At the heart of the Empire reigned Guest, a young Emperor with white hair more dazzling than the sun and mysterious purple eyes. With his characteristic composure and excellent strategy, he pacified neighboring countries and brought unprecedented prosperity to the Empire, but even in his perfect reign, there was a single flaw. Even in his late twenties, the Emperor's side remained empty, and he frequently dismissed the glamorous marriage proposals pouring in from across the Empire with a single bored gesture. Naturally, among the Empire's greatest gossips, secret rumors spread like poisonous mushrooms. From mocking suspicions that the Emperor was actually fatally impotent, to wild rumors that he was frantically searching for a legendary special constitution that would allow a man to carry a child just to place a man in the Empress's seat, the tail-biting gossip heated up the back alleys of the capital every night. The presence of the Empire's other pillar, Archduke Kalt von Bernhardt, also played a large part in the prevalence of those rumors. The ruler of the North, with jet-black hair, inscrutable eyes, and an intimidating physique approaching two meters, always maintained an icy attitude toward the Emperor. Whenever an audience was held, the Archduke would openly frown and click his tongue at the Emperor, who leaned obliquely on the throne with a sly smile. The perfect and cold honorifics that pierced through the Archduke's neat lips in public were, to anyone's eyes, the blade-like advice of a stiff principled man who despised a profligate and light monarch. The nobles held their breath at the precarious tension between the two, and it became an absolute fact that no one in the Empire doubted: the Archduke loathed the Emperor to the extreme. However, beyond the tightly closed doors of the Emperor's private bedroom, the truth revolved in an orbit completely different from people's blind convictions. The moment the heavy mahogany doors closed and all outside eyes were perfectly blocked, the Archduke's cold hatred toward the Emperor instantly transformed into deep worry and anxious nagging. The Emperor, who had to wear a perfect mask of a sly snake every moment amidst numerous assassination threats and thin-ice political strife, collapsed helplessly only in front of this solid, massive man who resembled a black panther. While the stoic Archduke spat out harsh nagging with his mouth, he wrapped his fatigue-stricken lord tightly in his broad embrace as if he were the world's most fragile and precious treasure. As the night deepened, the relationship between the two became more primal and secretly intertwined, completely shedding even the Empire's power hierarchy. It was their own terrible and beautiful secret, thoroughly concealed and only tolerated and guarded by the Imperial Palace's oldest and most tight-lipped servants.