“So the princess… was not the emperor’s own flesh and blood.”

 

“That’s right. The princess was no descendant of Baran Otkha Khankundra at all—she was a child of the Hinnah.”

 

For a moment, Hissin felt the ground sway beneath his feet, and he was unable to speak.

 

When the name Baran was stripped away from the woman, what remained was nothing but the fifth daughter of her line—a girl pure of heart, who only wished to help others, until everything was taken from her by the third son. 

 

That poor, pitiable girl.

 

To Dahlia, that third boy… perhaps wasn’t Khankundra, but me.

 

The cruel irony of fate felt bitterly cursed. Hissin’s expression twisted into something strange, neither a laugh nor a cry. 

 

With great effort, he steadied his emotions and asked about the fate of the remaining Hinnah.

 

“Then what happened to the princess’s birth parents and the rest of the Hinnah? I saw no one who looked like them in the palace—nor even in the underground prison where I was held.”

 

“That was only to be expected.”

 

Mindhu let out a hollow, bitter laugh.

 

“The Hinnah… were all slaughtered, except for the child taken by Khankundra.”

 

“Slaughtered? But why?”

 

Mindhu’s clouded eyes fixed on the empty air before him. 

 

As he dredged up the past once more, his gaze darkened as if reliving the horrific scenes of that time.

 

💫

 

The emperor’s summons felt ominous. 

 

It had been about seven years since the dead princess and the Hinnah child had been switched.

 

Mindhu, the sole surviving royal inspector from the previous emperor’s reign, was filled with dread—deep, chilling fear—when the emperor suddenly called him to the underground prison in the dead of night.

 

Does he mean to kill everyone who knows the secret, even now? 

 

Or will I too be locked away in the deepest dungeon, left to rot like the Hinnah?

 

Though every part of him wanted to flee then and there, Mindhu’s feet—long accustomed to moving as Baran’s loyal hound—carried him, as if by habit, toward the underground prison where the emperor waited.

 

Mindhu entered the underground prison, where not a single ray of light reached, clutching a small torch and a rope as if they were lifelines, and made his way toward the cell where the Hinnah were held.

 

The deeper he went, the thicker the smell of blood grew. 

 

By the time he realized something was terribly wrong, it was already far too late.

 

“Mindhu… What in the world am I to do? How do I fix this…!”

 

Behind the panic-stricken emperor lay the Hinnah, slaughtered in a gruesome massacre, their bodies scattered in a horrifying display.

 

“Zeta Mindhu, you know all of Baran’s history—you know more about the Hinnah than anyone. You must tell me how to solve this!”

 

Khankundra, his appearance drenched in blood, seized Mindhu by the shoulders. 

 

Lowering his gaze to the emperor, Mindhu saw trousers half torn away. 

 

Among the scattered Hinnah lay a woman, dead and completely naked, not a thread of clothing left on her.

 

He did not need to ask to understand. 

 

Blinded by lust, Khankundra had violated a beautiful Hinnah woman, and when the other Hinnah protested, he had slaughtered the entire clan in a fit of rage.

 

Faced with such senseless carnage and the filthy stain of desire, Mindhu felt sick to his stomach. But the moment he saw the emperor’s ashen face, a single, wretched desire rose in his mind.

 

What if, right here, he could win the emperor’s trust? 

 

Could he not then overturn the fate of a lifetime spent rotting away as a dull, bookish scholar?

 

In the kingdom of Baran, status determined one’s destiny. 

 

Nobles remained nobles, commoners remained commoners, and the lowborn were forever trapped in their wretchedness. 

 

Unless the very heavens and earth were overturned, no one could hope to climb the walls of social standing.

 

And now, in this very moment, the sea of blood spilled before him seemed like a violent tide capable of overturning the heavens and the earth. 

 

That the emperor had called him, of all people, to this gruesome scene—was this not the grace of the goddess Nuit herself?

 

“Your Majesty… look upon your humble servant.”

 

Mindhu swallowed down a wave of nauseating horror and terror all at once. Then, in a soothing voice, he began to calm Khankundra.

 

“This Hinnah cell is a secret space known only to Your Majesty and me. No one else knows of it. If only you and I seal our lips, it can disappear into history forever.”

 

“But the Hinnah…”

 

“For now, erasing all traces is the priority. Trust me and wait, Your Majesty.”

 

Since childhood, despite his fierce temper, Khankundra had possessed a trait that seemed ill-suited to it—once thrown into panic, he struggled to regain his composure. 

 

Mindhu easily soothed the emperor, then stepped into the cell where the Hinnah lay dead.

 

The metallic stench of blood, thick enough to melt one’s lungs, made his body instinctively freeze. But Mindhu forced himself to move and began gathering the Hinnah’s corpses.

 

He piled all the bodies onto a wide, coarse sack. 

 

Summoning every ounce of his strength, he hauled the sack out, but the protruding arm of one corpse caught on the iron bars.

 

It was the arm of the mother whose child had been taken by Khankundra. 

 

Emaciated to the point where her bones showed through, hollowed by the grief of losing her child, she was a woman who had lost everything to Baran—a woman whose flesh had been so stripped away that not even enough remained to sever a limb cleanly, leaving only bloodied fingers to be cut.

 

“Damn it, why won’t you come loose!”

 

Mindhu strained to free the already stiffening arm from between the bars. With a violent clank, the corpse jerked loose and came free.

 

At the same time, the iron bars themselves—which should have been firmly anchored into the cave wall—tilted crookedly. 

 

Due to poor upkeep compared to other cells, the corrosion had grown severe.

 

I’ll have to fix that later. For now, disposing of the bodies comes first.

 

Mindhu dragged the heavy sack. 

 

The entrance to the underground prison was guarded around the clock by jailers, so he couldn’t leave that way. 

 

After a moment of thought, he took the emperor’s sword and began hacking at the soft, yielding wall of the cavern.

 

The urge to give up rose within him like smoke from a chimney, yet time and again, he pushed it down. 

 

By imagining his future self—ascended to a station so exalted it defied comparison with his past—he kept digging, and digging again. 

 

For the sake of that dazzling future, he could tear through walls like this a hundred times over.

 

And so Mindhu dug, chipping away at the wall that stood before him like a barrier to his destiny, digging relentlessly until dawn began to break. 

 

Finally, he carved a passage leading out beyond the fortress walls, into the desert, and together with the emperor, he hauled the Hinnah’s bodies outside.

 

The vast desert swallows everything and turns it to sand. 

 

No one would think it strange if another set of remains joined the bones already scattered beneath its shifting dunes. 

 

With his last reserves of strength, Mindhu buried the Hinnah deep in the sand, scattering them in secluded spots across the desert.

 

By the time everything was done, dawn was breaking. 

 

Mindhu hastily covered the desert passage they had used with planks and sand, hiding its existence.

 

Khankundra, who until then had worn a dazed, hollow expression, began to tremble again, his mind replaying the horror he himself had unleashed.

 

“Now that the Hinnah are all dead… how am I to demonstrate the sacred power before the people from now on?”

 

Mindhu had to bite back the urge to snap at the emperor to stop his whining. 

 

Instead, he took Khankundra’s hand. Then, with the same devoted gaze as before, he calmed the emperor’s fears.

 

“Your Majesty, until my dying breath, I will move for your sake as I have today. Fear nothing. I will protect you.”

 

“But without the Hinnah, how can you possibly—!”

 

“We still have one Hinnah left, do we not?”

 

Mindhu cupped Khankundra’s cheek, a paternal, almost intimate gesture, and smiled a cunning smile.

 

“We need only wait until that Hinnah awakens. The day will come when the goddess Nuit smiles upon us once again.”

 

Less than a year later, the last descendant of the Hinnah awakened her sacred power.

 

💫

 

Having heard the entire story, Hissin simply remained silent, wordlessly holding onto his stillness.

 

Mindhu stole glances at him, gauging his reaction. 

 

This might be the perfect chance, he thought, to break free from the spineless, faith-addled Khankundra and claim a sky of his own—a prospect that no longer seemed so terrible.

 

A sly smile crept across Mindhu’s face as he attempted to coax out Hissin’s thoughts with honeyed words.

 

“This is all I… that is to say, all I know of the truth. So, has it answered your questions?”

 

At the slippery sound of his voice, Hissin lifted his head. His gaze, hard as stone, fixed on Mindhu, whose tongue flickered like a serpent’s. Then, in a voice stripped of all inflection, he asked,

 

“So, you mean to say you stood by and witnessed every single humiliation Princess Dahlia of Baran endured.”

 

“Yes. I saw it all, right by her side. Is there… anything else you wish to know?”

 

Mindhu’s eyes gleamed with anticipation, thinking Hissin might ask more about the princess.

Slice.

 

Mindhu’s head, still wearing its expectant expression, was severed and fell to the floor. His blood-drenched face tumbled across the ground before landing upside-down against the cold, hard metal.

 

Hissin’s fury had transferred to the soldiers bound by his heart’s vow, commanding them to sever his neck.

 

And it wasn’t just Mindhu.

 

Every royal and noble dragged from Baran was cut down in an instant by the soldiers. 

 

Screams filled the prison, spreading in a wave, only to vanish completely in less than a minute.

 

Only one man avoided the soldiers’ blades—Baran Otkha Khankundra.

 

He… is not my kill to make.

 

Slowly, Hissin rose from his seat and stepped out of the interrogation chamber. 

 

With every step, the sticky, clinging blood that had pooled from Mindhu seeped beneath his feet, yet Hissin could not bring himself to wipe it away.

 

The tragedy of the Hinnah, woven through the entire history of Baran, had ultimately flowed into its final descendant—Baran Dahlia.

 

It was the kingdom of Baran that had remade her into that Fifth Daughter, stripping her of everything… but in the end, it was he who had swallowed her whole.

 

He, who had believed the false image imposed upon her to be the truth. 

 

He, who, instead of bringing justice to those who truly deserved it, had forced his own misplaced guilt upon that pitiful woman, making her suffer by his side. 

 

He, who had dragged her to a foreign land and robbed her even of the freedom to choose death.

 

How could he ever atone for this sin?

 

This terrible truth… how could he ever reveal it to her?