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The King Is Born on the Road
Prologue
Is morality shaped by the law?
To forget her fear, Queen Iris Repos of Luwan lost herself in thoughts that had long since become meaningless.
The war raging across this continent was hurtling toward its final chapter.
It was a war sparked by religion. Entangled in its wake were two nations—Luwan and Suyeo—and five distinct peoples.
Though there were only two nations, there were five peoples, because no matter how loudly both kings claimed their borders, neither could control all the land.
Neither monarch could rule the peoples living in the Kahif Desert overlapping both realms, the southern mountain region of Kawat, or the northern highlands.
Everyone worshipped their own gods. Yet the people of Luwan, who tolerated no heresy, often mocked and casually slaughtered the heathens who crossed into Luwan seeking a livelihood.
Because there was not even a statute to punish a Luwanian who killed a heathen within Luwan, most did not consider it a sin at all.
Born in such a kingdom and raised on the teachings of monarchical rule, Iris’s husband, Sid Repos, looked down on the tribes dwelling in those three ungovernable lands.
He boasted that heathens had no place in this war. As a result, Luwan was defeated.
The land of Luwan was overrun by heathens.
In the royal office of a castle where everyone had fled.
The queen, who had always sat at the king’s right hand, moved to the vacant throne.
Though her education had begun late and she still knew little of the world, she was certain of one thing: someone had to hold the throne.
Whether for negotiation or surrender, she believed someone had to stand face-to-face with the enemy’s leader. Only then could this war finally come to an end.
As she awaited the enemy, the red hem of her dress swayed fitfully in the cold winter wind.
In the empire, the king and the moon were inseparable. For that reason, the royal office’s windows were aligned with the path the moon traced across the sky.
From where she sat, Iris wondered whether Luwan would have suffered such a catastrophic defeat had there been a law to punish those who murdered heathens.
Just then, she heard footsteps.
In the maze of the royal castle, the corridor leading to the king’s domain was built so that every step resounded loudly.
Sitting in this office, a king learned to gauge who approached by their footsteps alone. But Iris, having never been raised as an heir to the throne, had never been taught such things. All she could do was clasp her hands on her lap and tremble violently.
Who could it be?
Was it the enemy’s commander?
Or was it the desert tribe, notorious for their cruelty?
Iris had never once met the peoples of those three lands, who considered themselves neither Luwanian nor Suyeon.
Believing them to be nothing more than savages, she prayed it would be a general of enemy Suyeo instead—someone who might show a measure of gentlemanly restraint.
Before her eyes, Luwanian knights stepped into the room.
“Ah…”
Iris let out a breath, her tension collapsing in an instant.
She did not recognize their faces, but she knew the blue waves of the Tehas Knights emblazoned on their scabbards.
For an exceptionally long time, they had waged a ceaseless war against monstrous horrors at the farthest reaches of human reach.
Everyone knew they were indispensable to Luwan, yet none of them had ever received honors, to the point that Iris, who had lived in the royal castle for around six years, did not recognize a single face among them.
Even so, she could recognize their commander.
It was Heyer Asheri, commander of the Tehas Knights and younger brother to King Sid Repos, who had fled to save his own skin.
Iris Repos was the hidden child of Princess Celios, the late king’s cousin, whom he had forbidden from giving birth.
From the moment of her birth until she turned nineteen, Iris had lived in a convent, eventually married off to the heir to the throne without any say. Yet even through all of that, she had known a first love.
Iris had first met Heyer when she was dragged from the convent and brought to the capital.
When Heyer was ten years old, it was revealed that his mother, the queen, had borne her second son not to the king, but to her paramour.
His father flew into a rage, and in the end, Heyer took the surname of the queen’s house, Asheri.
From then on, to avoid being put to death by the king, Heyer had risked his life guarding Luwan’s southern border.
Heyer, who had briefly visited the capital to attend the wedding of the crown prince and princess, lingered in Iris’s memory with a smile so breathtaking it commanded awe.
She had lost her heart to him.
Raised in a frigid place, she could not help but be entranced by a smile as warm as the sun.
Six years after that day, her first love stormed into the royal office without anyone’s leave, flanked by his men and reeking of blood.
Like Iris, Heyer Asheri was twenty-five, his veins boiling with youthful blood, and he was even more striking than she remembered.
From his beautifully sculpted forehead down to the exquisite bridge of his nose, the groove above his lips, and the sweep of his jaw, his features held a masterful artistry. The lines possessed a beauty like nature itself, softening the raw masculinity of his firm brow and piercing gaze.
Sheathing his blood-dripping sword, Heyer addressed the unexpected figure seated upon the throne.
“Where is the king?”
“He… fled.”
At Iris’s trembling answer, the knights cursed aloud, venting their fury each in their own way.
Terrified by their uncouth behavior, Iris flinched, pulling her shoulders tight.
Unlike his subordinates, who bared their rage at once, Heyer stared intently at Iris in silence before speaking.
“Why are you here? Was my brother truly vile enough to abandon his wife and run?”
“I chose to stay.”
“Why?”
“Because someone… had to be here.”
At her answer, the rough and restless Tehas Knights fell quiet.
After a long pause lost in thought, Heyer broke the silence.
“Can Your Majesty find the North Gate as well?”
“The North… Gate?”
“Don’t royals carry a map of the world in their heads? You are practically of the legitimate Repos bloodline, Your Majesty, so I am asking if you possess it as well.”
At those words, the eyes of Heyer’s seething men snapped toward Iris.
Shrinking before their fierce, overpowering gazes, Iris lowered her head.
She swallowed down the blood pooling in her mouth from gritting her teeth, letting it wash past her stinging throat. Then she lifted her head and gazed at the moon as it slowly began to sink.
As Heyer said, members of the Repos family—especially those close to the royal throne—carried a map of the world inside their heads.
Just as migratory birds inherently knew their paths, they were born with the ability to find their way even if dropped into the middle of a desert.
Iris was no different, and so she nodded.
At that, relief washed over one of the knights, and he spoke to Iris.
“You must leave for the North Gate this instant.”
“And once we reach it?”
“Is that not where the boundary between the living and the dead lies? The minds of the living can find no way to save Luwan, so we must borrow the minds of the dead.”
Iris did not stop to judge whether they were right or wrong.
Nor did she care what the odds were. She had no choice. It was their only path.
“I see. Then we must go.”
Speaking those words, Iris rose from the throne.
Her long dress trailed along the floor, soaking up the heavy blood the knights had dragged in with them.
Iris was tall herself, but every last one of the knights was so massive that she felt utterly isolated.
She left the royal office alongside the Tehas Knights. Those who had fled had taken all the horses from the castle stables, but fortunately, a single scrawny mount had been left behind.
Iris climbed onto the horse, stepping beyond the royal castle for the very first time since her wedding.