# Chapter 49
(This is from the author’s perspective.)
For Kadilen, nothing was more foolish than love.
On a distant night he couldn’t even remember, his parents abandoned their child on a pile of stones and left. The weight of the massive rocks pressing down on his body seemed to foretell the weight of the life he would endure. Through the tangled gaps between the stones, the only thing the child could see was a pitch-black sky without a single star. When his desperate cries gradually subsided, someone hastily pushed away the stones with bare hands. The exhausted-looking man who lifted him up, covered in festering wounds, saw the child’s tightly closed mouth and powerless fists. As if realizing that crying couldn’t change anything, no more tears flowed from him.
It was his first meeting with his master.
Under his poor master, Kadilen began a nomadic life. Though he had never had anything in abundance, he couldn’t afford to waste time complaining if he wanted to survive. They moved from region to region, picking fruits from street trees and begging for food from house to house. Their group, mostly composed of army deserters, carefully examined only the outskirts of the kingdom.
After learning to walk, Kadilen took on all sorts of miscellaneous tasks. He was a quiet and blunt child, but everyone adored him. In a place with little to rejoice about, even a child’s wobbly steps could warm the heart. His master tried to send Kadilen to a decent household to grow up properly. Had the child not invariably followed the group the next day, even when they put him to sleep and secretly departed at night, it might have been possible. If he had been adopted into an ordinary family, eaten healthy meals, and received education, a completely different life might have unfolded.
But Kadilen vaguely knew his situation. That he probably could never expect the parental affection that might be natural for others. This was why he left his warm bedroom, got lost repeatedly, and fell down, all to follow his life’s benefactor.
Before learning about love, he first learned about survival.
The day Kadilen first held a sword, he felt an exhilaration he had never known before. For the first time in his life, he could call something his own. The sword followed him perfectly, drawing a flawless line according to the direction he wielded it. Talent—there was no other way to explain it. Even among soldiers who had trained for years, Kadilen’s swordsmanship always stood out.
He traversed as many places as possible. He wished the narrow surface of his blade could sweep through every corner of the world. His first desire, when he had never harbored even trivial greed, was to freely travel the world wielding his sword. It was a time when he still didn’t precisely know what consequences followed depending on where it reached, or what meaning was contained in the act of cutting something.
When he became a young man, a noblewoman visited their camp. She was an old friend of his master, and her husband owned a small territory on the outskirts. Their group, who were having a proper meal in a splendid building for the first time in a long while, didn’t notice when the master and the woman disappeared together. Walking around the castle with a full stomach, Kadilen witnessed the familiar man and woman kissing tenderly.
‘Master, do you love her?’
‘I haven’t even had the opportunity until now.’
After that, the woman frequently visited his master. The group, who had never settled in one region, established themselves in that land according to the master’s wishes. As the meetings between the master and the woman became more frequent, their food increased, and their bedding became more comfortable. Then one day, the woman, having discovered Kadilen’s outstanding skills, took him in as her personal guard. Leaving his master’s side, Kadilen was genuinely happy. Everyone pooled their entire savings to arrange a celebration.
But no matter that he had once been a general, now just a fugitive sitting on the streets, there was no way he could safely love her. Reality arrived faster than expected. When their secret meetings were discovered, she initially knelt before her husband and begged. However, few people wouldn’t succumb to continuous threats and the wall of wealth. What they thought was a noble love instantly died down, leaving only a moment’s passion and a stupid mistake.
When Zendal’s conquest war began, the kingdom put efforts into drafting soldiers. Word reached the king that a group of deserters were roaming the villages armed. Since the army was the most painful hell for those who had fled the terrible battlefield, her husband considered it the perfect method of revenge.
Learning the truth, the master visited his collapsed love and begged her not to harm his people. At that moment, his beggar-like appearance and pitiful kneeling posture struck her head like lightning. Watching her turn away with a cold face, the master rose silently. What awaited him as he tried to lead his group to escape was Kadilen, standing with the sword he had gifted him.
‘Master, why are you here…’
Kadilen had set out under the nobleman’s orders to capture the traitor. Had he known what awaited at the end, he would never have gone. For him, swordsmanship was the first thing entirely in his hands in a world where he couldn’t do anything, and he was preoccupied with thrusting it everywhere with an overwhelmed heart. He thought it was freedom. He thought he would do his best to make his sword reach as far as possible.
When he came to his senses, his sword was pointed at his master.
In an empty field, those he once called brothers knelt, waiting for the end. Kadilen, who had stood at the front, stepped back, unable to control his trembling body. Mocking his weakness, another person stepped forward with a fierce voice. Every word from his mouth sounded like hell.
He looked into his master’s eyes. Lingering attachment, a sense of betrayal, pain, and piercing regret.
Tears flowing from being overwhelmed by the pitiful affection that rose unwaveringly even at death’s threshold, and a lump of blood gushing from the chest along with the mercilessly plunged sword.
That was the love Kadilen knew.
That day, Kadilen couldn’t protect anyone. All his companions, including his master, were executed on the spot. The tears that had stopped when he first met his master in the pile of stones returned to him with intense anguish. The blood of dozens soaked his entire body, impossible to wash off no matter how hard he tried.
Since then, he never wielded a sword without purpose again. Even in the midst of a chaotic battlefield, he sensitively calculated where his sword was pointing at every moment. If it truly was his, it had to move exactly in line with his will, without the slightest error. And in that process, he must never forget the memory of when he had roamed the streets with nothing. The lives he failed to protect could return again at any time after circling through the afterlife. As all those who suffered were like them, he took the best care of people.
But even to the merciful Kadilen, there was something that seemed infinitely trivial. Though he would discard honor and willingly lower himself for his disciples, there was an emotion he could never possess. For him, love was a cruel, foolish, and merely hollow, useless emotion. No one could make him feel it.
Until he met Ludin.
He couldn’t believe it. That someone could love him.
An absolute affection he had never received from anyone. If such feelings, willingly sacrificing one’s life, were just pathetic and pitiful acts as he thought, they shouldn’t have resonated so greatly. An emotion he had declared he would never receive or give, crushed under stones on a distant night, soaked in the blood of brothers who died. How could he know how overwhelming and breathtaking it was to be the object of such tender feelings?
Also, that by belatedly following that desperate trajectory, he would feel the pain Ludin experienced intact.
Kadilen truly didn’t know.
‘I don’t want to lose anyone anymore.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Let’s not lose anyone together.’
‘It’s not easy to be honest…’
The words he had spoken, and the warm emotions felt from him, appeared in dreams every night. Why had he been blind to such a vastly rising emotion, while having not a shred of doubt about the belief in a curse? How could he hate him in an instant, while long suspecting there was a reason for his actions, knowing it wasn’t his honest behavior?
Though he knew he had no right, every moment of Ludin was too great a stimulus. Where he was looking, what he was saying, even the passing brush of his clothes. For the first time in his life, Kadilen collapsed helplessly before a budding love. He was helpless as his body heated up just from Ludin’s existence. All his nerves were concentrated on him, making his face flush and his breath stop at the slightest gesture.
Despite being able to do anything, he couldn’t do anything. There was nothing he could do for Ludin, who was only waiting for his day to die.
It wasn’t about receiving the same affection from him as before. He could kneel down and be eternally grateful for the affection Ludin had shared, even if Ludin hated him for the rest of his life. He only wished, please, that Ludin would not casually give up on life because of him.
* * *
After his master’s death, Kadilen, who had been roaming the battlefield, encountered the woman his master had loved again in a village he visited by chance.
He doubted his eyes. The glossy hair and the soft skin with a fragrant scent were nowhere to be found. The two eyes staring at him with an emaciated figure were filled with endless emptiness. After watching the woman for a while, Kadilen eventually turned away without saying anything. The heart that had sworn to seek revenge if given the opportunity sank miserably.
She was already in hell.
