Chapter 298
However, the moment Freesia opened her arms, his limit finally arrived. As she embraced the collapsing Izar, her face had grown even more bloodless than when she had first rushed toward him.
‘Izar’s lost too much blood!’
It was only hard to tell because his armor was black. Crimson blood was seeping through the broken and shattered gaps.
At this rate, Izar might reach the end of his life before she did.
“No…!”
He had said he would stay with her to the very end this time.
She had imagined entrusting Nova to him and dying, but she had never once pictured a future where he would leave her first.
Not even during those moments when she hated and resented him so much she could hardly stand it.
“Izar, please…!”
What words could one even beg with in the face of another’s death? She had already died once herself, yet not a single proper phrase came to her.
Freesia, half out of her mind, groped clumsily at his shoulder, trying to stop the blood that kept seeping out.
She didn’t even realize the shadow growing longer over her head.
“Freesia—”
Canopus adjusted his grip on his sword at the sight of her appearance.
Her body had been so broken she couldn’t even move. How had those injuries healed so cleanly?
‘Wait a second…!’
But the moment she turned to look at him, Canopus realized.
It was already too late.
“Ugh!”
A groan burst from him at the piercing pain, like his heart was being devoured.
Freesia, still holding Izar, could only watch in terror and confusion as the scene unfolded before her.
‘Why is that man…?’
Starting from the hand that wasn’t holding the sword, his body began to crack apart like a poorly fired piece of pottery, then crumbled into white petals.
“Kh…”
Canopus coughed up blood from the agony of his disintegrating body.
It felt like his insides were collapsing as if a dam had broken, and the sensation chilled him to the bone.
To think that accepting the monster’s power to defeat Izar would come back to him like this.
The face of the woman clinging desperately to his half-brother blurred and sharpened over and over again.
Even though she looked terrified and pale, she still held on to that man like he was hers… clinging to him with everything she had.
‘Isn’t this kind of ending too cruel for me?’
Mustering the last of his strength, Canopus gripped his sword hilt.
From the moment he was born, his entire life had been one of having everything good stolen by Izar.
If so, then at the very least, he wanted to take this final road with that woman.
Canopus’s sword caught the sunlight and gleamed with a sharp silver light. The woman, struggling to support the man, had no way to escape the path of the descending blade.
But just before it could strike her left shoulder…
His knee buckled.
“Ah…”
A thin line of blood spilled from the corner of his lips.
Life was draining from him through the sword Izar had thrust into his abdomen.
Even with his vision blurring, those golden eyes still shone with the brilliance of a finely honed blade.
At the sight of that gaze, Canopus let out a breath. Half sigh, half bitter laugh.
“Haa…”
He had lived his whole life to one day call Izar a failure, yet in the end, he had become the failure instead.
At last, the silver-haired man collapsed, but his body never hit the ground completely.
Thanks to Freesia, his body became a grave of petals.
And even that was scattered by a faint breeze, leaving behind only a faint, bitter scent.
The moment Izar’s sword dropped to the dirt floor, the last bit of strength drained from the body Freesia had been holding on to.
“…Izar.”
Frozen in place, Freesia finally snapped back to her senses.
Seeing his closed eyes and how his face had gone pale as snow, she couldn’t breathe.
‘I have to let someone know we’re here!’
She needed to find someone who had finished the battle nearby and bring them here. But before she could get up, the man grabbed her hand.
“Freesia…”
“Izar, let go of me just for a moment.”
Freesia cupped his hand in both of hers and whispered desperately.
Truthfully, she didn’t want to leave his side either. But if things stayed like this, he truly would die, so she pleaded with teary eyes.
“I’ll be right back, okay? If you just wait a moment, I’ll come back right away…”
“Those words weren’t sincere.”
“Izar, stop talking—”
“That people like us could ever be together…”
As she stayed by his side, falling apart from the fear of his looming death and clinging to him, Freesia’s eyes began to tremble. She immediately knew what he meant.
〈To be born to parents like us…〉
Even as she longed for him… even as she broke down under the weight of impending death… that was the final lock. It was the curse that had always kept her from offering complete forgiveness.
And yet, he remembered it.
He remembered, and he was saying it wasn’t the truth.
“That you didn’t love me… that you thought, if the baby came out looking like you, your affair would be exposed.”
“Ah…”
“So you buried the child first… That’s what I had convinced myself.”
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