Roland stared at the guard.
He didn't move. He just stared.
The guard was a pathetic creature. He was trembling.
Visibly. Sweat beaded on his forehead.
His hand was on the hilt of his sword.
A reflexive, trained gesture. But it was a bluff.
His knuckles were white, but not with aggression.
It was terror.
'He's terrified.'
Roland could smell it.
The guard was caught. Trapped.
'He's scared of me. The Earl's son. The Firstborn. The name still has power, even if the body is a cripple's.'
Roland stepped forward, "Get out of my way."
He only had one day. Less than one day. He didn't have seconds for this trembling idiot.
Tomorrow, he would leave for Northern Reaches.
His voice was cold.
"If anyone has a problem," he said, his eyes locked on the guard's, "they can bring it to me directly."
He meant his father. He meant the church. He meant any power in this gods-forsaken territory.
A mana-less cripple had no power. He was a zero. A hollow shell.
But the title... the title still had an echo. For now.
The guard flinched. As if struck.
Challenging the Earl's son, even a disgraced one, was a death sentence.
'A cripple. A zero. But still the Earl's son.'
'In the future he'd be gone. Exiled. As good as dead.'
'But today... today he was still here.'
The guard's hand fell away from his sword. It was a jerky, unnatural movement, as if the muscles had finally given up.
He stepped aside.
"As you wish, my lord."
Roland didn't waste a glance on him.
He turned back to the girl.
She still didn't move. She hadn't looked up. She was just a small, broken heap on the ground, knees drawn to her chest.
'Is she broken? Or just empty?'
'Broken things can be fixed. Empty things can be filled.'
He walked back to her. He knelt again.
The crowd watched. Utterly silent. They weren't just curious anymore. They were transfixed. This was not how the world worked.
"What's your name?"
His voice was softer now.
The girl's voice was dead. A dry whisper from a throat raw with screaming, or disuse.
"Violette..."
A pause. Then, a sound that was almost a laugh, but was just dry air.
"..."
"Is there any point... in asking a dead person's name?"
Roland didn't waste words.
He bent down. He slid one arm under her knees, the other behind her back.
He lifted her.
She weighed nothing. A bundle of sticks and rags. He had lifted sacks of feed that were heavier. It was shocking.
He stood up. He turned. He walked away from the crowd.
The filth from her body instantly stained his noble clothes. Thick, dark mud. The smell of the street.
He felt the dampness seep through the fine silk of his shirt, cold and clammy against his skin. He registered it. He analyzed it. He ignored it.
It was irrelevant.
The surrounding crowd was stunned.
A collective gasp. A sound of a hundred people sucking in their breath at the same time.
Their mouths hung open. Eyes wide.
This wasn't just unusual.
It was wrong.
It was a violation of the natural order.
This was the first time.
The first time they had ever seen a noble willingly touch "trash."
Serfs were dirt. They were tools. They were animals. You didn't touch them. You certainly didn't carry them. Not like this. Not a filthy one.
This was madness.
Violette was just as shocked.
She was too weak to struggle. A kitten's strength.
But her mind was reeling. This was impossible. This was a dream. A death-fever dream.
She raised her head for the first time.
Her azure-blue eyes, vast and empty, stared at Roland's jaw. His face.
Her gaze was filled with utter, painful confusion.
This scenario did not compute. Her world had rules. The rules were simple: Nobles hurt. Nobles hated. Nobles were not... this.
'He... he isn't disgusted by how filthy I am?'
'He didn't gag? He didn't throw me down? Why?'
'He smells... clean. Like soap.'
All her life, a touch meant a blow. A kick. A shove. Pain.
Her mother's hand. A guard's boot. A merchant's angry push.
This... this was firm. It was stable. It didn't hurt.
His embrace... it was so warm...
The first warmth she had felt in... forever?
It was a steady, solid heat, radiating from him, seeping through her rags, pushing back the bone-deep chill that had lived in her for years.
Gradually, the ordeal caught up to her. The fear. The betrayal.
The sentence of death. The endless, gnawing hunger.
And now, this. This impossible, terrifying warmth.
She was completely exhausted.
Violette's consciousness faded. She fell asleep.
She didn't know why.
She was being held by a strange man. A noble. A man who should have been ordering her execution.
But she felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
She felt... safe.
The thought was so alien, so impossible, her mind couldn't hold it. It gave up.
Roland arrived back at the castle gates.
The guards snapped to attention. Steel-clad. Faceless helmets.
Then they saw her.
Their eyes went wide.
They didn't dare stop him. The 'Cripple Lord' was still a lord. But their faces, hidden or not, were a mask of disbelief and disgust.
He walked past them. Through the iron-banded gates. Into the courtyard.
He walked into the main hall.
Polished marble floors. Ancestral banners. Sunlight streaming through high, arched windows.
The servants within the castle said nothing.
They all stared at him with bizarre, disbelieving expressions.
Their eyes were fixed on the filthy serf in his arms.
This was a contamination. A breach. The master was bringing plague and filth into the clean hall. This was a sacrilege.
Roland's parents, hearing the commotion, strode out from the dining hall.
They saw him.
They saw Violette.
Their brows furrowed in deep, profound disgust.
His mother's hand flew to her mouth, a silk napkin pressed to her lips, her eyes wide with horror. She looked like she was going to be sick.
"Roland!"
His father's voice was not a greeting. It was an explosion. A single word loaded with rage and revulsion.
"Why... why have you brought this trash back to the castle?"
He didn't say "girl." He said "trash."
Roland didn't stop walking. He didn't even look at him.
He replied coldly, "It doesn't matter."
"..."
"I'm taking her with me to the Northern Reaches tomorrow."
He walked past them.
His father was left standing there, sputtering, speechless with rage.
His face went rigid, then turned a dark, apoplectic shade of red.
"You... you dare..."
His mother looked faint.
Roland didn't care. They were furniture. Obstacles. Their opinions were air.
He went back to his own chambers.
He kicked the door open.
He placed Violette gently on his own bed.
The clean, white sheets. Imported cotton. Instantly ruined. A dark, damp stain of mud and filth spread across the blankets.
He didn't care.
He summoned his personal maidservant, Anna.
She hurried in, her eyes wide.
"My Lord...?"
She saw the filthy child on the bed. She saw the mud.
"Clean her up."
Anna, seeing his face, obeyed without a word.
She would do whatever he asked.
Roland turned away as Anna began her work. He moved to the window, staring out at the lands he was about to lose.
At the same time, a translucent screen of light materialized in front of him.
The content above is about Violette.
After he clearly saw what was written, he sharply inhaled .
As expected of a God-Tier bloodline!