Chapter 36

Isaac stumbled forward, his complexion turning a sickly, pallid yellow as he left behind the sympathetic stares of his peers.

“Isaac, steady yourself. It is a profound honor that His Highness has requested a spar with you,” Simon whispered. His attempt at cheer withered under Isaac’s razor-sharp glare. Feeling the weight of his own betrayal, Simon mouthed, I will buy you dinner.

Isaac had no idea if he would even be capable of swallowing a mouthful of food after this, let alone enjoying a meal.

Dragging his feet toward the center of the yard like a beast bound for the abattoir, Isaac grabbed a wooden sword and stood before his tormentor. The prince’s face revealed nothing—it remained a mask of perfect, icy neutrality. It was the same expression he had worn the previous night, holding a blade with a cold indifference that provided no insight into his volatile thoughts. It would have been entirely logical for Isaac to have died by that hand already.

Whether the prince intended to cut him down yesterday, today, or in some distant, uncertain future, the reality was absolute: this man could extinguish Isaac’s life whenever the whim seized him. The realization, previously a mere abstract theory, now burrowed into his mind as an inescapable truth. As Isaac tightened his grip on his weapon, the prince lunged.

Despite the ten paces between them and the absence of any visible acceleration, the prince bridged the gap in a heartbeat. Isaac’s entire nervous system ignited in a primal warning.

CLACK.

The wooden swords collided.

There was no murderous intent, nor a desperate desire to conquer; it was a clinical assessment, a test to measure how far the prince could push his opponent before the structure collapsed.

In the vibration that shuddered through his shoulder and into his very ribs, Isaac grasped the truth: he could not win. He could only survive, and even that felt optimistic.

Isaac glanced at the prince, catching the subtle, unreadable movement of those eyes.

The prince stared back, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing his features.

From that moment on, the rhythm shifted.

The blows came with unrelenting, calculated speed.

This was not practice.

To Isaac, every strike felt like a potential bone-shattering impact. He focused every sensory nerve on the movement of the prince’s hands, his hair standing on end.

This man should have been born into a martial house, not the royal line. He would have achieved greatness as a master of the blade. No, that is madness—he has stood at the zenith of power since the moment of his birth. Why must he possess such monstrous talent in addition to his throne?

Isaac gritted his teeth, desperation driving him to strike. He parried the downward arc of the prince’s sword and attempted to leverage the momentum into a counter-strike at the exposed shoulder.

“…”

CLACK.

At the sound of the collision, the weight in Isaac’s hand vanished. His wooden sword shattered in two, the severed surface as smooth as if sliced by a razor. The prince’s blade halted inches from Isaac’s forehead, poised at a distance where a single forward breath would bridge the gap.

“…I lost.”

Isaac discarded the broken hilt.

Before him, the prince’s blue eyes had darkened into a look of sober appraisal. The prince studied him for a long moment, then retracted his weapon in a fluid, silent motion.

“Not particularly useful, but not entirely useless, either.”

The prince flicked the wooden sword toward his attendant, muttering the verdict with a chilling casualness.

Isaac stood rooted to the earth, trapped in a paralysis of uncertainty. Was this a biting critique of his ineptitude, or some twisted, begrudging praise? He darted a desperate glance at Simon, who began signaling frantically with his eyes, but Isaac, entirely flustered, could only muster a stiff, mechanical bow. “Thank you.”

“You will serve as my direct bodyguard from now on.”

Isaac remained frozen, his mind spiraling as he debated whether that earlier expression of gratitude had been a tactical error or if he should have pivoted immediately to a groveling apology. The true weight of the prince’s decree only slammed into him seconds later.

“…”

Did I hear that correctly? His mind stalled, grinding to a halt against the absurdity.

For a heartbeat, he turned to stone, his gaze flickering across the perimeter of the group. The faces surrounding him had drained of color, and that familiar, creeping dread he had been suppressing for days coiled around his chest like a constricting serpent.

“B-bodyguard, you say? …You mean me?”

Isaac lurched forward, his neck snapping upward as he locked eyes with the prince. His Highness had already begun turning toward his horse, seemingly finished with the matter, but he paused, glancing back over his shoulder. Realizing his window of escape was slamming shut, Isaac scrambled to protest.

“There are plenty of others far more capable than I am. Brick, for instance, or even Olsen—”

Brick and Olsen choked on their own breath, glaring at the back of Isaac’s head with enough malice to bore holes through his skull, but Isaac was far past the point of caring. “They are objectively superior to me in every metric. Even if they have aged a bit, with a little grooming and some decent tailoring, they could easily pass for presentable—”

He was cut short as his two companions lunged forward, grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him backward with ruthless, desperate force.

“You promised to help if I ever needed it! You swore you would support me whenever possible! This is that moment! You absolutely have to step up for me now!” Isaac hissed, his voice frantic.

“That isn’t helping! That’s just offloading your own damn funeral onto us!”

It was a scene that laid bare the brutal reality of their existence: when faced with an existential threat, a man will prioritize his own skin above the welfare of his peers. Perhaps disgusted by the squabbling, or perhaps harboring a sliver of pity for a man who had barely emerged from a wretched period of confinement, the prince’s attendant addressed Simon directly. “Squad leader, is there anyone else you can recommend?”

“…Well, those three are essentially on the same level… Isaac is at least in the top five of our squad. He is subtly clever, which would likely prove an asset in a skirmish. …But why specifically Isaac…?”

Simon’s query hung in the air, his voice trailing into confusion as he met the prince’s icy gaze. The prince looked back, utterly unfazed by the hesitation.

“My bodyguard resigned recently.”

“…”

“… …”

Silence descended, and it was not just Simon who went mute.

Isaac, Brick, and Olsen—the latter two still clutching Isaac’s collar—fell into a collective, hollow stupor. Even the attendant and the other colleagues lingering by the riverbank seemed to hold their breath.

The vacancy left by the previous bodyguard—a young man they had just been discussing, a bedwarmer dismissed immediately after impregnating a woman—was suddenly filled with a cold, logical, and terrifying new prospect.

The explanation sounded plausible enough, yet everyone remained deathly silent. Every soul present knew that a man of the prince’s standing had no actual need for a conventional bodyguard.

Within that heavy, suffocating quiet, Isaac’s complexion bled of all color. His face turned sallow before he managed to stammer out a final, futile objection.

“A bodyguard… no… but I’m not exactly pretty… and I’m certainly not young…”

“What on earth does that have to do with being a bodyguard?”

The prince regarded him with an expression of genuine, piercing bewilderment.

Isaac felt his response wither in his throat. Logically, the man was right—beauty and age were irrelevant to the post. But everyone knew the truth! The entire world understood that the position of direct bodyguard to the prince of the Blue Shadow Palace was a transparent euphemism for a bedwarmer, you oblivious royal bastard! Isaac screamed the words in his head, his face contorted in silent agony, until the prince narrowed his eyes, peering down at him with clinical interest.

“Ah. Were you perhaps under the impression this was for the bedwarmer role?”

Absolutely not. By no means. I would swear it on my life. But before the protest could leave his lips, the prince dealt the final blow. “You won’t do. You lack the sort of aesthetic that would entice anyone to keep you as a bedwarmer.”

“…”

The prince raked his gaze over Isaac from head to toe before delivering that blunt dismissal. While the sentiment should have been a relief, being insulted so callously to his face left Isaac feeling like he had been branded a grotesque. I mean, I know I’m plain, but I’m not that hideous…

“Be at the Blue Shadow Palace by tomorrow morning.”

Before Isaac could muster a retort, the prince tapped his stirrups. The steed, sensing its master’s intent, surged forward. The prince vanished into the distance, trailing a wake of dust.

The attendant in turn hastily mounted his own horse, cast a fleeting look between Simon and Isaac, and muttered, “Well then, consider it settled,” before galloping off in pursuit.

No, wait, what exactly is settled? Isaac reached out as if to seize the horse’s tail, but the attendant was already gone. He was left alone with his comrades, caught in a stunned, hollow silence.

“…”

“… …”

His colleagues stared at him, their eyes darting in search of some explanation for the absurdity that had just unfolded. They looked at the pitiful, hollowed-out young man as if his very soul had vacated his body. “If you are the prince’s personal bodyguard, that is technically a promotion, isn’t it?” one offered tentatively.

“Congratulations, Isaac.”

“…Shut your mouth… I will kill you, and then I will happily die myself…”

“…”

The colleague withered under Isaac’s dark, hollow gaze, and the others promptly thumped his head for his breathtaking lack of tact. Even as they looked at Isaac with genuine pity, the whispers began to circulate. “What just happened?” “I have no idea. What kind of bolt from the blue is this? Why on earth would he come here looking for a bodyguard?”

“Has Lord Kaiyan’s taste really changed that drastically? Why him?”

“Lord Kaiyan always preferred flashy, pretty boys, though I suppose this one is at least neat enough.”

“Watch your back when you get there, Isaac.”

The colleague who offered this unsolicited advice was pelted with fresh head-thumps, and Isaac surged forward to seize his collar and shake him, though his heart was not in the violence. He only felt despair. The ominous premonition that had dogged him since his run-in with Lord Kaiyan at the Roverni lair the previous night had materialized in the worst possible way. This was surveillance. A gag order. His life was now destined to be spent within the prince’s shadow, never knowing when the blade might fall.

“Farewell, Isaac. Try to visit the guard when you have the chance. Let us see your face once in a while.”

“If you can,” Simon added, his voice barely an audible rasp. His face was a mask of grief, as if he were mourning at a funeral. The others looked no better.

Was this what it felt like when the sky finally fell?

Isaac slowly crumpled until he sat on the hard ground, his shoulders slumping under an invisible weight. He didn’t even notice his colleagues patting his shoulders in sympathy as they walked away, careful not to disturb his misery.

At that moment, his mind held only a single, desperate thought:

I have to find that damned tinderbox.

[END of VOLUME 1]