Chapter 1
Stab.
My stomach was pierced.
“Ah, c-cwount….why…? (Ah, c-count…. why…?)”
“For the family, you dirty bitch. Just die quietly.”
No, I’m scared. I’m scared.
I don’t want to die!
“Catch her.”
Woof! Woof woof! A huge drooling hound barked violently at me.
“Ah!!!”
As I was desperately trying to get away, I was bitten on my ankle and fell.
“I-it hurts. It hurts….”
I couldn’t breathe because of the burning pain and the edges of my vision were drenched in darkness.
The hound’s sharp teeth and dripping saliva leered at me and this fear was not something a young child like me could bear. My whole body trembled, tears welled up and fell. When I looked down at my chapped palms, I saw they were soaked in blood.
“What a vulgar devil’s spawn.”
That was the last thing I heard before I died.
I laughed for the first time as I saw my usually cold face trembling with fear.
My uncle, who grabbed my hair and dragged me away, soon threw me into the corner.
I couldn’t get used to the pain no matter how much I tried to endure it. No matter how hard I struggle to believe this wasn’t real, the pain refused to change.
I saw a flash of silver flickering through my eyes, which had long lost its vitality.
Thud.
Just like that, I was decapitated.
“I will fweed chu poison!”
I placed a piece of rotten wood with a bloom of scarlet mushrooms in front of me as a doll and practiced for the 666th time.
I didn’t know whether it was because I didn’t eat properly or whether there was another reason but even at five years old, my body was still very small. My tongue must have grown to be as short as my height, and so no matter how hard I tried to pronounce the words correctly, my consonants kept disappearing.
I was getting choked up, but once again, I opened my mouth and mumbled.
“The cwiminal is thath jewk Cwount Eblang! (The criminal is that jerk Count Eblanc!)”
It wasn’t easy, but I was very proud to have finally managed to say it. This was a very important sentence for my survival so if I didn’t want to die, I’ll have to practice it well.
I recited the following sentence without a break.
“Gold, money. It’s pretty, it’s mine.”
It was also rather difficult sentence to say with a baby’s tongue.
I practiced the most important words by putting my hands together politely.
“Pwease gwive me the chiwld suppowt fee.”
PR/N: I’m going to remove the things in brackets where I think they’re pretty intuitive even without them.
In gold please.
If other people saw this, they’d ask me if I’m crazy about money.
If you accuse someone of being a criminal, they’d ask whether you’re getting paid to do so. But I was a kid who was only up to the knees of an adult man. No matter how much I liked money, I couldn’t receive an order from anyone looking like this. It should be obvious that I was doing all this desperately to save my life.
“I have to pwonounce it pwopery….”
It’s the only way I’d be good at playing hard to get at the negotiating table.
It would be difficult if my pronunciation was like this. I thought everything would be easier because I’d grown up to the age of five, but somehow, I still looked three or four.
I groaned and slumped down in my seat.
No one stopped me for that—I was the only one in this room after all.
I sighed, looking down at what I was doing, and practiced again for the 667th time.
Long hair, which has never been cut ever since I was born, covered my face so I couldn’t see well. My dusty clothes were worn out and old, making it impossible to even recognize their original colors. I wouldn’t have anything to say if I could be taken away due to child neglect but no one could save me.
Well, who would know about me when I was locked up and unpermitted to go out?
I no longer had anything to eat in my empty bowl so I looked at the old door with my cheeks puffed out.
I’d never walked out of that door in my entire life.
I lived in this house but my existence was that of a ghost.
‘It’s gonna open today, right?
There was a dog hole at the bottom of the door, which was originally for hunting dogs raised in this mansion. And now it had become the hole for my rice bowl to enter. So I’ll probably have to call it the rice hole.
They’d installed the locks on the outside so I wouldn’t be able to open the flap and escape through the opening.
I’ve tried everything so I knew this very well.
I barely even had enough physical strength to open my eyes so it was better not to waste it on useless matters.
There was nothing I could do with my hands which were as small as a duckling’s feet.
Grrrrowl.
At that moment, the skin on my belly tightened and emitted a sound. I pinched my tummy, which had no flesh, and scolded it. “Stop it!”
A baby should eat when she is hungry but unloved babies must starve even if they are hungry.
I noticed from the sun leaking through the high windows that there was still a long way to go before ‘that time’.
‘Let’s just practice pronunciation more.’
Important days are coming up soon. I’d been enduring until now for the events that will happen starting from now on so I opened my blue lips one more time, holding back tears of hunger.
“I’m here to geth the chwild suppowt you haben givwen me, Dad.”
I was the daughter of a saint.
But why am I in this state you ask?
The reason was simple. I was a cursed child who killed her mother as soon as she was born. And that wasn’t the only problem.
‘Nerephim’
According to El-Hala’s doctrine of religion, which is believed by half the empire’s people, God created the world and then told humans that Nerephim would protect them.
The Nerephim is an angel blessed with holy powers who lives in God’s Paradise where humans cannot reach. He personally selects humans and gives them a blessing, and these chosen ones were called saints or holy knights. Special human beings who could use the power of Nerephim.
The direct descendants of a saint and a holy knight are born with shining silver hair.
On the contrary, there was also the ‘Devil’.
According to the doctrine, he was the Nerephim’s oldest enemy with strange and evil powers.
Demon believers also existed in the empire and were said to be made up of the other half of the empire’s people. And the ugly enemies of the Nerephim, humans imbued with demonic power, were characterized by black hair.
Saint Arsilla Eblanc the ninth daughter of God, came down to the world in order to destroy the demons and save the humans. She was my very own mother, was as beautiful as a lily, and of course, had silver hair.
But one day, my mother appeared in front of the family, pregnant with a child.
It was something that should’ve been impossible.
No matter how much the family asked, the mother did not say who the father of the child was.
But the secret that I thought I would take to the grave was revealed the day I was born. As my mother’s child, I had to have silver hair as proof that I was protected by Nerephim. And I had… black hair.
Something so ridiculous turned the family upside down, and I was quickly hidden away.
To the public, it was like I was never born and my mother died from a sudden illness.
‘It’s not like I have black hair because I wanted to…’
I pouted, a little dissatisfied.
My uncle and aunt hated me to the core. No, everyone in this family hated me. My aunt hated me from the beginning, saying that the devil’s seed had ruined my mother, and wished for me to die. My uncle said he couldn’t be promoted within the palace because of me. He could have been a cardinal and became enraged, saying it was all over.
Because my mother sudden death, the era of God’s ninth daughter passed.
The Eblanc family’s dream of gaining more power vanished along with the death of the ninth saint and now the tenth daughter of God would soon come down.
If the old saint dies, a new one would be born after a decade.
In simple words, uncle became a duck egg on the Nustaf River.
As a result, I was neglected.
The diaper maid only came once a day. The writing was taught by the butler that came once a week. Other than that, there were no visitors to this small room.
‘They’re very bad guys. Treating a child like this.’
I puffed up my cheeks.
‘I have to quickly leave. If I don’t, I’m sure I’ll die. Unless, I kill them.’
Once my legs grow properly! Once I can walk long enough on my own!
I’ll go far away.
But where do I go? I don’t have any money.
I was a pretty rational and calculating child. A pessimistic five-year-old who worries about making a living. I wasn’t reckless, I wasn’t overly emotional and didn’t naively believe everything would be alright.
Money!
Every time the butler or maid saw me, they clicked their tongues and ask whether I knew how much money it cost to raise me. Of course, I didn’t know how much it was, but I do know that I needed money to live.
‘Then we should get some money!’
But how? When I couldn’t even get out of this cramped room.
No one in this family was on my side. I smiled hard at the people who came to see me, but what I would always receive in return was a cold shoulder.
A child who shouldn’t have been born.
It would have been easier to kill me just like that, so why did they let me live?
I only found out why early on my birthday that year.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorr… ack!”
It was snowing a lot so it was normal for me to fall asleep trembling, it was a normal morning. My birthday was as cold as usual, there was nothing special.
But that morning, after nearly three months, my aunt came to see me.
“Because of you my sister’s life was ruined! Die! Die!”
After standing by the door and staring at me, my aunt suddenly screamed then slapped and scratched me.
To be honest, I was frightened of the face that was using all its strength to hate me.
My face, still tender with baby skin, couldn’t resist the nail of my aunt, so it stung here and there.
“It was all because of you. If it wasn’t for you, my sister wouldn’t have died. You killed her!”
“Aunt, aunt… I’m sowy…. I’m sowy… I was wong.”
I knelt, rubbed my hands, and begged again and again.
“Come on, repeat after me. I killed my mother. My mother died because I was born. I said repeat after me!”
But no matter how much I cried, the violence did not end. It wasn’t this bad until I was four or three. In the end, trembling and squatting on the floor, I had no choice but to follow my aunt’s insistence.
“I-I ki-killed…”
“My mother.”
“My… mother.”
“Yes, you killed her. Write it on this paper. You know how to write, right? You’ve learned.”
My aunt smiled in satisfaction and stuck out a piece of paper right in front of me.
“Ah….” I looked at the roll of paper with a blank face. Yes, I did learn. The first sentence that the butler taught me was not my name nor my family’s name.
“Know that there will be no food until you write a hundred letters of apology. You won’t dare be hungry on the day you ate your mother, right? You have that much conscience, right?”
The night I suffered for a longer period of time because I’d grown up.
I lay on the wooden floor with empty eyes and looked up at the dusty ceiling.
[I’m the daughter who ate my mother.]
I couldn’t begin to describe how sore my wrists were from writing the same sentence a hundred times. After that, I couldn’t even feel my hands.
‘I killed my mother. That’s why I’m being punished.’
I’m a bad child.
A devil’s child who shouldn’t have been born.
You should just die.
You should just die…
‘I don’t want to… die.’
I want to live too.
“Mom….”
My fever went up.
I held my wrist and fell into a deep sleep and had four very long dreams. The dreams were so vivid that they could never be forgotten.
All four dreams started the same way.
Chapter 1
Stab.
My stomach was pierced.
“Ah, c-cwount….why…? (Ah, c-count…. why…?)”
“For the family, you dirty bitch. Just die quietly.”
No, I’m scared. I’m scared.
I don’t want to die!
“Catch her.”
Woof! Woof woof! A huge drooling hound barked violently at me.
“Ah!!!”
As I was desperately trying to get away, I was bitten on my ankle and fell.
“I-it hurts. It hurts….”
I couldn’t breathe because of the burning pain and the edges of my vision were drenched in darkness.
The hound’s sharp teeth and dripping saliva leered at me and this fear was not something a young child like me could bear. My whole body trembled, tears welled up and fell. When I looked down at my chapped palms, I saw they were soaked in blood.
“What a vulgar devil’s spawn.”
That was the last thing I heard before I died.
I laughed for the first time as I saw my usually cold face trembling with fear.
My uncle, who grabbed my hair and dragged me away, soon threw me into the corner.
I couldn’t get used to the pain no matter how much I tried to endure it. No matter how hard I struggle to believe this wasn’t real, the pain refused to change.
I saw a flash of silver flickering through my eyes, which had long lost its vitality.
Thud.
Just like that, I was decapitated.
“I will fweed chu poison!”
I placed a piece of rotten wood with a bloom of scarlet mushrooms in front of me as a doll and practiced for the 666th time.
I didn’t know whether it was because I didn’t eat properly or whether there was another reason but even at five years old, my body was still very small. My tongue must have grown to be as short as my height, and so no matter how hard I tried to pronounce the words correctly, my consonants kept disappearing.
I was getting choked up, but once again, I opened my mouth and mumbled.
“The cwiminal is thath jewk Cwount Eblang! (The criminal is that jerk Count Eblanc!)”
It wasn’t easy, but I was very proud to have finally managed to say it. This was a very important sentence for my survival so if I didn’t want to die, I’ll have to practice it well.
I recited the following sentence without a break.
“Gold, money. It’s pretty, it’s mine.”
It was also rather difficult sentence to say with a baby’s tongue.
I practiced the most important words by putting my hands together politely.
“Pwease gwive me the chiwld suppowt fee.”
PR/N: I’m going to remove the things in brackets where I think they’re pretty intuitive even without them.
In gold please.
If other people saw this, they’d ask me if I’m crazy about money.
If you accuse someone of being a criminal, they’d ask whether you’re getting paid to do so. But I was a kid who was only up to the knees of an adult man. No matter how much I liked money, I couldn’t receive an order from anyone looking like this. It should be obvious that I was doing all this desperately to save my life.
“I have to pwonounce it pwopery….”
It’s the only way I’d be good at playing hard to get at the negotiating table.
It would be difficult if my pronunciation was like this. I thought everything would be easier because I’d grown up to the age of five, but somehow, I still looked three or four.
I groaned and slumped down in my seat.
No one stopped me for that—I was the only one in this room after all.
I sighed, looking down at what I was doing, and practiced again for the 667th time.
Long hair, which has never been cut ever since I was born, covered my face so I couldn’t see well. My dusty clothes were worn out and old, making it impossible to even recognize their original colors. I wouldn’t have anything to say if I could be taken away due to child neglect but no one could save me.
Well, who would know about me when I was locked up and unpermitted to go out?
I no longer had anything to eat in my empty bowl so I looked at the old door with my cheeks puffed out.
I’d never walked out of that door in my entire life.
I lived in this house but my existence was that of a ghost.
‘It’s gonna open today, right?
There was a dog hole at the bottom of the door, which was originally for hunting dogs raised in this mansion. And now it had become the hole for my rice bowl to enter. So I’ll probably have to call it the rice hole.
They’d installed the locks on the outside so I wouldn’t be able to open the flap and escape through the opening.
I’ve tried everything so I knew this very well.
I barely even had enough physical strength to open my eyes so it was better not to waste it on useless matters.
There was nothing I could do with my hands which were as small as a duckling’s feet.
Grrrrowl.
At that moment, the skin on my belly tightened and emitted a sound. I pinched my tummy, which had no flesh, and scolded it. “Stop it!”
A baby should eat when she is hungry but unloved babies must starve even if they are hungry.
I noticed from the sun leaking through the high windows that there was still a long way to go before ‘that time’.
‘Let’s just practice pronunciation more.’
Important days are coming up soon. I’d been enduring until now for the events that will happen starting from now on so I opened my blue lips one more time, holding back tears of hunger.
“I’m here to geth the chwild suppowt you haben givwen me, Dad.”
I was the daughter of a saint.
But why am I in this state you ask?
The reason was simple. I was a cursed child who killed her mother as soon as she was born. And that wasn’t the only problem.
‘Nerephim’
According to El-Hala’s doctrine of religion, which is believed by half the empire’s people, God created the world and then told humans that Nerephim would protect them.
The Nerephim is an angel blessed with holy powers who lives in God’s Paradise where humans cannot reach. He personally selects humans and gives them a blessing, and these chosen ones were called saints or holy knights. Special human beings who could use the power of Nerephim.
The direct descendants of a saint and a holy knight are born with shining silver hair.
On the contrary, there was also the ‘Devil’.
According to the doctrine, he was the Nerephim’s oldest enemy with strange and evil powers.
Demon believers also existed in the empire and were said to be made up of the other half of the empire’s people. And the ugly enemies of the Nerephim, humans imbued with demonic power, were characterized by black hair.
Saint Arsilla Eblanc the ninth daughter of God, came down to the world in order to destroy the demons and save the humans. She was my very own mother, was as beautiful as a lily, and of course, had silver hair.
But one day, my mother appeared in front of the family, pregnant with a child.
It was something that should’ve been impossible.
No matter how much the family asked, the mother did not say who the father of the child was.
But the secret that I thought I would take to the grave was revealed the day I was born. As my mother’s child, I had to have silver hair as proof that I was protected by Nerephim. And I had… black hair.
Something so ridiculous turned the family upside down, and I was quickly hidden away.
To the public, it was like I was never born and my mother died from a sudden illness.
‘It’s not like I have black hair because I wanted to…’
I pouted, a little dissatisfied.
My uncle and aunt hated me to the core. No, everyone in this family hated me. My aunt hated me from the beginning, saying that the devil’s seed had ruined my mother, and wished for me to die. My uncle said he couldn’t be promoted within the palace because of me. He could have been a cardinal and became enraged, saying it was all over.
Because my mother sudden death, the era of God’s ninth daughter passed.
The Eblanc family’s dream of gaining more power vanished along with the death of the ninth saint and now the tenth daughter of God would soon come down.
If the old saint dies, a new one would be born after a decade.
In simple words, uncle became a duck egg on the Nustaf River.
As a result, I was neglected.
The diaper maid only came once a day. The writing was taught by the butler that came once a week. Other than that, there were no visitors to this small room.
‘They’re very bad guys. Treating a child like this.’
I puffed up my cheeks.
‘I have to quickly leave. If I don’t, I’m sure I’ll die. Unless, I kill them.’
Once my legs grow properly! Once I can walk long enough on my own!
I’ll go far away.
But where do I go? I don’t have any money.
I was a pretty rational and calculating child. A pessimistic five-year-old who worries about making a living. I wasn’t reckless, I wasn’t overly emotional and didn’t naively believe everything would be alright.
Money!
Every time the butler or maid saw me, they clicked their tongues and ask whether I knew how much money it cost to raise me. Of course, I didn’t know how much it was, but I do know that I needed money to live.
‘Then we should get some money!’
But how? When I couldn’t even get out of this cramped room.
No one in this family was on my side. I smiled hard at the people who came to see me, but what I would always receive in return was a cold shoulder.
A child who shouldn’t have been born.
It would have been easier to kill me just like that, so why did they let me live?
I only found out why early on my birthday that year.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorr… ack!”
It was snowing a lot so it was normal for me to fall asleep trembling, it was a normal morning. My birthday was as cold as usual, there was nothing special.
But that morning, after nearly three months, my aunt came to see me.
“Because of you my sister’s life was ruined! Die! Die!”
After standing by the door and staring at me, my aunt suddenly screamed then slapped and scratched me.
To be honest, I was frightened of the face that was using all its strength to hate me.
My face, still tender with baby skin, couldn’t resist the nail of my aunt, so it stung here and there.
“It was all because of you. If it wasn’t for you, my sister wouldn’t have died. You killed her!”
“Aunt, aunt… I’m sowy…. I’m sowy… I was wong.”
I knelt, rubbed my hands, and begged again and again.
“Come on, repeat after me. I killed my mother. My mother died because I was born. I said repeat after me!”
But no matter how much I cried, the violence did not end. It wasn’t this bad until I was four or three. In the end, trembling and squatting on the floor, I had no choice but to follow my aunt’s insistence.
“I-I ki-killed…”
“My mother.”
“My… mother.”
“Yes, you killed her. Write it on this paper. You know how to write, right? You’ve learned.”
My aunt smiled in satisfaction and stuck out a piece of paper right in front of me.
“Ah….” I looked at the roll of paper with a blank face. Yes, I did learn. The first sentence that the butler taught me was not my name nor my family’s name.
“Know that there will be no food until you write a hundred letters of apology. You won’t dare be hungry on the day you ate your mother, right? You have that much conscience, right?”
The night I suffered for a longer period of time because I’d grown up.
I lay on the wooden floor with empty eyes and looked up at the dusty ceiling.
[I’m the daughter who ate my mother.]
I couldn’t begin to describe how sore my wrists were from writing the same sentence a hundred times. After that, I couldn’t even feel my hands.
‘I killed my mother. That’s why I’m being punished.’
I’m a bad child.
A devil’s child who shouldn’t have been born.
You should just die.
You should just die…
‘I don’t want to… die.’
I want to live too.
“Mom….”
My fever went up.
I held my wrist and fell into a deep sleep and had four very long dreams. The dreams were so vivid that they could never be forgotten.
All four dreams started the same way.
