Bloodline (1)
The noble being whose name could not be spoken had married the greatest hero of the age and founded a family of thieves known as Eunyodang. Ren Sonnet was the direct descendant of that lineage. The proof lay in her silver hair. The noble blood only manifested in one child per generation, and every one of them possessed beautiful silver locks. No one around her doubted that the next head of the family would be Ren Sonnet.
She first sensed something was wrong when she was five years old. The current head of Eunyodang—Ren’s mother—watched her daughter sitting demurely at a social gathering, smiling sweetly, and declared that the child was clearly abnormal. Different from all the previous heads.
The reason became clear the year Ren turned seven.
“Obstruction Disease, you say?”
Ren had been on a picnic, gripping colored pencils and sketching the scenery, when a sudden chill like freezing blood in her veins struck her. She fell unconscious. When she woke, she was lying in a hospital bed. Her vision was hazy as she looked in the mirror; her lips had turned a sickly blue.
Unaware that Ren was listening, the doctor gave her mother the diagnosis.
A rare condition reported in only a handful of cases. It might be more accurate to call it a constitution. Those afflicted gain extraordinary beauty and prodigious talent, yet their bodies cannot endure the excessively pure energy within them and they perish young.
“Perish young… meaning the timeframe is…”
“No recorded case has lived past the age of twenty-five.”
Her mother was a hero who had survived countless battlefields. She was also the indomitable woman who led this ancient family. And yet, for the first time, Ren heard her mother sob.
After a long moment of thought, Ren closed her eyes. She decided to pretend she had heard nothing.
The next day, her mother summoned her. Hiding her mouth behind a fan decorated with black feathers, she said,
Ren could not see her mother’s expression behind the fan. Still, she understood the order. If she died without leaving an heir, the centuries-old bloodline of Eunyodang would end here. As the family head, her mother had no choice but to hope her daughter would produce a successor before her time ran out.
So Ren obeyed the rather cruel command with a gentle smile.
Yes, I understand.
She had only whispered it to herself, like a quiet confession.
As she grew older, she came to realize it. The family into which she had been born was desperately pretending to be ordinary, yet in every way it strayed far from the norm.
Her parents had treated her warmly ever since. Their act as a loving couple was so obvious it was almost painful. Perhaps they had decided to stay on good terms at least until their daughter died. That was what Ren thought.
But she knew it was all a lie. She had seen her mother secretly slip poison into her father’s tea—many times. Even though her father, known as the Poison Meister, would never be affected by such things, her mother kept dosing him as if venting her resentment.
It was hard to understand.
In her daily life, she received the education befitting the next head of Eunyodang. She learned the skills, mindset, and techniques a thief must master without missing a single day. She felt little enthusiasm for it.
After all, I’ll be gone soon. I won’t have the chance to use any of this. Mother knows that too.
She could not comprehend why they invited so many first-rate instructors, pouring money and effort into her as if she had a future.
“You will become a wonderful head of the family.”
“I hope you meet a good husband and lead the clan well.”
The people around her spoke of a future that would never come, smiling brightly the whole time. She found them difficult to understand. Were they like children who painstakingly built sandcastles that would collapse with a single wave? Were they investing all this money and effort simply to deceive themselves about her limited lifespan? If so, then she supposed she should let them be fooled.
“Young lady, I will protect you from the shadows for the rest of my life!”
Sometimes a spiteful urge rose inside her. Her parents had brought home an orphan girl around her age, introducing her as a friend and servant. The girl’s eyes sparkled like obsidian beetles as she announced her name was Soria.
“A kind and beautiful young lady like you will surely become an excellent head! No matter where you go, I will stay by your side for decades, even a hundred years!”
Stop it.
Watching Soria chatter away in innocent excitement, something surged up Ren’s throat. The fact that even this child who had only just been picked up could speak so casually of a future that would never be hers was unbearable.
For several days after Soria arrived, Ren skipped training. She skipped meals. She simply lay in bed, staring at snowflakes that fell and vanished.
She had no motivation. Everything felt like a child’s game of stacking toy blocks that were destined to be knocked down. She wanted to lie there forever, doing nothing, and melt away on the wind like those snowflakes.
“Young lady, I’m sorry… Did I do something wrong? Are you angry with me? Please forgive me…”
After several days of this, Soria came to her bedside, crying and apologizing.
It’s not your fault. I was just jealous.
Ren felt ashamed. Why was this girl apologizing for something she hadn’t done? If Ren died like this, the girl would cry. She would cry a lot. Ren didn’t want that.
She sighed and sat up in bed. From that day on, Ren never missed a single training session.
People were always difficult to understand. Life was the same. To Ren, the quiet but certain approach of death always felt far more real than a life that pulsed with incomprehensible patterns.
On days when all those contradictions felt suffocating, Ren would put on a straw hat and go outside. The white hem of her dress fluttering, she would walk along the paths of the vineyard where dark-purple grapes glistened like jewels.
She saw many things.
She saw a wife scolding her drunk husband and slapping his back. She saw a mother nervously accompanying her child on their first day of school. She saw a father, exhausted from hard labor, proudly showing off a photo of his children. She saw a little girl jumping with joy after receiving a kitten for her birthday.
Things that would probably never be allowed to her.
Yet simply watching them brought her joy. Ren stood there like someone who had wandered into the wrong background, smiling awkwardly and waving her hand.
After circling the vineyard, she would sit on a hill overlooking the entire territory, hugging her knees, and watch the sunset. As the sun sank and the windmills and old castle walls melted into twilight, the countless grapes across the horizon caught the sky’s colors, creating thousands of sunsets sinking together.
Every time she thought of death—one step closer with every morning she opened her eyes—Ren recalled this scene. She hoped her own death would resemble that sunset light. She didn’t want it to become an object of mourning. She wanted it to be accepted as calmly as the setting sun or falling petals.
Just as no one grieved the fleeting life of summer cicadas whose cries gradually faded, she hoped her death would be the same.
Her life had always been like that. Her entire existence felt like one vast rehearsal for the farewell that would one day arrive.
Even so, there was one thing Ren allowed herself to desire.
If she had been born to a life that would end after leaving behind a single child, like a summer insect, then at least that one love—at the very least that love—she wanted to be something burning, passionate, and beautiful.
And then the opportunity came to her.
“The Empire has requested that we dispatch one thief. It seems the hero has a terrible reputation and is having a very hard time recruiting companions.”
At the evening dinner table, her mother glanced at the letter and spoke with clear annoyance.
Her father, slicing meat with a knife, answered curtly.
“What level of skill are they asking for?”
“The hero is so unimpressive that they aren’t requesting anyone combat-ready right away. They say a promising rookie who can grow alongside the hero would be enough… Honestly, it might just be for political appearances.”
“Just how bad is this hero, exactly?”
“After sending the Silver Night Squad to gather information, we found he’s weaker than the average town guard.”
“Does that even make sense? He’s supposed to be the hero.”
“Which is precisely why the Empire is making an official request stamped with the Chancellor’s seal. I told you, it’s political.”
“Political, huh… Well, if rumors spread that they slighted the owner of the Holy Sword Gramhilt, the opposition might tear them apart later. They’d claim that if only they had given the hero proper support from the beginning, none of this would have happened.”
Her father nodded thoughtfully, swallowed a piece of meat, and said,
“If they just want a promising rookie, would Soria be enough?”
“She should be.”
The conversation was already flowing toward sending Soria.
Ren felt a sudden impatience and raised her hand.
“U-um!”
The hero’s party. She had heard that even the founder of Eunyodang had once been a companion of a hero. If she left this land and set out on an adventure, if she met many different people, then surely she could experience a love that burned like fire.
That premonition filled Ren’s entire body.
“If it’s all right… I would like to go! Please let me go!”
That day, for the first time in her life, Ren spoke up for what she wanted.