The air in the freezing dungeon was filled with the same metallic scent of blood and damp mold as it was eight years ago.

Shadows flickered grotesquely every time the torchlight licked the walls. At the end of that light, a man who was once called the sun of the Kingdom of Tae crouched like a beast.

Bound and staring into space with lifeless eyes, he could hardly be called human anymore.

The favorite of the Imperial Court, who had been bestowed the surname 'An' by the Emperor.

My most brilliant friend. And the man I trampled upon most cruelly.

I looked down at him and felt a parching thirst.

It was a mixture of hatred, a sense of betrayal, and an unexplainable, burning emotion.

I cannot forget his cold gaze as he looked down at me from the walls of the Wei capital.

Since that day, I carved out my own humanity.

For a man like me, despised as a mutant, to survive as a general, hating him was my only proof of existence.

"Kill me... please, just kill me..."

A frail voice crawled across the floor. For eight years, I tortured him. I starved him, beat him, and tore his soul to pieces.

As the price for his betrayal, his family vanished like dew on the execution grounds, and his vassals died swallowing their screams on the torture room floor.

I whispered all those deaths into his ear, waiting for him to break.

But he never once made an excuse. There was only pleading, or a strange silence.

Until today, when the last surviving vassal spat out the truth while coughing up blood, I believed all of this was justice.

"You... you know nothing...! To hide the fact that you are the discarded, filthy blood of the Wei Imperial Family, he became a traitor in your place...! If that fact had been revealed, it would have been you who was executed!"

Something shattered inside my head.

I scoffed and cut the man's throat. But as the severed head rolled away, a strange reversal from the past war came to mind.

The moment when the Wei camp, which had been facing certain defeat, collapsed so hollowly.

I finally understood that it wasn't betrayal, but his final blade that pushed us toward victory.

"...Hey."

With trembling hands, I lifted his chin. His unfocused eyes turned toward me. The warmth that was the only thing to hold my hand eight years ago had vanished, replaced only by the scars I had left behind.

Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you resent me?

"Tell me... just how far were you planning to let me ruin myself...!"

My scream hit the stone walls and scattered. Instead of answering, he smiled faintly. Not an excuse, not resentment, but the hollow smile of a person who had given everything away.

In that moment, I realized. I wasn't a hero, but a murderer who had personally slaughtered the only person who abandoned the world for my sake.