creased as these tattered sheets of paper. I casually closed the open book, hiding it behind my back, and turned fully toward Mahir. A sigh reached my ears.
“I told you, you aren’t allowed to be in here.”
“Did you?”
“This just happens to be the 100th time.”
“Of what?”
I knew what the 100th time meant, but I pretended not to and quickly put the book back on the shelf. As I turned my head with an innocent expression and made eye contact, Mahir’s head tilted to the side.
“Of this exact same conversation we’re having right now.”
“Ah, is this the place where even the imperial family can’t enter without His Majesty’s permission? Sorry, sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Just know that that’s the 100th time I’ve heard you say you didn’t know.”
As I approached Mahir, who had his hand pressed against his forehead, and grabbed his strong forearm, another sigh escaped his mouth.
“What if His Majesty finds out?”
“This is the 100th time you’ve said that.”
“Since you’re aware of that, listen to me.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Dfobgf sbe’gf obecv bea, P’ii yf obecv bea olgra.”
As I quietly mumbled an apology, Mahir sighed for a third time. I looked up to meet his gaze. His stern face was all but gone, replaced only by a troubled look. Seeing that, I grabbed his forearm again and hung on.
“His Majesty listens to what you say, so if you get caught, just tell him to get angry at me instead.”
Mahir looked down at me, clinging to his forearm like a monkey, and shook his head in dismay.
“When on earth will you grow up? You’ll be seventeen soon.”
“What? I’m nearly seventeen already?”
I let go of his arm and gasped in exaggerated surprise. Mahir grabbed my hand and began to drag me away.
“I can’t believe it either. It seems like just yesterday you were crawling, not walking.”
“Crawling? I’m not a bug.”
I frowned, but Mahir laughed out loud as he remembered something.
“You never stayed still then, just like now, and if I took my eyes off you for a second, you were gone. You cried so hard the first time you got lost.”
Mahir turned his head and looked down at me, smiling as he reminisced about the past. Gradually, his smiling face hardened, and his eyes grew worried. As I clamped my mouth shut, feeling a prick of guilt, Mahir spoke sternly.
“So stop causing trouble, because if His Majesty finds out you’re sneaking in and out of places like this, he’ll never let it go.”
I knew I had to nod meekly to Mahir’s words to defuse his anger, but my lips were itching and I couldn’t help it.
“I hope you become the emperor soon. Then you can let me read any book.”
“Kyle.”
“Why on earth are such things hidden so tightly? Hiding them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen…
“Kyle!”
Mahir’s voice rose. As I flinched, I hear him sigh for the fourth time in a short while. His grip on my hand tightened.
“Don’t think you can get away with everything because you’re a prince. His Majesty…”
Mahir quickly shut his mouth and looked around to see if anyone was within hearing range. He silently mouthed a few words, and I could tell what he wanted to say without him saying it.
In the Solar Year 992, or about three years ago.
Khalifa, the great ruler of Akhtan, the sun-god Arhaan, the lord of the desert, father of me and Mahir, killed my sister and brother, his daughter and son, whom I had never seen before, with his own hands.
Sharp candlesticks were driven into their chests and their bodies were mutilated for the most trivial of reasons: they refused to spread their legs to accept the emperor.
With this incident, Akhtan legalized incestuous relationships between members of the imperial family, and Khalifa was able to legally take his illegitimate children without the slightest reservation.
Wasn’t he crazy, legalizing incest to rape his own children? And how could a relationship between a father and a child be incest? Incest was for relationships between siblings, like me and Mahir. A relationship between a father and a child, no matter how you labelled it, was just something crazy should never be done.
“Mahir-nim! Kyle-nim!”
We heard a voice in the distance calling to us. Mahir’s servant ran toward us, panting with urgency. He stood in front of us, gasping for breath, and then opened his mouth with a confused look on his face.
“What on earth are you two doing here?”
“What’s so urgent that you had to rush over like this?”
The servant, who looked at us curiously as we stood still in the middle of a remote garden where no one ever walked, said “ah” in response to Mahir’s words.
“His, His Majesty is holding a feast…”
This time, Mahir and I shared a puzzled look at the servant’s cautious words. Khalifa was in a state of drunken revelry day and night. It was his job to throw daily feasts and drain the treasury.
What was so surprising about holding a feast that a servant had to rush up here to announce it? Mahir must have thought the same as me, because he let go of my hand and straightened his back.
Before his lips could open, the servant bowed low and spoke.
“It’s been a while, and he wants to have a meal with his son…”
“Son?”
Mahir asked, his brow furrowed. The servant looked up from his bow to glance at him, then turned to me.
And then there was silence. I widened my eyes and asked, staring at the servant blankly.
“No way. With me?”
“Yes, he asked me to bring Kyle-nim in.”
“No… what for?”
“What? Well, that’s, that’s, I…”
I asked the servant, but he was clueless. Mahir looked at the servant, who was as puzzled as I was, and lightly raised his hand.
“Alright. You may go.”
At those words, the servant bowed deeply once again, turned around, and walked back the way he had come.
“……”
“……”
My eyes met with Mahir’s as we both looked up at the same time from where the servant had stood. As I gazed into those bronze-colored eyes filled with worry and confusion, all the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of things I’d done wrong so far began to flash through my mind.
“Have I been caught sneaking in and out of there?”
“……”
“……”
“…I don’t think so.”
“……”
My heart sank at the unconfident tone of his voice.
Only the first chapter but already so interesting!!! Thanks!!!
Soo excited tobread this, the cover art is beautifulll!! But OH MY GOD that emperor is DIS.GUST.ING
BACK OFF FROM KYLE, BACK OFF I SAID