"That's how I feel about myself when I stand in front of Samur." Voloha revealed.

  "Hueh?" The attendant stupidly grunted.

  She could not, for a moment, understand what Voloha was saying. The latter simply smiled at her reaction. It was perfectly natural, after all.

  When the meaning of the words did dawn on the attendant, her eyes widened in sheer disbelief.

  "H-how is that possible?!" She exclaimed. "You are the Princess of this country, while he's just a boy who was kicked out of his house. You have much more meaning than he possibly could!"

  "Just a boy? Samur is just a BOY? Ha!" Voloha scoffed. "You have no idea what you are talking about!" She roared.

  "Eek!" The attendant shrieked.

  "Ah…" The shriek brought Voloha back to her senses, and she felt shame bubbling up inside her. "My apologies, Kanguko. I should not have screamed like that." She bowed her head.

  "Ah! Please, do not bow your head to a lowly servant like me, Princess!"

  "We're all equal, Kanguko, we're all equal." Voloha sighed and lifted her head.

  She could not bring herself to tell her attendant that they were equal because they were all meaningless.

  "O-oh…" As much as Kanguko wanted to refute her statement, she could not.

  "Anyway, like I was saying, Samur is not 'just a boy'. He is special. No, he HAS to be special, for all of us."

  Just the thought of Samur being ordinary threatened to send her tumbling down a bottomless pit of despair.

  'Something' like Samur had to be special, because if he was not…


  "…" Kanguko still looked a bit puzzled.

  That too, was understandable. Only after conceiving the inconceivable could one see the true value of Samur.

  However, Voloha wanted someone, anyone, to know. Because the weight of her knowledge was too much for her to bear alone.

  "Do you know how I see fate?" She asked.

  "Yes, you see it in the form of colours."

  That was common knowledge among the handful of people who knew Voloha could peek into fate.

  "Right. When I first witnessed Samur's fate, what I saw was… blackness."

  "Black?" Kanguko furrowed her brows.

  "Yes, black. It means that he was doomed from the start."

  "I see."

  "However, I was wrong about that. What I saw wasn't black. It was an absolute… nothingness." A smile appeared on Voloha's face.

  "What?"

  "What I had seen wasn't the colour black, but the absence of anything and everything. It was a never-ending abyss. Do you know the implications of that?"

  "I do not…" Kanguko regretfully shook her head.

  "It's simple, Samur is outside fate."

  "Outside? Does that mean…" Kanguko's eyes widened slightly.

  "Yes, Samur is not bound by fate. He is the only person who's free to walk any path he so desires."

  "Oh…" She silently nodded.

  However, Kanguko could not completely grasp what Voloha was talking about. After all, fate was an intangible concept and there was no way for her to know how it had affected her life.

  So to her, Samur being outside of fate wasn't too big of a deal.

  And Voloha realised that. She bit her lips; it wasn't enough.

  She needed to work harder to make Kanguko understand.

  "There was one more thing I realised today when I peeked into his fate. Would you like to know what it was?"

  "Yes."

  "Today, when I saw into that abyss, the abyss actually looked back at me, and I realised that Samur is not outside of fate."

  "Then?"

  "He is above it."

  "What?" Kanguko furrowed her brows.

  "Do you know how fate works?"

  "I do not."

  "Fate affects everything around us. Let's say you find a spot on my dress. That's fate. Let's say upon reaching the castle, I find my parents to be dead. That would be fate. Let's say that the Aggressors will invade this country today, defeat it and take me back as their slave, violating me everyday and turning me into a breeder. That would also be fate."

  "D-do not talk like that, Princess!" Kanguko wailed.

  "But it's the truth." Voloha shrugged. "What happens in the next moment is decided by fate. Fate lays out your entire life for you before you're even born, and it does so for everyone. In fact, the Aggressors invading our world is also our fate."

  "But… but why? What about the Heroes of the past? The Gods? The-"

  "They're the same. They reached their positions and created miracles because fate decided they would do so."

  "…"

  "And Samur, hehehe, is above it." A manic smile appeared on Voloha's face. "Fate, the very concept that dictates the lives of men and gods alike, kneels before Samur."

  "H-how is that possible?" Kanguko's eyes shook.

  Voloha was satisfied when she saw the horror hidden behind the eyes of her attendant, because that meant even if a little, Kanguko understood what Voloha was talking about.

  "I do not know. I do not know at all." Voloha grit her teeth.

  How could she know? The things she had seen were far too great for her to put into words.

  It's not like she hadn't tried; she had worked her hardest to describe the things she had seen when she first saw Samur's fate, but she just couldn't find the words to put them in.

  And the more she tried to find the right words, the more she realised that the concepts she had seen were starting to crumble away like a castle made of sand, until finally, what remained were only the memories of having once understood those concepts, haunting her in her dreams.

  Back when she had gotten lost in the stupidly huge backyard of the Eckart Ducal family, she wasn't afraid. She had faith that someone would come get her. She was the Princess of this country after all.

  However, her courage crumbled when she met the boy locked in a secluded tower. When she, like always, peeked into the fate of this stranger, she finally saw the true insignificance of her existence.

  That… was what had made her cry.