#24. What Did I Do Wrong

‘……Something feels strange.’

Partanie, sinking into pitch-black water, thought hazily.

‘No, you cannot die.’

That cry wasn’t unfamiliar.

It felt as if she had experienced something similar in the past, on the other side of a life she had forgotten.

‘If so, when exactly?’

With this question, the dark scene suddenly began turning white.

What appeared was a snow-covered mountain.

She was still collapsed, but not alone.

The strong embrace holding her body and someone’s contorted face emerged sporadically as blurry memories.

Partanie realized at that moment.

‘This is the day I died, isn’t it……?’

But what was strange was that she, who should have certainly died, was faintly breathing.

Her face, somehow regaining a bit of color, looked peaceful.

Her lips, which had been spitting black blood, were now cleanly wiped, and the Grand Duke of Dragonia’s chimera leather warmly covered her body that had been shivering from cold.

As if trying to protect her from the cold and pain, even just a little.

In contrast, the faces of the three Dragonia brothers looked terrible.

Pale faces, as if they had collapsed while spitting blood. They looked like patients dying from excessive bleeding, as if their life force had been drained.

Their previously healthy and robust appearances were nowhere to be seen.

‘Why……?’

Why has everything changed so much?

Partanie couldn’t help but think. It seems like you are the ones dying, not me.

Among them, the Grand Duke of Dragonia had the worst complexion. He said something while holding Partanie tightly in his arms.

‘You’re not dead. You’re still alive.’

And with devastated eyes, he muttered.

‘I absolutely won’t let you die……’

……What exactly happened?

Partanie was dazed, unable to believe the appearance of the Dragonia clan before her.

She clearly remembered dying that day on the snowy mountain.

Yet why did she see herself not dying, and her family members who seemed to have shared her pain, right before her eyes?

As if there was a moment she didn’t know about……

‘Grand Duke of Dragonia!’

Just as she wondered…..

‘What happened to the lady!’

A voice split with rage echoed in her ears. Partanie unconsciously turned her head.

The owner of the voice was a handsome young man with golden hair that seemed made from sunlight and silver-gray eyes colder than the moon.

‘……Prince Lukaris?’

Partanie was even more confused than when she saw the Dragonia clan.

‘And why are you appearing here?’

However, Partanie’s reasonable question was swept away by the bombshell statement that followed.

‘Didn’t you say you needed the lady of Phoenix to save the lady? So you lured that wicked thing all the way here……!’

‘What did you just say?’

The real saintess, Fionia Phoenix, what? She’s needed to save me?

‘That wicked thing, lured……?’

But Partanie couldn’t continue her thoughts.

The black water suddenly rose, erasing everything and swallowing her.

The incomplete memories in her blurred consciousness were soon erased, and her soul forgot everything.

“……Ugh.”

But contrary to the inner chaos, Partanie’s physical body gradually recovered its vitality.

Above the unconscious Partanie’s head, letters of light appeared one by one.

[Congratulations! You have successfully completed the quest <Survive oppression and cold>!]

[As a reward, you receive ‘Fragment of □□’.]

[Congratulations! All ‘Fragments of □□’ have been collected!]

[Item ‘Contaminated Divine Beast’s Egg’ is being purified.]

[Curse ‘Yoke of Original Sin’ is weakening……]

The consecutive light letters appeared, glimmered by themselves, and disappeared repeatedly.

The fingers of the quietly sleeping girl twitched and moved.

* * *

In the basement of the Blue Brick Castle, a dark prison.

This gloomy and musty place was filled with the stench of decay.

The incessant snowfall made the prison as cold as ice. Countless people developed frostbite, their bodies rotting.

“My lord!”

“I truly don’t know anything. I only did as I was told!”

Numerous people were imprisoned in the underground jail.

They were people who, in the Grand Duke of Dragonia’s judgment, had committed wrongs—ranging from lowly servants to vassals with noble blood.

For instance, Penelope Barshava, Taran’s maternal aunt.

“I’m wronged, I, I really didn’t do that……”

Locked in solitary confinement, Penelope trembled and muttered like a madwoman.

Tangled hair and a haggard, emaciated face.

Dressed in elegant but thin clothes to welcome the Grand Duke, now torn and soiled, she truly looked insane.

In fact, Penelope was half-crazed.

Because she had seen the fate of those brought in with her.

‘I’ve done nothing wrong! I have nothing to say!’

Johanna, Penelope’s maid who had been imprisoned for punishment before Kalenso left, didn’t understand the situation.

Perhaps that’s why, even when dragged to the underground prison, she held her head high.

In reality, all Johanna had done was persecute the half-baked lady Partanie, and she believed it wasn’t a crime because Madam Penelope had permitted it.

‘That’s right!’

‘What wrong have we done to be dragged here?’

‘For Taran’s sake, you shouldn’t treat us like this!’

And the same went for Penelope’s other minions.

The interrogator persuaded these criminals, who unanimously claimed their innocence, very simply.

‘Urgh, ugh…… kuhak!’

He poured poison into the mouth of the maid, Johanna, who had stepped forward as a representative.

The poison was so terrible that Johanna couldn’t even die easily.

‘Ah, aaaagh—!’

After what felt like an eternity to the prisoners, though actually only four hours, Johanna became a horrifically disfigured corpse.

That’s when the interrogator returned.

‘Is there anyone who still feels wronged and has nothing to confess?’

At the sight of him shaking the poison bottle, the criminals spilled everything as if they had lost their minds.

“Damn it, damn it, damn it……!”

Penelope screamed, tearing at her tangled hair.

Her terrified subordinates had revealed everything, and now she was a dead woman walking—not just for tormenting the half-wit lady Partanie.

“Shut up, you wretched woman!”

“This is all because of you!!”

In the cell next to Penelope’s, her similarly imprisoned minions spat at her and threw stones.

Unfortunately for them, they had served the same mistress—Penelope, and ended up in this state!

‘If that bitch hadn’t acted up, if she had just quietly lived as Taran’s nanny……!’

They didn’t realize, even in their final moments as they blamed others.

Coincidentally, all those being treated most cruelly until the very end shared one crime—having mistreated Dragonia’s youngest lady Partanie at least once.

“Ugh, huuh!”

Miserably beaten by her subordinates’ rebellion, Penelope shed humiliating tears.

‘How did I end up like this? How have I fallen so low?’

She was the legitimate daughter of Barshava. Taran’s maternal aunt and the nanny who had raised him!

Dragonia couldn’t treat her like this……!

‘I must let Barshava, my family know!’

So someone could rescue her.

But who would contact her family on her behalf?

‘Taran?’

Penelope’s expression twisted at the name that unconsciously came to mind.

No, that ungrateful wretch hadn’t even looked back when she was dragged away. After all she had done to raise him!

She had lived in vain. Even the nephew she had raised with her own hands betrayed her; her entire life had gone wrong.

As Penelope despaired, the underground prison door creaked open as meal service arrived.

The meal was nothing but a piece of rock-hard black bread that could break teeth, but the starving prisoners rushed at it like hungry demons.

“Give me, give it quickly!”

“I, I didn’t get any!”

Penelope was no different.

At first, she had thrown it away in disgust, acting haughty, but after going hungry for days without a drop of water, she now rushed at it like a beggar with wild eyes.

As she hastily received and chewed the bread, Penelope discovered a small note tucked inside.

“……!”

Instinctively realizing this was an opportunity, Penelope looked at the guard who had brought the meal.

But the guard had already disappeared, and she carefully unfolded the note, avoiding others’ eyes. Then she realized.

‘It’s that person!’

Penelope’s heart beat violently.

The person who had guided her since she entered Dragonia’s main castle. The one who had helped her become Taran’s nanny and rise to the position of de facto mistress!

‘Of course, they haven’t abandoned me. I still have a way to survive!’

If she had no value to use, they wouldn’t have contacted her so secretly.

Penelope grinned. The merchant’s daughter, who calculated worth to her very bones, realized. As long as she had usefulness, there were plenty of chances to survive.

Relieved, she slowly unfolded the note, but her expression gradually turned blue with shock.

“H-How……”

Sister.

Penelope, muttering unconsciously, covered her mouth with her hand despite no one being around to hear.

As she continued reading the note in terror, her face transformed into a smile tinged with madness.

“……Taran.”

Kuk-kuk, muttering the name of her inexcusably wretched nephew, Penelope’s eyes flashed.

Yes, if she died, she wouldn’t die alone.

* * *

The interrogation of Taran, the second son of Dragonia, began around that time.