Episode-204

Words : 1472 Updated : Sep 27th, 2025

Chapter: 407 And then he saw Airin. Truly saw her. Not as Anastasia, his ghost, his memory. But as a young, terrified woman, backed into a corner of her own vegetable stall, looking at him with the wide, frightened eyes of someone confronting a dangerous lunatic. The realization hit him with the force of a physical slap. What am I doing? His mind, which had been a chaotic storm of emotion, suddenly, violently, rebooted. The Major General, the strategist, the man who had lived a lifetime understanding the critical importance of control, of perception, slammed back into the driver’s seat. And he was horrified. He saw the scene through his own eyes now, not the eyes of a grieving ghost. He saw himself—Lord Lloyd Ferrum, heir to a great Ducal house, a man whose every action was now scrutinized by his father, by a king, by his enemies—standing in the middle of the Royal Market, openly weeping, accosting a common vegetable seller, making a public, humiliating, and politically disastrous, spectacle of himself. A wave of shame so profound, so intense, it was almost physically sickening, washed over him, instantly extinguishing the last embers of his grief-induced delirium. The tears stopped as if a faucet had been wrenched shut. The raw, open wound in his soul was instantly, brutally, cauterized by the cold, hard reality of his own catastrophic folly. “My... my apologies,” he stammered, his voice hoarse, unrecognizable. He took a hasty step back, away from Airin, away from the judgmental glare of the crowd. He ran a hand over his wet face, trying to wipe away the evidence of his shattered composure. He looked at Airin, at her terrified, confused face, and he knew he had to say something, anything, to salvage this train wreck. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice stronger now, though still tight with mortification. He forced himself to adopt a tone of pained, embarrassed sincerity. “I... I mistook you for someone else. A... a dear friend. From a long time ago. Anastasia.” He deliberately stumbled over the name, as if it were painful to say. “The resemblance... it is... uncanny. I was... overcome. It was unseemly. My sincerest, deepest apologies for causing you any distress.” Airin stared at him, her fear lessening slightly, replaced by a profound, utter confusion. Anas-ta...? She couldn’t even wrap her tongue around the strange, foreign-sounding name. This lord thought she looked like his long-lost friend? So much so that he would break down and weep in the middle of the market? It made no sense. But it was, at least, an explanation. A very strange explanation, but an explanation nonetheless. The crowd murmured, the narrative shifting slightly. Not a mad lord accosting a commoner, but a grieving nobleman overcome by a chance resemblance. Tragic. Pathetic, perhaps. But slightly less scandalous. Lloyd knew he couldn’t stay. Every second he remained here, he was a spectacle, a vulnerability. He needed to disappear. Now. He gave Airin one last, brief, and deeply apologetic bow. “Again, my profound apologies for the disturbance.” Then, without another word, he turned and, with as much dignity as he could muster, which wasn’t much, he began to push his way through the crowd of gawking, whispering onlookers. He kept his head down, his face flushed with a shame that burned hotter than any of his Ferrum fire. He just wanted to escape, to find a dark, quiet hole to crawl into and never, ever come out. He stumbled away from the market, his mind a chaotic storm of grief, shame, and disbelief. The impossible, beautiful, heartbreaking face of Anastasia, superimposed over the terrified, confused face of a vegetable seller named Airin, was seared into his memory. He had found his ghost. And in doing so, he had shattered his own carefully constructed composure, revealed a profound emotional weakness, and created a public spectacle that would undoubtedly be the talk of the capital by nightfall. The encounter had not just unearthed emotions he thought long buried; it had created a new, and potentially very dangerous, loose end in the already tangled web of his new life. Chapter: 408 The Royal Market, moments before a vibrant, dazzling world of wonders, had become a personal hell. Every curious stare felt like an accusation, every hushed whisper a judgment. Lloyd Ferrum, the man who had coolly faced down assassins and negotiated with kings, felt like a frightened boy again, his skin prickling with a hot, crawling shame that was more painful than any physical blow. He pushed his way through the parted sea of onlookers, his gaze fixed on the cobblestones, not daring to meet the eyes of the crowd. The sounds of the market, the cheerful haggling, the laughter, the music—it all seemed to mock him, a bright, chaotic counterpoint to the silent, screaming storm in his own soul. He didn't stop moving until he had left the market far behind, until the noise had faded, until he was once more in the relative quiet of the less-trafficked streets leading back towards the district where his temporary royal quarters were located. He finally stumbled into a small, deserted square, slumping onto a cold stone bench beneath the shadow of a forgotten statue of some long-dead Bethelham hero. He buried his face in his hands, his body trembling with the aftershocks of the emotional cataclysm. His mind was a battlefield. Two images warred for dominance, superimposed, irreconcilable. Anastasia, his wife, his love, her face alight with the fierce intelligence and warm, teasing humor he remembered so vividly from a world away. And Airin, the terrified vegetable seller, her face a mask of bewildered fear, her eyes wide with the shock of being accosted by a weeping madman. They were the same face. The same bone structure, the same gentle curve of the jaw, the same spray of freckles across the nose. But the soul behind the eyes... it was different. Anastasia’s eyes had held a universe of shared history, of love, of laughter, of a deep, abiding partnership. Airin’s eyes had held only the simple, honest fear of a common girl confronted by the bizarre, overwhelming emotions of a powerful stranger. She is not her, a cold, rational part of his mind, the Major General, insisted. It is a coincidence. A cruel, statistically improbable, but ultimately meaningless, cosmic coincidence. A doppelgänger. A quirk of genetics. Nothing more. But the other part of him, the part that still ached with a grief fifty years old, the part that had felt the solid, living warmth of her hand in his, refused to listen. It felt too real. Too profound. Could souls be reborn, just as bodies could? Could his Anastasia, his lost love, have found her way here, to this same strange world, just as he had? Stripped of her memories, her history, her very identity, and reduced to... selling radishes? The thought was a fresh wave of agony, a pain so deep it was almost unbearable. To have found her, only to find her a stranger, a frightened girl who looked at him with terror instead of love... it was a cruelty beyond anything he had ever imagined. He sat there for a long time, the battle raging within him, the soldier warring with the widower, logic warring with a desperate, heartbreaking hope. The cool stone of the bench leached the heat from his body, but it could not touch the firestorm in his mind. He had made a mistake. A catastrophic, unforgivable mistake. He had allowed a ghost to shatter his composure. He had exposed a profound, personal vulnerability in the most public of settings. The story would spread like wildfire through the capital. The Ferrum heir, having an emotional breakdown in the market. The whispers, the mockery, the speculation... it would reach his father. It would reach the King. It would, undoubtedly, reach his enemies. A man who could be so easily undone by a chance resemblance... such a man was not a fearsome prodigy. He was a liability. He was a target. He had just handed his enemies a weapon, a psychological key to his own undoing. “Fool,” he whispered to himself, the word a bitter taste of self-loathing. “Eighty years of experience, and you act like a heartbroken teenager. You are a Major General. You are Lord Ferrum. Get a grip.” Slowly, painstakingly, he began to force the walls back up. He pushed the image of Anastasia, of Airin, into a deep, dark, lead-lined box in his mind and slammed the lid shut. He forced the grief, the hope, the agonizing confusion, down, burying it once more under layers of cold, hard, pragmatic necessity. He could not afford this. He could not afford to be this man. Not now. Not here.

Episode-204

Comments (0)