The next morning, the horrible news shook the whole palace.
While the queen had wept for her son, the king instructed the royal bureau of soldiers to announce the crime and to conduct a widespread search.
Since the young prince was the only rightful heir after the queen had been infertile, this became a kingdom crisis. While everyone was frightened about it, somewhere hidden at the villain's nest, the young prince was locked inside a cold room, tied up with ropes.
Across the corner of that room, there was a transparent glass vault.
Inside it was the flower that the young prince had been desperately looking for.
The sight of it in the real world fascinated him so much, it took all the fear away from him.
This was exactly how his dream that night occurred. He was first inside a dark, hopeless place when the ground was laid upon him and there, he met the beautiful flower.
A few days later, the young prince had been hearing the villains' conversation all day long as they fed him and treated him quite poorly.
He didn't mind, though. There was a sense of security that glowed in him as he imagined the flower's scent.
A little fed up with the same setup day by day, he finally spoke up and offered help to the criminals.
He told them that he'd help them conquer the palace if they grant his favor by giving the flower to him.
The criminals immediately agreed to this and took a careful chance into heeding the prince's advice despite being quite skeptical of him.
After completing a few steps of their revenge plan in taking over, the criminals were slowly starting to depend on the young prince's words.
Meanwhile, the young prince enjoyed spending his time in that comfortable room with the captors around his palm as well as the flower that they unhesitatingly gave up.
It seems like the flower didn't mean a thing to the bandits, but it meant the world for the prince.
A few months later, the royal family's monarchy had been overthrown and the family was murdered.
A representative from the band of criminals that was also part of the same conspiracy was long a mole inside the royal palace as a head scholar. He had successfully asserted his suggestion of overtaking the position and starting a new dynasty, which everyone else agreed to.
The young prince lived under the kingdom's conquerors, silently relishing his possession over the flower.
He would always keep it inside the glass box, but would frequently let it receive sunlight and water.
Sometimes, he'd smell it for hours. He treasured it like it was his own lover and no one paid too much attention to him.
As he was finally approaching his teenage years, he mysteriously died one day.
His skin had paled, his lips were ashen, his hair was falling out, and his internal organs crushed. The conspirators left him like that until his body was reduced into ashes and was gone forever.
Until his death, he hadn't realized how foolish he had become and it was a tragedy he brought upon himself.
The young prince was completely forgotten and was eventually erased even in the histories like he never existed, much like the poisonous flower which he was obsessed over with.
That beyond his death, no one cried for him because he had chosen his addiction that eventually killed him over his own kingdom that was entrusted to him. In the end, no matter how sad it sounded, the young prince lived and died within the bliss of ignorance.