Forgotten Silver Coin
A blue light shattered. My body plummeted to the ground with a sickening thud.
“Kuk—!”
I reflexively curled inward. The frigid floor of the North was gone. In its place I felt soft earth and the tickle of grass blades brushing my cheek.
Breath caught in my throat. The smell of soil slammed into me.
I lifted my head. The gray clouds that had crushed the North for a year had vanished. Sunlight poured from a clear blue sky.
“Ha… ha……”
Safe in the South. The opposite end of the continent.
A wave of relief washed over me for a moment, then my stomach lurched violently.
“Ugh…!”
I collapsed forward and spat a handful of blood onto the grass. The dark liquid bloomed across the bright blades.
The last curse nucleus I had forcibly extracted from Isolde’s heart had taken root in mine and now revolted.
“Kuk… kuh-luk! Ha…”
My vision began to flicker. I had bled too much.
I wiped my blood-smeared lips with the back of my hand and lay flat on the dirt.
A warm breeze that should not have existed in the North crept over my back. Even if my breath failed right now, I would not feel wronged.
That was when—
Swish… swish…
The sound of footsteps cutting through the undergrowth reached me beyond my fading consciousness.
“Oh my—blood…! You’ve lost too much blood!”
An urgent voice.
I forced my eyes open. A silhouette stood backlit by sunlight.
Honey-colored hair stirred in the breeze.
“Hold on just a little longer! I’ll get the herbs to stop the bleeding right away!”
A warm hand touched my cheek.
That touch was the final thread. My awareness sank into deep darkness.
***
At the exact same moment, on the first floor of the Grand Ducal Residence, the banquet hall.
“Kyaaaaaaaah—!!!”
The music shattered into a scream.
Isolde, who had been dancing with Julian beneath the chandelier, collapsed onto the floor, blood spraying from her mouth.
“Your Highness! Grand Duchess Isolde!”
Julian dropped to his knees, face white, and caught her as she fell.
Isolde clutched at her dress, gasping. The rosy glow she had worn for so long was gone; her eyes had lost focus.
“Aaaaaah! My heart—my heart feels like it’s being torn out…!”
A death-rattle wail tore from her throat.
The rebound of forced extraction.
The shock of the curse nucleus still lodged in her heart being ripped out whole by Cassian.
“Your Holiness! What is the meaning of this?! You said the purification is complete!”
“Quickly, quickly—Holy Power—!”
The Knight Commander and the nobles shouted in panic toward Julian.
“Please, please— I’ll pray again—!”
Julian placed a trembling hand on Isolde’s chest and frantically poured out Holy Power. Golden light enveloped her body.
Yet nothing happened.
The pain that should have vanished like a lie remained. The sacred light spilling from his fingertips did nothing to ease Isolde’s agony.
“Your Holiness…!”
Writhing in pain, Isolde grabbed Julian’s sleeve with a pale hand.
“It hurts… It hurts too much, Your Holiness. Please… make the pain stop…!”
She clung to him with a desolate face. The only light that had saved her.
Yet in the depths of her agony, Julian’s expression held no trace of the gentle savior’s compassion.
Only the pale, trembling face of a man on the verge of collapse.
For a split second, even in the crushing pain, a tiny crack formed in Isolde’s mind.
Why…?
Why was my savior so panicked?
Why did his miracle fail to cure the madness in my heart?
“Doctor! Damn it, everyone out of the way! Fetch Dr. Victor!”
The Knight Commander’s roar silenced the hall.
“Your Highness! Are you all right?!”
The Knight Commander hurried over. Isolde, still gasping, roughly slapped Julian’s hand away from her.
“Get out of my way.”
“Your Highness, this must be because of that dark magic! Yesterday that man spat a sinister aura in the corridor!”
A desperate attempt to shift blame. In that instant Isolde’s head snapped up straight.
I will not take even one step outside the room tomorrow. I will gratefully accept the medical records.
Every time she had screamed at him in fury, Cassian had nodded without a word, his face as blank as a tomb. The stench of rotten roses that always drifted from his room.
No way…
An unknown dread crawled up her spine. Isolde bit her lips until they bled, and staggered to her feet.
“Take me to Cassian’s room—now.”
“Your Highness, you need to rest first!”
“Did you not hear me?! Take me to Cassian’s room—now!!”
Isolde’s furious shout sent the Knight Commander bolting up the stairs with his knights. Isolde followed, still clutching her dress hem, staggering behind them.
At the farthest corner of the second floor, the Knight Commander unlocked the door with a key.
“The man…! Hah!”
The Knight Commander froze the moment he stepped inside. The knights behind him were frozen in shock and could not move.
“What… why have you stopped…?”
Isolde shoved the knights aside and stepped to the doorway. The instant she saw the scene inside, her eyes could not focus.
The room was empty.
Instead, the entire floor was covered by an eerie, gigantic magic circle.
Where mana should have glowed, dark bloodstains pooled and clung, forming a terrifying pattern.
“This… what…?”
Isolde stood there as if forgetting how to breathe and stepped inside.
That same acrid stench she had once called trash and drug smell—the one Cassian had carried.
It vibrated from the bloodstains that now filled the floor.
And if a human had lost that much blood, death should have come immediately.
Yet no body of his was to be found anywhere in the room. That impossible contradiction drove Isolde further mad.
Her gaze followed the bloodstains to a corner and then to the shabby desk.
On the floor beneath the desk lay a thick gold pouch untouched, as if rolled there by her own hand.
On the desk itself lay the Agreement of Divorce and Annulment, stained with blood. At the very bottom, in Cassian’s slanted signature, was written the name Cassian.
On top of the agreement rested only one old, scratched silver coin—bearing the faint emblem of the Winterfell family.
“A… aa…”
The moment Isolde saw that worn coin, something inside her fractured.
The curse that had been ripped from her heart had been the key. Memories she believed had vanished forever poured in like a dam breaking.
Her head split with a headache. The past she had thought erased forever returned through that silver coin.
Isolde snatched up the divorce documents and the coin with shaking hands. The faint Winterfell wolf emblem on the surface.
It was the silver coin she had carelessly tossed to a dying beggar boy fifteen years ago in the middle of a blizzard.
Why had Cassian kept that coin? Endless confusion tightened around her throat.
“Get out of the way!”
Chief Physician Victor rushed in, out of breath.
“A… aa… Prince…!”
Victor dropped to his knees in front of the floor soaked with blood and the magic circle. His hands began to tremble before the faint traces of the lord he had served for three years.
And then his eyes landed on the divorce documents in Isolde’s grip.
The Grand Duchess who had humiliated him to the end, not knowing the noble sacrifice of her own husband. The sight of that foolishness brought uncontrollable sorrow and resentment surging from Victor’s chest.
“Your Highness…!”
Victor opened his mouth, tears streaming. The moment he tried to spit out the truth he had swallowed for three years.
“Kuk!”
Victor suddenly clutched his throat and collapsed. Blood poured from his mouth.
The Covenant of Silence Cassian had placed on him. The moment he tried to speak the truth, the curse tightened around his heart and sealed his lips.
Choking on invisible chains, Victor clawed at the floor, eyes rolling back.
“Doctor! Why are you acting like this?!”
Isolde cried out in confusion, but Victor could not answer. He coughed blood and scratched the floor. He could not speak. He could not tell the truth.
Bursting into sobs in despair before the horror, Victor pressed his head to the floor and curled into a ball.
Thud.
From the recoil, the thick leather notebook tucked in Victor’s bosom rolled to Isolde’s feet.
[Cassian, Medical Records Journal]
Isolde’s gaze dropped to the fallen notebook.
“What… is this…?”
The instant she reached for it—
“Eup! Uuuuugh!!”
Victor, still vomiting blood, lunged toward the notebook in a panic. As if he were trying to snatch something hostage from her, Victor desperately grabbed the hem of Isolde’s skirt and shook his head frantically.
Please don’t look at it.
His desperate resistance only fanned Isolde’s sinister certainty.
“Let go!”
Isolde shook Victor’s hand off and seized the notebook from the floor.
In that moment, Victor’s fit ceased.
Because the Grand Duchess had forcibly taken what he himself had tried to reveal, the curse of the Covenant of Silence was lifted.
No… could it be? It could not.
Her trembling hand turned the first page of the leather notebook.
Yellowed paper was filled with neat handwriting.
[Imperial Year 721. Winter. Patient Name: Cassian. Today at midnight, perform the first stage of the transference ritual that converts Grand Duchess Isolde’s Curse of Eternal Freezing into the patient’s heart. Symptoms: Severe chills and mana core rejection reaction. Patient loses consciousness and hovers at death’s door after the ritual. Stabilized with emergency care, but survival cannot be guaranteed.]
“……What…?”
Isolde’s lips parted in a daze. He had moved her curse into his heart?
It had been winter three years ago—the very time she had been so happy when the pain in her chest first lessened.
[Imperial Year 723. Summer. Patient Name: Cassian. Curse transference rate 70%. Symptoms: Loss of body temperature and progressive organ decay. Repeated coughing of blood that smells of rotten roses during sleep. Note: The Grand Duchess, mistaking the patient’s blood for drug use, assaulted him. Patient did not explain. As attending physician, I attempted to intervene, but was forbidden by the patient’s order.]
Her breath caught. The acrid smell she had despised and treated like filth—the very scent she had dismissed as drug-induced—its true identity was…
“A… aa…”
Isolde staggered backward. The hand clutching the notebook trembled violently. Her eyes, entranced, turned to the next page.
[Imperial Year 724. Three days before the final ritual. Patient Name: Cassian. Curse transference rate 99%. High Priest Julian’s Holy Power actually stimulated the curse and accelerated the patient’s collapse. The patient endures nightly agony. Note: When I asked the reason for concealing the truth, the patient answered as follows.]
Isolde’s eyes, reaching the final line of the journal, lost their focus and trembled.
[I have only a short time left to live anyway. A dying man does not want to burden her with the truth. Even if it means she remembers me as garbage forever, I wish her to live happily without guilt.]
“Terminal…?”
Isolde’s lips trembled.
He was dying?
The man she had driven away, the one she had thought would live miserably elsewhere. The man who had sacrificed his entire remaining lifespan to save me?
Thud. The leather notebook fell to the blood-stained floor.
[I will gratefully accept the medical records.]
[I remember. I will not linger near the banquet hall.]
Every piece fell into cruel place. Why he had never once protested. Why he had nodded blankly every time she had shouted at him in rage. And why he had placed that fifteen-year-old silver coin on the divorce papers.
“A… aaaaaah—!!!”
Isolde clutched the divorce documents to her chest and collapsed onto the floor.
What have I done?
Irreversible regret crushed her. On the floor, sobbing until her voice broke, her wails echoed through the room.
***
“Mmm…”
She slowly opened her eyes. Sunlight stung her cornea. The harsh North wind she had grown used to had vanished, as had the pain in her heart.
“Ah, you’re awake?”
She turned her head. Clear olive-green eyes met hers.
A girl with honey-colored hair loosely braided smiled gently, holding a wet cloth.
“You lost so much blood. How long have you been lying here? I’m so glad you’re awake. My name is Elara.”
A soft voice like spring wind. The stiff nerves throughout her body began to loosen at the touch of warmth.
“……Cassian.”
She whispered my name in a hoarse voice. A bittersweet smile spread on Elara’s lips as she carefully rolled the name around in her mouth.
“Yes, Mr. Cassian. You still seem unwell. Rest without forcing yourself.”
She carefully wiped the sweat from my forehead with the cloth in her hands.
The hellish winter of the North was over.
My new spring had come.