Lost in the Path of Fate

Chapter 81 - Frost's Curse

Wearing the color of grief, Pier stood at the window of the palace's fifth floor where his room was located.

Everything became ruined.

The winter nights festival's opening which should have been filled with cheers of celebration and joy was instead replaced with screams of agony and despair.

The countdown that supposedly starts the merry days of the kingdom being in the state of warm slumber became a total chaos party.

The House of Masters had been bombed.

The explosion was so huge that it wiped out the central mansion in a single second. It killed thousands of individuals including the personal servants Pier hired for himself.

No one was spared. No one lived.

"You're shivering from the cold." Raphael stated as he placed a coat behind the young master but Pier did not answer him.

It had been like this ever since the incident happened hours ago.

The young master could not speak and he simply stared into the far distance with his hollow expression.

The young duke was worried. He had just gotten back from the borders due to the threats of war and what he returned to had been one of the Belmiunde Household's mansions being obliterated by an explosion that was the biggest the kingdom had ever seen.

Pier's expressionless gaze was even more disturbing than that.

It was so deep yet so shallow that one could not really fathom what was going through the young master's head.

"How many?" Pier inquired and Raphael paused in his observations.

"Pardon?"

"How many died in the explosion?" He repeated.

Raphael hesitated for a second as it was the first time Pier spoke after their conversation back at the burning and destroyed mansion.

Pier's skin was still glowing even under the melancholic weather but it did not resonate beauty. It was emitting an aura of mourn and another emotion that he could not quite decipher.

"One thousand and three hundred fifty-two." Raphael responded and he watched with a cautious glance as Pier became silent again.

"Does that include the visitors that came to tend father's needs?" Raphael shook his head at the follow-up question.

"Another forty would be added for that."

"I see."

Pier shrugged his shoulders and embraced the warm coat tighter.

"Pier..."

"Who do you think did that?" He asked and Raphael was stunned at the inquiry the young master made.

"Do you think it would've been hilarious if I told you I do not feel any sadness right now?" Pier asked and tilted his head to the side in a curious manner.

There was no space in left in his chest to feel sadness.

He had lived his life before as a sad and lonely person. Nothing new with that. The void created in his chest that he thought he had finally moved on was revealed slightly.

Regret? Fury? They were present in his chest.

He was regretful that he wasn't able to think about the connections between the persons involved with his knight's issue and the mansion. Only if he was able to analyze it faster, he could've returned to the mansion and probably save people from the explosion.