TPNSIA-0

CHAPTER -0

Prologue: The Reaper Dies

Rustle—

The sound of reeds swaying in the wind echoed in my ears.

The poison spreading throughout my body had blurred my vision long ago. Hot blood kept rising from deep inside me, making every breath difficult.

Collapsed face-first in filthy mud, I barely managed to raise my eyes.

Standing before me was the man I had trusted more than anyone in this world—the man I had loved more than anyone.

He was smiling coldly.

“How does it feel to have your face buried in the mud, Kaila?”

I never imagined my one and only lover could speak to me with such malice.

And to discover it only when I was about to die?

It was almost laughable.

“I suppose answering is difficult. I coated the blade with poison. You probably even know what kind it is.”

Ian Angel.

My only lover—and the vice leader of Angel’s Breath, the greatest assassin guild on the continent.

Did I really never know?

No.

Deep down, I had always known what kind of man he was.

Meticulous. Coldhearted. A man who cared about nothing except completing the objective placed before him.

I had simply hoped that I would always be the exception.

“I thought the Reaper was someone who wouldn’t die even if you killed her. Apparently, I was wrong.”

Ian placed his foot on the dagger embedded in my back and pushed it deeper.

Then he crouched beside me, grabbed my face, and forced me to look into his eyes.

A blazing fire burned within those desolate gray eyes.

Once, I had loved those eyes to the point of madness.

Now, I resented them just as fiercely.

“Why… why…?”

I forced the words out, wanting at least to know the reason.

He merely sneered.

“Who knows? Why indeed?”

With an expression I had never seen before, Ian murmured quietly,

“…You should know the reason better than anyone. Are you really asking because you don’t know?”

Was I losing my mind?

Because the man who had stabbed me in the back somehow looked… sad.

After standing silently for a long moment, he suddenly rose to his feet.

My face fell halfway into the mud again.

“Then use this opportunity to think carefully about why I’m doing this.”

A chilling aura seemed to rise from his back as he turned away without mercy.

“In the afterlife.”

As Ian walked away, black-clad figures waiting behind him rushed forward as though they had been waiting for his command.

“Burn her. Don’t leave even ashes behind.”

The assassins approached me carrying torches.

One poured an entire container of oil over my body.

“I-Ian… please….”

I desperately tried to move my lips, but begging meant nothing to them.

Without hesitation, they threw the torches onto me.

The oil-fed flames erupted violently, as though determined to burn me down to the bone.

Before I could even scream, I felt my entire body being consumed.

Perhaps fortunately—or unfortunately—the poison had already spread throughout me, so I felt no pain.

So this is how I die.

For someone who had struggled so desperately to survive, it was a pitiful ending.

At last, I slowly closed my eyes.

On the day the blade of the man I loved more than anything pierced through me…

On the day flames swallowed my body before my final breath had even left it…

I lost everything.

The organization to which I had devoted my entire life.

The lover I had cherished more than my own life.

And the life I had fought harder than anyone to preserve.