—prologue—

Prince Do Kyungsoo has been in the Little Palace for so long that he can no longer recall what the sunlight looked like from the outside. Perhaps he’s been there for hundreds of years since the day of the accident, wilting away in the darkness of the Little Palace. Or, perhaps he’s been in that torturous chamber for his entire life, and the images of the grass, the trees, and the wind that occasionally flashed through his mind before flickering away were all hallucinations created by himself. Whatever the answer was, the Little Palace was a place like that— a place that once you’ve been in there for long enough, there was no need to consider what was right, and what was wrong. Everything of the past simply seemed like a daydream.

Time, as Kyungsoo saw it, did not tick in the Little Palace. There was only darkness from behind and darkness ahead. And Kyungsoo? He was nothing more than a wisp, shrouded by the darkness, unable to crawl out.

Kyungsoo didn’t believe in miracles, until the moment where daybreak came, and the sun rose for the first time in the Little Palace.
 

—
 

The citizens of Red say that the day after the Second Great Fire, when the bastard prince was finally let out of the Little Palace, he was only a deteriorated boy. Old enough to be considered as a man, yet still holding the mind of a little boy. A little boy made of skin and bones, barely any flesh in between and never given the chance to grow up.

They say that when the bastard prince finally saw sunlight again, after years of being locked in a place like the Little Palace, he dropped to the floor and clutched the grass in fear, clinging onto the feeling of sunlight on his skin and embracing the warmth of the ground. It seemed that he was afraid of the consequences of letting go, and if anyone dared to drag him back to the Little Palace, he would rather die.

It