Shoujo Hater-Chapter 11 - 9.5: Lowen and the Great Betrayal

The Child Nobody Wanted.

Lowen was born into the Von Gildor family as a mistake. No, not even a mistake, but a stain, a living reminder of his father’s sin. He was an illegitimate son, the price of a selfish moment. His mother, a servant with no voice and no rights, was never treated as human. When she was forced to carry him, it was never her choice.

She could not run. She could not even cry. The duke’s wife, Selena Darkmoor, could not bear the sight of her. She could not bear the sight of a woman carrying the proof of her husband’s betrayal.

So she took her away.

And when she returned, the earth had already swallowed the servant’s blood, and her body had vanished into a darkness no one wished to question.

No one knew where she went. No one cared. But the child, the one who had done nothing wrong, remained behind, asking himself every day:

“Where is my mother?”

He was young when he learned no one would ever speak of her. He was young when he realized no one wanted him to exist.

So when the world began devouring his childhood, he found only one refuge.

The sword.

The sword became his path to safety. And that safety lay in strength.

He entered the imperial training camp with nothing but his name and a wound in his heart that never healed. He was stronger than the others, not because he was gifted, but because he had no other choice.

He had to be strong or be crushed by the world.

When he finally rose to the rank of knight, and his name echoed throughout the kingdom, it was never for glory.

It was for survival.

But even strength was not enough to save him.

Nor to save the love the world would never forgive.

Her name was Elinor

.

She was not a princess, nor a noble, nor someone whose name was spoken in the halls of power. She was an ordinary girl, but the only one who made him remember he was human. Not a title to be praised. Not a sword to be drawn. Not a weapon to be commanded. She saw him as he was, not as the world wanted to shape him.

And in her quietness and simple honesty, she resembled something he had lost long ago.

She reminded him of his mother.

But fate does not always spare lovers.

Their love was extinguished in silence.

It happened during a birthday celebration for one of the emperor’s sons. Elinor had been bullied by a noble girl. Her face was red from being slapped, wine was poured over her, and her clothes were torn.

Lowen was strangely drunk that night. He could not bear what happened to the girl he loved. His feelings had been suppressed for too long, and he was tired of hiding their relationship like a shameful secret. He wanted to give her a title. He wanted to call her his wife. He wanted to give her the dignity any woman deserved

.

But that desire became the beginning of their suffering.

He intervened.

He grabbed her hand before everyone and shouted:

“She is my beloved. She is under my protection. Anyone who harms her will die.”

At that moment, he did not realize that he had signed his own death sentence.

His wife, the icy woman chosen for him, said nothing, but the look in her eyes marked his doom.

That night, their fate was written in ink made of frost and blood.

It was the beginning of their torment.

After escorting Elinor safely away, he returned to Frost Castle.

His legs froze the moment he entered the gate. A high level magic circle had been planted.

He was ambushed by the Frost family.

They forced him to kneel.

Then the torture began.

He was dragged into a dark chamber where no one could be seen. His senses for mana and aura were sealed completely.

Then the suffering began.

The first torture came in the form of slow bone breaking, one bone at a time. His muffled screams blended with the sound of his bones cracking under calculated pressure. They did not send a strong man to kill him, nor a weak one to show mercy. All he heard in that darkness was the breaking of his body and his own voice shattering.

Then they moved to his leg. The fracture was not sudden. The bone bent slowly, a faint creak before the final shatter, as if the pain itself hesitated before flooding him all at once. They froze his limbs until they crumbled. His skin turned brittle like a dry autumn leaf, and his nerves, despite everything, remained alive to feel every spark of agony. When they melted the ice, his blood surged through his veins like burning lava, awakening every dead spot only to hurt it again.

Then they broke the bones again, slowly and patiently, like sculptors experimenting with torment. Every angle, every pressure point, every strike designed to crush his spirit before his body. His screams became nothing but a tearing of the soul.

And when they finished, Lowen lay barely alive in a cold cell.

His breathing slowed.

Then the second punishment arrived.

They brought him before his two children, Luna and Ian.

His swollen eyes searched their faces for warmth, for anything familiar, for the love he had poured into them since they were born.

But he found nothing.

“Please... leave them alone.”

Luna stood before him. Her small face carried a cruelty no child should possess, and her eyes were colder than northern frost. For a moment, he told himself this was a trick, a Frost illusion.

But her voice was clear, sharp, merciless.

“Servant. Clean this place.”

It was a psychological illusion created by the Frost family.

They made him see twisted versions of his children.

A few simple words, yet they stabbed him deeper than any sword. Her eyes did not see him as a father. They saw a servant. A thing. Worthless. Nameless. History erased.

He tried to call her name, but nothing came out. His body was burning, but his heart was what shattered.

Then came the third punishment.

They stripped him of his humanity.

They did not kill him. Death would have been mercy.

They bound him, naked and robbed not only of clothing but dignity, and dragged him to the frozen forest.

The air sliced his skin like invisible blades. His body collapsed onto the harsh snow. It was not a prison. It was not even a torture chamber.

It was an execution by nature.

The cold, the hunger, the terror were left to finish the job slowly.

They knew the wilderness would tear him apart more brutally than any torturer.

The wolves came.

Their eyes no longer held fear of the knight he once was. They saw only meat. A weakened body. A meal.

When the first fang dug into his leg, he did not scream. Physical pain was nothing compared to what he had already endured. Warm blood flowed down his freezing skin. The wolves did not rush. They knew their prey could not escape.

So they tore him apart slowly.

Yet he did not think of death.

He did not think of revenge.

All he whispered, through trembling lips, was:

“Forgive me... Luna... Ian... Elinor...

I am sorry... for my weakness.”

And his death was not the end.

The Frost family was not satisfied.

His death meant nothing to them.

In the days that followed, Elinor’s village ceased to exist.

No walls remained. No stones stayed in place. Houses were burned until nothing but ash remained, mixing with falling snow to create a gray landscape that looked like the remains of a dream turned to dust. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

It was not a battle. It was not a war. It was not even revenge.

It was a calculated extermination.

No one survived. Not the children. Not the elders. Not the women who had never even met Lowen.

The punishment was larger than love.

But the nightmare did not end.

Luna and Ian were next.

They stood before the Frost family’s court.

“Kill them. Remove this shame from our blood.”

The sentence was clear. No mercy. No hesitation.

But before the orders were carried out, a decree arrived.

An imperial decree sealed in gold.

The paper was thick, stamped in royal blood more poisonous than any weapon.

When it was read aloud, no one dared oppose it.

“Harm must not come to the blood of the knight Lowen. Royal protection is granted to the children Luna and Ian.”

This was not mercy. This was not kindness.

The emperor was a hunter waiting for the Frost family to slip, to stain their hands with forbidden blood, so he could crush them in the name of justice.

Life yes, but without life.

Luna and Ian were handed over to Frost Castle under imperial protection, surrounded by high walls and silent guards and political chains.

But protection was not enough.

Life was not enough.

Luna, the little girl who had endured that traumatic moment, never forgot. She never forgave. Every night she remembered the illusion they forced on her father, the voice that made him break. A wound carved deep into her heart.

Ian, the small boy who only knew the warmth of his father’s arms, saw his death in every nightmare. He did not know the details, but he felt them. The cold. The fear. The suffocating despair.

The emperor gave them life and nothing else.

He did not give them family, nor peace, nor the chance to forget.

And so the story of Lowen ended.

Or perhaps...

it has not ended yet.