By Zephyria 
The moonlight slowly illuminated the wide, dark field. Khalifa, holding a sword, and Aska, kneeling on the cold ground, looked unreal, like a painting.
Watching from a distance, I was frozen in place until Khalifa turned his head in my direction. I reflexively moved my lips to greet him, but then realized I was panting.
It was natural since I had run so fast, but it felt different. My heart was racing, and my whole body throbbed as if pulsating. I moved my legs and stood before Khalifa, still gasping for breath.
“Your Majesty.”
“You lied to me.”
Lie? What lie did I tell?
My mind went blank, and I couldn’t connect my thoughts. I tried to control my breathing by taking deep breaths, but it was no use. The smell of blood had been bothering me since earlier, and I couldn’t calm down.
“What is the matter?”
“……”
“Is it your magic, or is it…”
He reached out to Aska, who was kneeling. Aska, who had been looking down, turned his gaze to me. His pale face was covered in cold sweat, and the corners of his eyes were red as if blood had burst.
His lower body was completely red in the pool of blood, and I couldn’t even guess where he was injured. I tried to peel off the soaked clothes, and then I found a large amount of blood flowing from his ankle.
The flesh was torn open as if the area above his heel had been deeply cut. The wounds were so deep that it was a miracle both ankles were still attached. I hesitated to touch him, just fidgeting my fingers nearby, and then looked at Aska.
His face looked pained, but he wasn’t crying. He had suffered such a severe injury while under a Sealing Magic, yet he was still lucid. I didn’t know why, but it was a relief.
How awful would it have been if Aska had started crying and screaming for blood in this situation? Khalifa would have been flustered, and I would have been dumbfounded, making the atmosphere very comical.
Thinking about it that way, I could say I was lucky, but strangely, my vision kept blurring. It was hard to breathe, and my body was shaking, so I couldn’t think straight.
Bright red blood was still gushing from the open wound.
How could so much blood come from that small body? Why didn’t he avoid it? Why did he just stand there and get hurt by that sword? Why didn’t he run away? Why is he kneeling here like a criminal, head bowed? Why won’t the blood stop?
Why…….
As countless questions filled my head, a blood-soaked hand overlapped mine. A damp, slender hand was gripping mine tightly.
Thanks to the moderate warmth, I realized I was excessively cold. I was terrified, trembling with fear, and couldn’t even breathe properly.
Still, thanks to that, my mind, which had been like melting, sticky sugar, felt a little better.
“Kyle.”
Khalifa’s voice came from above. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it properly. I gently pulled Aska’s arm and grabbed the back of his neck.
As I moved closer, I bit my tongue to draw blood and then kissed him. I could feel him struggling weakly in my arms, probably because he was flustered. But he soon calmed down and began to suck the blood. My injured tongue throbbed, but the pain only made me more alert.
I watched Aska, who was focused on sucking blood with his eyes closed, and then parted my lips. His face was still pale, but the pain seemed to have subsided a lot.
I stood up from the ground, took off my coat, and covered Aska’s head with it.
As I straightened my back, Khalifa, with a furrowed brow, was staring at me. The taste in my mouth was still fishy and disgusting, but the weak force with which he had sucked so desperately remained like an afterimage.
I slowly licked the gums behind my teeth with my sore tongue, deliberately touching the injured area.
“……”
“……”
Looking at Khalifa, I instinctively realized that there was no turning back. No excuses or lies would work. Even if I repented and begged for forgiveness, it wouldn’t end smoothly.
But if a miracle happened and he offered to cover everything up, would I be able to accept it?
Whether I went back obediently or not, it didn’t matter anymore.
Mahir had saved me and pulled me up so many times, but Khalifa had finally pushed me to the edge of a cliff.
“Why do you keep…”
As I opened my mouth, the tip of the sword Khalifa was holding scraped the ground, creating noise. I stared at it for a moment, then raised my gaze to look at Khalifa.
“Why do you keep making me kill you?”
“What?”
Khalifa frowned and asked back at my mumbling. His eyes were fierce, but Khalifa’s threats had never worked on me, not even for a single moment. Even on the day we first met, I thought Khalifa was more pathetic than scary.
“I’ve tried to kill you countless times. That’s because you, a human, act like a god. You take lives with a wave of your hand, change people’s destinies with a word, and look down from above to decide everything, so what else could you be if not a god?”
I took another step closer to him.
“Do humans really need a god? Why is there a god in the world where people live? After much thought, I tried to kill all the gods in this world. But I didn’t. Why?”
Khalifa didn’t answer my question and raised his arm to swing his sword. I could have easily avoided it, but I deliberately grabbed the sword with my hand, which was stained with Aska’s blood.
“That’s because you’re not a god.”
“Do you want to die?”
“You’re not a god, just a back-alley thug who’s drunk from noon and causing trouble with a broken bottle. Where are the gods in this world? They’re just pathetic humans who were born in the right place, sitting in high chairs and acting like assholes.”
The blade cut into my palm, and blood streamed down.
“Why don’t you know this? Why don’t you know something that I and Mahir know, even after eating all that age? Kalik must not have told you that, huh?”
Khalifa’s eyes changed when the name of the late Emperor was mentioned. Khalifa put strength into his arm and moved it. The sword I was holding slipped out with a whoosh, scattering blood.
My palm was deeply cut, and blood splattered everywhere.
“You must have had some reason, too. You must have had unspeakable circumstances that made you the way you are. You weren’t born like this from the start.”
“……”
“But that doesn’t excuse you.”
“……”
Khalifa’s expression as he just stared at me until the end of my words was quite a sight. Anger, embarrassment, shame, and other miscellaneous emotions were mixed together like pig slop, clearly visible on his face.
“Ha……”
But Khalifa quickly regained his composure, chuckled, and turned his head. He opened his mouth with a dumbfounded expression.
“Is that all you have to say?”
Khalifa looked like he was about to swing his sword at any moment. I closed my mouth for a moment and caught my breath.
I had been spewing out words haphazardly because I was angry, but it didn’t make me feel better. I had been bringing up stories that had been inside me all along, so why did I feel so bad?
Was it because the dead wouldn’t come back no matter what? Because the past couldn’t be undone, and the broken glass couldn’t be put back together?
Mahir had tried so hard, but in the end, I had grabbed the sword. As I gripped the cold handle of the sword tightly with my injured hand, the blood began to freeze.
“Father.”
Khalifa’s expression, which had been glaring at me, twisted strangely. I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.
“If Aska were a normal person, he would have already died from excessive bleeding.”
Like the people who had burned to death in the old castle as children, like the physicians who had worried about the patients’ health, like the Servants who had begged for mercy, like the knights who had tried to protect their masters, like the young children who had missed their parents…….
I forced myself to swallow the things that wouldn’t digest no matter how much time passed, chewing them thoroughly.
If something had happened to Aska, I would have regretted it again, holding his dead body. I should have listened to Mahir back then and killed you, even if it meant going against the natural order.
Since it was something you did with the intention to kill, I couldn’t forgive you for that alone, regardless of whether Aska lived or died.
“Do you have to kill everyone to be satisfied?”
“You have a talent for speaking vulgarly.”
The coldness emanating from Almas was freezing my hand, and I was losing sensation. The skin, which was already red as if frostbitten, was gradually darkening, so I couldn’t waste any more time.
“There are people who dance with swords when they’re angry, so is it so surprising that an angry son says some harsh words to his father?”
“Do you even think of me as your father?”
“Yes, I think we have a lot in common. Especially the way we blame the times and whine like cripples. I guess that’s where the saying ‘like father, like son’ comes from.”
“Insolent bastard.”
“Don’t you dare try to teach me. My Emperor has never been you for a single moment.”
The blood on the ground froze and rose upwards like spears.