CL Prologue

A man stood surveying the cold, barren expanse of the mountains, his gaze more piercing and intense than it had ever been when he had cut down his enemies.

He was already halfway up the treacherous slopes, having carved his path through snow-laden trees and stumbled over ground as sleek and treacherous as moss-covered stone.

Yet, even with their arduous journey, had they found nothing here, the knights would have been able to proceed forward, guided by the man who led them.

But then, there they were. The faint footprints leading to a cliff at the edge of the snow-blanketed plain.

They were tiny, delicate imprints. It was all too easy to imagine the frail, slender woman who had left them behind.

“Ah…”

A knight exhaled a sorrowful sigh, a cloud of breath drifting into the cold wind. The tragedy unfolding before their eyes became painfully real.

‘I must have misinterpreted it.’

The last remnants of hope that they had clung to evaporated in an instant. There would be no return. It was a bitter ending, with no hope of a continuation.

“…No.”

The only one unwilling to accept the crushing truth was the man who led the search, desperate to find his lost wife.

Leo Carthenon.

The Captain of the Lumina Knights, Head of the Carthenon family, Lord of Rosa. And husband to the woman whose fragile footprints marked the snow.

He should have recognized his wife’s footsteps at once, but even with this undeniable evidence before him, he shook his head stubbornly.

“That can’t be.”

As the knights hesitated, lost in their own thoughts, Leo pressed on, moving forward alone. Rather than admiring his persistence, those watching felt nothing but pity for the man who refused to accept the truth.

“No. No, this can’t be. No…..”

He took several more steps, driven by desperation.

“My lord!”

The man who had once been as unyielding as a mountain crumbled. He fell to his knees, a guttural sob wracking his body, the anguished sound akin to an animal caught in a trap, struggling for its final breath.

Even amidst the chaos of war, where death and survival hung in balance, nothing had prepared them for this. When the physician had informed him of his impending blindness due to a terrible fever, Leo had not flinched. Nor would he have faltered had he been told his life was in jeopardy.

The man who had once been indomitable, now shattered into pieces smaller than glass.

He groped helplessly over the small, faint footprints, his hands trembling as if to grasp his wife’s fading presence. But when he realized the futility of it, the hopelessness was too much to bear.

“M-my lord! You mustn’t, my lord!”

His knights desperate voice was drowned out by his frantic movement toward the precipice.

“My lord!”

“Please, come to your senses!”

The knights acted swiftly, restraining him before he could reach the cliff. Had they been even a moment too late, the outcome would have been unimaginable.

“Let me go! I said, let me go!”

He fought fiercely, struggling to reach her, even as his body was pinned against the snow. The knights held him down with all their strength, but he resisted with every ounce of his being, slamming his head repeatedly into the ground in an attempt to break free.

There was no longer any trace of the man who had once commanded the kingdom’s strongest order of knights, who had led a prestigious family, and ruled vast territories.

With the loss of his wife, Leo Carthenon had lost everything.

“Charlotte!”

It was a devastating loss.

“Charlotte!!!”