1 – FAY 1 The Wedding

Caliph was the leader of bandits who believed that everything in the desert, down to the last grain of sand, belonged to him. He began to make his name known around the time mountains of corpses and rivers of blood appeared in the vast desert.

Exhausted by destruction and slaughter, and drenched in fear, people crawled to his feet one by one. After decades of massacre and tyranny, when all the sand of the desert finally became Caliph’s as he had wished, he became the Emperor of the desert.

“The empire of the scorching sun, the beginning of Actan. Forbidden book.”

The naked face of Actan, built on corpses and blood, was written as it was in the Forbidden book.” The one who risked his life to record history had all ten fingers cut off, eyes and tongue pulled out, and dried to death under the hot sun for three generations. The corpses would have been eaten by desert eagles and weathered away, leaving not a single bone fragment.

“Kyle.”

As I was turning the worn and crumpled pages, a familiar voice came from behind. When I turned my head, Crown Prince Mahir, the next Emperor of Actan, was standing with his back to the light seeping through the window.

His face wasn’t clearly visible due to the backlight, but his expression must have been as crumpled as this worn piece of paper. I naturally closed the open book, hid it behind my back, and turned my body completely towards Mahir. Then, I heard a sigh in my ear.

“I told you not to come in here.”

“Did you?”

“It’s exactly the 100th time today.”

“What is?”I knew it was the 100th time, but I pretended not to know and asked, quickly putting the book on the bookshelf.” Then, I turned my head with an innocent expression and met his eyes, and Mahir’s head tilted to the side.

“I mean this exact same conversation we’re having now.”

“Ah, this was the place where even royalty can’t enter without Your Majesty’s permission? Sorry, sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Just know that ‘I didn’t know’ is also the 100th time.”

As I approached Mahir, who was holding his head, and grabbed his firm forearm, another sigh escaped his lips.

“What are you going to do if Your Majesty finds out?”

“It’s also the 100th time you’ve said that, brother.”

“If you know, listen to me.”

Mahir shook off my hand and said in a stern tone. His face, standing against the sunlight, was covered in darkness, the complete opposite of his usual gentle self. His usually warm brown eyes seemed to have a chill, so I pouted my lips.

“You can find it before anyone else does, right?”

I mumbled in a voice so small that an ant could crawl over it, as if I had done something wrong, and Mahir sighed for the third time. I looked up to gauge his reaction. His cool face was nowhere to be seen, and only a troubled light was evident. Seeing that, I grabbed his forearm again and clung to it.

“Your Majesty listens to you well, so if I get caught, you can just tell him to spare your little brother once.”

Mahir stared down at me, who was clinging to his forearm like a monkey, and shook his head with a worried expression.

“When are you ever going to grow up? You’re almost seventeen now.”

“What! I’m already seventeen?”

I let go of his arm, gasped with exaggerated surprise, and Mahir grabbed my hand and started walking, saying,

“I can’t believe it either. It feels like just yesterday you were crawling around.”

“Crawling around? I’m not a bug.”

I frowned deeply, and Mahir laughed out loud as if he had remembered something.

“You were just as restless back then as you are now. You would disappear as soon as I took my eyes off you, and I cried so much the first day I lost you.”

Mahir, who was laughing while reminiscing about the past, turned his head and looked down at me. His face, full of laughter, gradually hardened, and his eyes filled with worry. I felt a pang at that look and shut my mouth tightly, and Mahir said in a stern voice.

“So, stop causing trouble. If Your Majesty finds out you’re sneaking around in places like this, he won’t let it go.”

I knew that nodding obediently to Mahir’s words would ease his anger even a little, but my lips were itching and I couldn’t bear it.

“I wish you would become Sun God Rahan soon. Then you’d let me read whatever book I want.”

“Kyle.”

“What’s so special about this that you hide it so carefully? It doesn’t make what happened disappear, either…”

“Kyle!”

Mahir’s voice rose. I shrugged my shoulders, and I heard a sigh. Mahir, who had already sighed for the fourth time in the short time we had met, tightened his grip on my hand.

“Don’t think that you can be forgiven for everything just because you’re a prince. Your Majesty…”

Mahir looked around to see if anyone was listening and quickly shut his mouth. He only moved his lips several times, but no sound came out. But I knew what Mahir wanted to say even without him saying it.

Solar Calendar 992, about three years ago from now.

The great ruler of Actan, Sun God Rahan, the master of the desert, and my and Mahir’s father, Khalifa, killed my sister and brother, his daughter and son, whom he had never even seen.

He stabbed sharp candlesticks into their chests and mutilated their corpses for the trivial reason that they did not spread their legs and accept him.

With this incident, incestuous marriage among the royal family was legalized in Actan, and Khalifa could legally take his illegitimate children without any hesitation.

Isn’t he crazy? Legalizing incest to rape his children. Besides, how is the relationship between a father and his children incestuous? Incest is when you’re siblings like me and Mahir, but the relationship between a father and his children, no matter how you package it as incest, is just crazy and should never be done.

“Mahir! Kyle!”

Just then, a voice calling us came from afar. When I turned my head, Mahir’s Servant was running towards us with a desperate look on his face. He stood in front of us, panting for a long time, and then opened his mouth with a pale face.

“What are you doing here?”

“Why are you running so frantically? Is there something urgent?”

The Servant, who was looking at us standing still in the middle of a remote garden where no one ever came, with a puzzled look, said “Ah” at Mahir’s words.

“Y-Your Majesty is going to hold a banquet…”

At the Servant’s cautious words, this time Mahir and I exchanged puzzled expressions. Khalifa was indulging in wine and women day and night, holding banquets every day and squandering the national treasury. That was his job.

Why is holding a banquet such a surprising thing that he came running here in such a hurry to tell us? Mahir must have had the same thought as me, as he let go of the hand he was holding and straightened his back.

Before his lips could open, the Servant, who had been bowing, said,

“H-He wants to have dinner with his sons for the first time in a while…”

“Sons?”

Mahir frowned and asked, and the Servant raised his head, glanced at him, and turned his gaze towards me.

And then silence fell. I stared blankly at the Servant, then widened my eyes and asked.

“Are you talking about me? Me?”

“Yes, he specifically told me to bring Kyle.”

“No… Why?”

“Excuse me? W-Well, that’s…”

Well, there was no way the Servant would know even if I asked him. Seeing the Servant, who was as flustered as I was, Mahir raised his hand lightly.

“I understand, you may leave.”

At those words, the Servant bowed deeply once again and turned his back to walk the way he had come.

“…”

“…”

After the Servant disappeared, Mahir and I, who had been looking at that place for a long time, made eye contact almost simultaneously. As I looked into his brown eyes, which were mixed with worry and confusion, hundreds and thousands of things I had done wrong flashed through my mind like a panorama.

“Did he find out that I’ve been sneaking in and out of here?”

“…”

“…”

“…It can’t be.”

The scene in front of me turned dark at his unconfident tone, which came out after a long delay.