My beloved mother lived her life like the very model of royalty.
Born a king’s daughter, her proud nose had never once bowed since birth. And though she never flaunted it openly, her nature was cruel. Whenever she was mentioned, bloated old nobles would click their tongues and scoff, asking who could possibly bear such a princess—but no matter how high they climbed, she was still royalty.
The king, who cherished her in his own way, did not sell her off for political gain. Instead, she overturned the world by marrying the man who was my genetic father, the most beautiful man alive and the bard known as the Legendary Minstrel—Cedric Ohamua.
But as with most lives, where the string you grasp at birth determines your entire fate, their marriage did not last long. The gap between their lifestyles and values was like heaven and earth.
Mother was always lofty; Father was always humble. Mother always held in her hands something worth opening one’s mouth in praise, while Father only ever opened his mouth in admiration, with no desire to claim anything for himself.
Perhaps that contrast was what made them fall in love in the first place—but in the end, it was also the decisive reason they split. The widening gulf between them could not be bridged. Their quarrels grew frequent, and eventually, Mother divorced him. Not long after, I was born.
“Ah… how beautiful. Your name shall be Oscar. Oscar.”
I remembered my birth. Not because I was some prodigy, but because I carried intact memories of my previous life—twenty-odd years in the Republic of Korea.
Yes. I remembered my past life.
I couldn’t recall how I died, but I remembered my family, my friends, their names, the things I liked—many details remained clear.
“Nice to meet you, Oscar.”
But those memories were just the past.
I could still see Mother clearly, holding me in her arms and smiling like sunlight. She could not have known that I understood every word from the moment I was born, yet her voice was full of love, as though she were choosing only the most precious words to gift me.
A short nose, faint freckles, amber eyes folding into crescents, hands brimming with nobility despite her simple features, and warm brick-red hair adorned with jewels even during childbirth.
But my birth was not celebrated.
From the moment I was born, things grew strange. After nearly ten years of being childless, the king and queen grew wary of me—born with the royal family’s surname, not my father’s, because Mother had divorced him.
They feared I might someday threaten any child they might yet bear.
The king’s unease did not stop at anxiety.
The whispers around him were so venomous that his worry consumed him little by little. To protect his throne, he was willing to discard both affection and blood.
He bound Mother into remarriage to drive me out of the royal family. But it was a futile gesture. If the king and queen remained childless, I, as the son of a direct princess, would inherit the throne in the end.
So the king chose Mother’s new husband himself.
When I was about three years old, Mother was prepared for remarriage with the Marquis of Serpentine, who already had a child. By the time I was five, the ceremony was complete and I was ready to enter the Marquis’s estate.
There were other noble houses in the kingdom, so why Serpentine?
Because they were sinister.
The Serpentines were masters of sorcery and curses, yet loyal to the king—cleaning up his filth in the shadows. A family of obedient hounds.
The king’s grand design was simple: if I were raised in such a household, I would never even think of coveting the throne. And so, I toddled into the hounds’ den, clutching Mother’s hand.
The first impression of House Serpentine was… surprisingly comfortable.
Well—more comfortable than expected.
It was still a home where people lived, and being one of the kingdom’s only three marquis houses, its gates and grand exterior were splendidly maintained. Even at a glance, the building materials were of the finest quality. But that wasn’t the problem.
Most of the servants who greeted us had scraps of cloth with strange symbols tied over their eyes. And they groveled before Mother as though their human rights meant nothing.
To call it “groveling” doesn’t even capture it. From the moment she stepped out of the carriage, they made sure her feet never touched the bare ground by mistake.
And their demeanor—bowed heads, reverent as if worshiping a deity—gave me chills. I looked at Mother, but she seemed used to it, as though she had visited before.
“Adelheid. You have come.”
At that moment, the crowd of eerie servants parted like the Red Sea, and a man appeared.
“So you are Oscar.”
The moment he walked forward, the servants all stepped back, as if terrified of brushing against him.
I glanced around in wonder, then he greeted me.
“I am the master of House Serpentine—the one who will become your father. I was most disappointed when you caught a cold and couldn’t attend the wedding.”
Ah. Now I understood why the servants dared not even look at his face.
How could anyone stand shoulder to shoulder with the one who had cursed them?
Rumor said that while some were hired through proper channels, most Serpentine servants were criminals who had been “educated” into service. Education meant nothing more than torture laced with family spells, breaking minds until obedience was absolute.
Those who survived became so loyal they would gladly die at the Marquis’s word—and feared him to the core.
But… he doesn’t look like someone who enjoys torture himself.
With all the rumors surrounding the family, I had imagined the Marquis’s face as something demonic. Yet in person, he looked rather ordinary.
Gray hair, gray eyes, faint shadows with reddened corners gave him a somewhat gloomy, weary look. Still, he was striking enough to be called handsome. Our eyes met.
“You are indeed… just as I heard…”
He seemed to be observing me just as closely.
He stared at me in disbelief, unable to finish his words. The longer I blinked at him, the stranger his expression grew. Feeling uneasy, I whimpered and hid behind Mother’s leg. At that, he seemed to come to his senses and carefully lifted me into his arms.
“Oh, heavens. How could a child be like this…”
Muttering something I couldn’t grasp, he held me with the awkwardness of someone who had never carried a child.
But I had no attention left for him—because of the servants lined up behind him.
They’re all criminals?
I studied the cloths over their eyes. The fabric was sunken, as if the eyes beneath had been gouged, and over it were scrawled lines of bright red script.
And yet… it was as though they could still see me. Their heads slowly turned to follow me in the Marquis’s arms, staring at me blankly, as if to etch me into memory.
The sight was so grotesque my skin crawled. I buried my face in the Marquis’s shoulder. He flinched, then patted my back.
“Adelheid, was the journey arduous?”
“It was harsh, but not impossible.”
Despite his cold, somber look, the Marquis clearly tried to sound gentle.
Mother, by contrast, was icy—perhaps because she had been forced into this. Yet even so, when she removed her gloves and extended her hand for an escort, the motion flowed with flawless elegance.
The Marquis stared at her, dazed, as if spellbound. When he finally seized her hand, she recoiled in disgust.
He’s not that unattractive, though.
Mother, from what I’d seen, liked beautiful things. My biological father’s beauty was legendary, renowned across both kingdom and empire. The Marquis was no ugly man, yet perhaps to her eyes he fell far short.
Still… to recoil that much?
His manner might have been slow and brooding, but beyond that, there was little to reproach.
Had something happened between them that I didn’t know of?
Then I noticed—Mother’s ears had flushed red. The Marquis, oblivious, awkwardly offered his arm and led her into the mansion.
So the conclusion was this:
Neither of them realized they were both simply nervous and embarrassed.