Sa’dilin.
The great grayish-white castle, residence of the Sun God Arhaan, Emperor of the Desert, Khalifa, was one of the symbols of Akhtan. It was said that the Caliph, the first emperor, did not want what he had accumulated during his lifetime to be taken away by outside barbarians, so he drew up defenses that used his own blood in order to guard Sa’dilin.
The numerous golden letters intricately carved into the grey-white exterior walls were a marvel to behold.
It wasn’t because they were beautiful. It was just incredible that someone would spend decades carving these rice-grain-sized letters for fear of being robbed of their wealth through theft and murder. It was a historic structure that showed how far human insanity could go.
“Kyle, when you see His Majesty, you can’t be as spoiled as you are with me. You’re aware of that by now, of course, but you must never cause trouble or talk nonsense, alright?”
I was bent over, staring at the outer walls of the castle with a serious expression, and Mahir was nagging me nonstop. Mahir was always worried and overprotective of me, so I wasn’t surprised, but the problem was that he’d been saying the same thing all the way to Sa’dilin.
“I got it, so don’t worry, brother…”
I spoke as usual, then glanced at the guard standing watch at the entrance before taking a couple of steps toward Mahir and speaking into his ear.
“You said you didn’t think I’d be caught going in and out of there.”
“Answer only when asked, and do not ask questions without permission or needlessly open your mouth. You must never offend the Emperor or act immature. Do you understand?”
“Okay. I will answer politely only when asked, without acting immature. I will behave properly, like a prince of the empire, and be sparing in my words…”
“What do you mean, ‘like a prince?’ Kyle, you are a prince.”
Mahir cut me off with a tired sigh. I cleared my throat a few times, then straightened my back and opened my mouth.
“Anyway, don’t worry about me.”
“Would you rather I come with you?”
He didn’t look like he was kidding. I was worried he really would follow me, so I puffed out my chest and bent at the waist to give him a proper bow.
“Brother, I’ll get going now.”
As I bent my back, I lifted my head slightly to reveal the teeth of my smile. Mahir shook his head and laughed.
“It may be late, but come to my castle when the feast is over.”
“Okay. I’ll be back.”
When I lifted my bent back and spoke, Mahir’s face had turned stern again. I didn’t want to seem frivolous, so I moved slowly and nodded my head lightly.
“I understand what you’ve said.”
“Go ahead, go.”
“See you later!”
I waved my hand enthusiastically and walked quickly into Sa’dilin, hearing Mahir sigh behind me.
After passing through a pathway of golden statues dotted with jewels, I found myself not in a dining hall, but before Khalifa’s bedchamber. The servant who had led me here stood at a massive, firmly closed door, announcing my arrival.
A familiar but unfamiliar voice came from inside. It had been months since I’d heard that voice, I thought blankly, and then I came to my senses and stepped through the smoothly opened door.
With thick curtains drawn, the room was dark as a starless night. The smell of alcohol mingled with a heavy floral scent, making me grimace, but I quickly composed myself.
I walked inside with silent footsteps and arrived in front of the curtained bed. Kneeling down soundlessly, I touched my forehead to the floor with my palms outstretched.
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.
“I greet Arhaan, the Sun God.”
Cr P rqbxf lc j nblmf cba abb ibev cbg abb rboa, P tfjgv atf megajlc iloa. P rajgfv ja atf vjgx oibbg klatbea ygfjatlcu bg yilcxlcu ws fsfr. Coafg j wbwfca bo raloilcu rlifcmf, P tfjgv Btjiloj’r nblmf.
“Ejlrf sbeg tfjv.”
P mibrfv jcv bqfcfv ws fsfr ribkis obg j wbwfca, atfc ribkis ragjlutafcfv ws yjmx. Zs tjcvr, qjiwr bearagfamtfv, kfgf qijmfv gfrqfmaoeiis lc ws ijq jr P ibbxfv eq. P rjk Btjiloj, klat tlr ibcu yijmx tjlg tjculcu ibbrf— atf Swqfgbg bo Cxtajc, jcv ws ojatfg.
He looked down at me nonchalantly, with eyes that held all the indifference and boredom in the world.
“Kyle.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“You’ve grown up a lot.”
Khalifa’s words left me flabbergasted. Should I say ‘thank you’? I didn’t understand why he would call me up and say something like that when he usually wasn’t interested in me at all. And if he had asked me to eat with him, why had he called me to his bedchamber?
For a moment, I wondered if I was going to be raped. What would I do if that happened? I knew I would die if I resisted, but I also didn’t want to submit so meekly.
The longer the silence lengthened, the more uneasy I became, but I couldn’t find the words to respond. I pressed my lips together, and then I heard a sound. It was so small, like the breathing of a young animal, that I thought I had misheard, but then I heard it again, a groan.
“Last year.”
Groans mingled with that muttered voice. I hadn’t misheard. The sound was getting clearer and louder with each passing second.
“I think you were this big when I saw you then.”
Khalifa raised his hands and spread them slightly apart, measuring the distance between them. At about the size of two apples, he paused, his fingers twitching, then shifted his gaze to look down at me. When his eyes met mine, sunken and grim, I lowered my head in surprise.
A cold sweat ran down my back, wondering if he’d seen the look of disbelief on my face, like I was some kind of fool.
“You had a bunch of sweets in your hand, and when Mahir took them away, you cried.”
“Ugh, heuk…”
“……”
The groans, which had been faint, were now so loud that I could no longer pretend not to hear them. They must have reached Khalifa’s ears, but he continued to speak indecipherable words.
“So Mahir picked you up while you were crying, but you kept struggling, and all the sweets fell to the floor. The look on Mahir’s face when he saw you picking them up and eating them was a sight to behold.”
“Ugh…”
“Does Mahir often take away and eat your sweets?”
“……”
What the hell was he talking about? Did he call me over to ask this?
Rather than those sweets, I was more curious about those groans. Was I the only one hearing them? Was it a ghost?
But I couldn’t even ask Khalifa what this was about. I blinked at the floor a few times before defending Mahir.
“My brother has never taken away or eaten my sweets before.”
“Then why did you do that back then?”
“……”
When on earth had Mahir stolen my sweets last year? I blinked in confusion, then suddenly remembered an instance of Mahir holding me as I cried. I shook my head and then glanced up.
“Could it be…”
“Ugh!”
“Euk!”
Perhaps because I was very nervous, I bit my tongue at the loud groans. I didn’t even bite hard, but I was so startled that my teeth started making noises.
“Heuk!”
“……”
I sucked in a breath, startled again by the sound I’d made, and looked at Khalifa. His face, which had been expressionless just moments ago, was slightly contorted. I stared blankly at his creased brow, then lowered my gaze and swallowed hard.
It was normal for people to be startled while talking, but this drug-addicted mad emperor had a history of killing people for just that. A cold sweat ran down my spine.
Khalifa stood up from his seat, his bare feet on the floor, and remained there for a moment before slowly taking a step. As Khalifa walked by me, I heard a sound in my ear again. It was the groan of someone in agony, like they were choking and about to die.
I slowly raised my head, as if possessed by something. The darkness where Khalifa had sat was pitch black and ominous, like the gaping maw of a monster. Something was writhing incessantly inside.
As I strained my eyes to see what it was, I heard the scraping of metal against metal. It was the sound of a sword being removed from its scabbard.
I held my breath and quickly ducked my head as Khalifa passed by me again. Before I could question what in the world was going on, a terrible scream erupted.
“Ahhhh!”
I looked up, barely able to exhale the breath I’d been holding, to see Khalifa holding a bloody sword upright. If this continued, a person’s life would be lost like a fly’s.
Actually, I didn’t know if the person was a concubine, a slave, or something else…. They had nothing to do with me anyway, but I didn’t like the idea of someone dying for no reason, so I thought for a moment and spoke up.
“Your Majesty.”
Khalifa was about to swing his sword once more when my voice stopped him in his tracks. He turned his head to look at me, irritation written all over his face.
I almost creased my brow in frustration, but I forced myself to smile. It was much easier to force a smile than to keep a straight face.
“It wasn’t that he took my sweets away from me, it was that I was too young at the time…”
As I was talking, I suddenly remembered that Mahir had told me never to open my mouth without permission. I was usually pretty good at following through on what he told me to do, but people around me never helped me stick to his directions.
“You were too young?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Khalifa interrupted me. I naturally bowed my head down and continued.
“If I ate too many sweets, my teeth would rot, so he wouldn’t let me eat them.”
“……”
“And not last year, because that was when I was young… a long time ago.”
When I finished, Khalifa didn’t say anything, so I kept talking. If Khalifa got offended, it would be Mahir who would have to deal with it, not me.
“Back then, I was scolded by my brother for picking up things off the floor. I wrote eight pages of self-reflection saying I would never pick up things off the floor again…”
“Eight pages?”
“When I was eight years old, I was told to write eight pages… and when I was nine, I wrote nine pages.”
“Then how many pages do you write now?”
“…Sixteen.”
Actually, I didn’t write any self-reflections after I turned ten, so I just lied. If I told him I didn’t write them now, he’d ask me why I didn’t, but I couldn’t just tell him that I got smarter and started giving up and running away.
“When I was young, my brother used to scold me, too.”
I shut my mouth at the low voice. There was only one person in the world that Khalifa would call brother.
“I don’t remember what I got in trouble for.”
It was the Caliph, the former emperor who had been torn to shreds and left without an intact corpse at Khalifa’s hands.
It was said that Khalifa tore his flesh with his bare hands, crushed his bones, and drank his blood. I didn’t know if it was true or not, because I’d only seen it in written records, but there was no doubt in my mind that Khalifa killed his brother.
“Sixteen.”
“……”
Khalifa’s voice was much lower than it had been a moment ago. I glanced up and saw Khalifa with a bloody sword in his hand, staring blankly into space, his long fingers pressed against his chin.
“You said sixteen.”
“……”
What about sixteen… I nervously expected Khalifa to tell me that sixteen was long enough to live and that I should kill myself right here and now, but the words that came out of his mouth weren’t a command to die.
“It’s time for you to get married.”
“What?”
“Since we’re talking about it now, we might as well proceed with it.”
“……”
Marriage? All of a sudden?
Khalifa spoke as he looked at me, who was stunned by his unexpected words.
“It’s your birthday in a week, so we should do it then.”
“……”
I locked eyes with Khalifa, mouth open like a crucian carp’s. If Mahir had seen me, he would have yelled at me for how I was acting.
But I was too panicked to care about that right now.
All of a sudden, I was getting married in a week, not even a year? Who was I going to marry?
And…
“Why? You don’t want to?”
“Oh, no. That… Thank you…”
And my birthday was in three months, not a week…
Wow, what a charming father 😑
How observant this.. “father”.. is 💀