Acidity of Regret Ch 6
- Dec 15, 2025
- 8 min read
Updated: Dec 16, 2025
It had been a week since Declan returned to the Grand Duchy.
From the moment Vanessa woke up that morning, she had been seized by an unshakable unease.
Her mood was so visibly dark that her maid cautiously asked if something had happened during the night.
Just as the maid suspected, her sleep had been deeply disturbed.
In her dream the night before, her cozy bedroom was engulfed in roaring flames.
She tried to flee, but something like a spiderweb bound her tightly from her neck down to her ankles, making escape impossible.
The ferocious fire gradually spread to the curtains and the bedposts, until it finally swallowed her whole as she lay paralyzed.
The sensation of her entire body burning was so vivid that she genuinely wanted to die. And she truly believed she was dying.
When she jolted awake, gasping for air, her body was drenched in sweat.
Perhaps because of that ominous nightmare, her nerves were on edge all day.
Yet, as if her anxiety were merely baseless, nothing happened at the Count’s estate from the moment the sun rose until she lay back down for the night.
But that peace was merely a prelude—one she should not have easily overlooked.
The turmoil erupted at dawn, while she was deep in slumber.
[Head Maid] "...Lady, My Lady!"
Vanessa was roused from her deep sleep by urgent hands shaking her. When she opened her eyes, the elderly Head Maid was looking down at her, her face as pale as a sheet.
[Vanessa] "What is happening?"
Still hazy with sleep, Vanessa clumsily propped herself up. But the Head Maid, having no time to spare for her sluggishness, cried out breathlessly.
[Head Maid] "You must flee at once. Hurry!"
[Vanessa] "...? Flee? What do you mean?"
[Head Maid] "The Imperial Guard has broken in. While they are stalling downstairs, you must escape, My Lady."
[Vanessa] "The Imperial Guard? Why would they be here..."
Acting as if there was no time to explain, the Head Maid hurriedly pulled her out of bed. Even as she was dragged along in her négligée, she couldn't shake her bewildered expression.
However, the moment she took a single step outside her bedroom, she realized why the maid was so frantic.
While most mansions were silent in the dead of night, the Count’s estate was in utter chaos, resembling a riotous marketplace.
Shouts and screams echoed consecutively from somewhere, intermingled with the sounds of things shattering and smashing.
A glance out the window revealed an endless stream of Imperial Guards in red uniforms flooding into the garden.
It was truly a bolt from the blue.
Why...?
Cold sweat ran down her spine at the inexplicable intrusion.
The Head Maid led the stunned Lady toward the exit used by the servants.
Vanessa, coming to her senses a beat too late, spoke up.
[Vanessa] "Wait, Father. Where is Father?"
In this chaos, where was the head of the house, her father, and what was he doing?
When she grabbed the maid’s sleeve and asked, the Head Maid bit her lip with a hesitant expression.
Sensing dread from that face, Vanessa immediately shook off her hand and ran toward her father’s bedroom.
[Head Maid] "My Lady!"
The Head Maid’s desperate cry rang out from behind, but it didn't reach her ears. Her only thought was to check on her father’s safety immediately.
He was her only remaining family, her flesh and blood. If something happened to him, then she...
The moment she stepped onto the stairs to reach the Count’s bedroom, she encountered the knights storming up from below.
The knights, exuding an aura like iron, stopped abruptly upon seeing her appear before them, momentarily speechless.
Her golden hair was disheveled and unkempt, and she wore no adornments. Yet, her unconcealable beauty shone so brilliantly that it delivered a shock, making them doubt their own eyes.
That saintly face was enough to render mere mortals powerless, if only for a moment.
[Imperial Knight] "It's Vanessa Rohawk!"
One of the knights, recovering his wits first, shouted. The others snapped out of their trance, instantly surrounding and capturing Vanessa.
[Head Maid] "No! Not the Lady!"
The Head Maid, who had followed behind, begged and pleaded, but the knights, with faces dripping with cold indifference, roughly dragged her away.
Dragged to the first-floor hall, she found the already captured servants... and Count Rohawk.
The knights of the Count’s family who always guarded her father, including Elliot, were nowhere to be seen.
[Vanessa] "Father!"
Vanessa turned pale at the sight of the Count kneeling, bound just like her.
Slowly lifting his head, the Count had blood streaming down his forehead as if he had been struck, and his eyes were swollen with burst blood vessels.
Seeing his gruesome state, her heart sank to the floor.
She quickly regained her senses and demanded of the knight binding her.
[Vanessa] "What on earth is this? Why are you doing this!"
The knight lifted his head to speak, but upon meeting her eyes, he swallowed hard.
Every time she blinked, her emerald eyes revealed themselves beneath long, lush lashes.
Her high-bridged nose seemed delicately drawn by a master painter, and her vividly red lips were enough to captivate anyone’s gaze.
Even in anger, her face was so incomparably sacred that it made the observer feel as if they were the one sinning.
Before he could open his mouth, a man strode forward with deliberate steps, positioning himself at the center of the commotion.
Seeing the three-wing emblems on his epaulets, he was clearly the Captain of the Imperial Guard, the leader of these knights. He pulled a finely rolled parchment from his inner pocket.
[Captain] "We received a secret report that the Count Rohawk family harbors treasonous intent against the solemn and exalted Imperial Family. The investigation has confirmed this report to be true. Thus, by the will of the Imperial Family, the family’s title is stripped, and all those bearing the name Rohawk are sentenced to death."
The stern, low voice resonated through the mansion’s hall. To Vanessa’s ears, it sounded like a clap of thunder.
Folding the parchment as if crushing it, the Captain then drew his sword from its scabbard.
Schwing—the sound of the silver blade being revealed sent a chill down her spine.
[Vanessa] "No..."
Seeing the fierce tip of the sword aimed at her father, her eyes trembled violently.
She tried to rush forward immediately, but the nearby knights, anticipating her action, pressed down firmly on her shoulders.
[Vanessa] "No, Father... Father!"
Her heart, sensing doom, pounded insanely. Nausea rose in her throat, making her feel sick. Her throat constricted tightly, just as it had when the crimson flames in her dream tried to devour her.
Before Vanessa could even scream, begging him not to, the Captain’s sword sliced through the air with terrifying speed. It was a strike devoid of a single shred of mercy or hesitation.
As flesh tore and blood sprayed in all directions, the servants screamed through their tears. Her father’s body slowly crumbled to the floor.
For a split second, her reason couldn't comprehend what had happened. But the moment she met her father’s eyes, from which the life had not yet fully faded, she accepted the entire situation as despair.
Ah, ah...
Vanessa gasped like a person who had lost the ability to speak. She couldn't breathe properly, as if her lungs were filled with water.
What is this? Why? How? Why Father? Why them...?
Her mind, utterly unable to process what happened, tangled into a mess. Tears she didn't even know were flowing dripped onto the back of her hand, which had turned pitifully pale.
[Captain] "There is no need to weep."
A voice as cold as frost pierced her ears. The Captain, who had ruthlessly beheaded her father, now approached her.
[Captain] "For you will soon be joining your father."
Thick blood dripped from the glistening silver blade. The blood pooling on the floor, slowly forming a puddle, looked like the sorrowful tears of her father, who had met an untimely death.
The Captain raised his sword once more. The gesture was identical, without a margin of error, to the one that had ended her father’s life.
Her emerald eyes lost focus.
Am I dying? Like Father? Like this? So helplessly?
Having witnessed her father’s death right before her eyes, all her will vanished, and she felt no desire to resist.
In truth, it still didn't feel like she had woken up. It was a nightmare so terrible she wanted to believe it might just be a dream.
Vanessa did not close her eyes. She merely stared blankly as the sharp blade slowly descended toward her head.
From the moment she met the eyes of her father, who had become a corpse before she could even lift a finger, her reason had scattered into specks of dust.
[Imperial Knight] "Captain!"
Just before the blade touched her, someone urgently stopped the Captain. It was another knight of the Guard.
He whispered something to the Captain. After listening silently, the Captain clicked his tongue—tsk—and neatly sheathed the sword he could have swung at any moment.
[Captain] "It seems a famous face saves even a life in the end."
Muttering words she couldn't understand, the Captain soon shouted to the surrounding knights.
[Captain] "We return to the Imperial Palace. Escort the prisoner!"
He turned his back and strode toward the mansion entrance. The sound of his footsteps left long, stinging lacerations on her heart.
The sword hadn't even grazed her, yet the inside of her chest felt torn and tattered, as if pierced dozens of times.
From the tips of her toes, a despair like mire crawled up, claiming a woman who had lost her future in an instant.
It was still a pitch-black dawn, before the first light.
*****
The Imperial Palace’s Underground Dungeon.
Infamous for the fact that once entered, no one leaves with their life intact, this place consisted of a staggering thirteen levels.
Prisoners were confined to different floors according to their crimes; the heavier the sin, the further down into the abyss they descended.
Vanessa, who knew nothing of her crime but was charged with 'treason' as the Captain stated, was imprisoned on the 11th floor.
The knight, dragging her roughly, shoved the dazed Vanessa behind the dark, gloomy iron bars. At the push on her shoulder, she collapsed to the ground.
The turmoil had erupted so suddenly that she still hadn't come to her senses. Her retinas failed to capture the actual scenery, replaying only the moment of her father’s death over and over.
That horrific scene must be a dream. Yet, it was too cold.
Her bare feet were freezing, and the prison cell she was trapped in was chillingly damp. That realistic sensation forcibly awakened her reason.
[Head Maid] "My Lady... Oh, My Lady..."
Perhaps intending to separate them, the Head Maid was locked in a different cell far away. The sound of her weeping occasionally echoed through the desolate corridor.
But in this coldness that sought to break her completely, that weeping was the only thing that held warmth, causing her eyes to regain focus gradually.
Bang!
As the door—which seemed impossible to open no matter how much one struggled—slammed shut, she finally, clearly, perceived everything that had happened.
Among it all, the reality that her father was no longer by her side—no, that he was no longer in this world—struck her with the most crushing despair.
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