What Became of the Tyrant After the Pregnant Empress Left - Chapter 232

The Fourth Consort stabbed Kazhan. Convinced that a blood-based ability could be triggered by sheer blood loss, she attacked her own child with a blade without hesitation.

Fortunately, a quick-thinking maidservant intervened, saving his life—but something in Kazhan broke that day. He no longer cried or laughed like a child should. Though he still behaved like one, his expressions had dulled, as if his emotions had been hollowed out.

That same year, in early winter, the Fourth Consort gave birth to a second son—a result of the emperor’s fleeting visits to her chambers, spurred by the hope that a true heir to the Tennilath bloodline might finally emerge.

But Alit Tennilath’s eyes were green. A definitive sign, he would never awaken the family’s power.

Desperate, the emperor ordered Duke Barilio, his closest confidant, to ransack the imperial archives. If Kazhan could be forced to awaken, perhaps there was still hope.

Months later, once the conditions were uncovered…

Fearful that the Sixth Prince might one day threaten him, the emperor decided to eliminate the risk at its root.

The Fourth Consort’s palace burned. Countless lives were lost with her.

In the chaos, the head maidservant—acting on her mistress’s final orders—fled with Kazhan and his infant brother, Alit.

Two princes, one maid, one attendant, one knight. A party of five, so fragile they seemed moments from capture. Yet with the help of an unknown ally, they managed to escape Uzephia—though not without devastating losses.

Kazhan’s one-year-old brother, feverish through the night, died within a day. The maidservant who’d smuggled them out voluntarily became a decoy and was captured.

At the same time, their knight, seeing no future in their flight, deserted. By the time they reached Pyrein, the attendant—who’d used the consort’s jewels to secure a fallen noble’s title and shelter—succumbed to illness.

Kazhan was six years old. Far too young to comprehend any of this.

For days, the child stared blankly at the attendant’s rotting corpse. Eventually, he dragged the man outside alone, grunting with effort as he buried him, then collapsed onto the dirt.

Hungry. Exhausted.

Kazhan clutched his empty stomach. The last adult who’d cared for him was gone, yet he felt no sadness. No anger, no grief.

Only envy for the man’s peaceful sleep.

‘They said you wouldn’t hurt anymore. How could he close his eyes and never wake up, too?’

Kazhan didn’t want to live. He didn’t know how. His mother had demanded he become emperor; everyone else had wanted him dead. The first was now impossible, the second a concept he barely understood.

If staying unseen meant burying himself, wouldn’t that be better?

Gazing dully at the pitilessly clear sky, he drifted into sleep—nearly joining the “passed” himself.

When he awoke, it was in a healer’s home.

Kazhan recited the story drilled into him by the attendant before death, the last survivor of a fallen house, his family lost to tragedy. Money remained, but no one to care for him. Moved, the healer helped place him with an employment agency for servants.

From then on, Kazhan grew up in the hollow transactions of hired labor. Already directionless, he moved through life like a ghost—breathing, existing, but little more.

Revenge against Uzephia’s emperor never crossed his mind. Not just because it was impossible, but because he lacked the fury to fuel it.

He knew the emperor had killed his mother and brother. So what?

With emotions pared to a sliver, Kazhan saw their deaths as mercy.

At least they weren’t hurting anymore.

Unaware his world was twisted, he drifted through time—until enrollment at Pyrein’s Royal Academy, just like any other noble.

It became the second turning point of his life.