"Can you please explain to me what this is supposed to be?" I said in an irritated voice. Father looked startled when I barged into his room. "Valerio!" he scolded, "What sort of behaviour is this!"
"Father, I am sorry. But this letter needs to be addressed now" I replied and placed the letter in front of him. He took one look at the page and sighed. "So, she told you."
"She told me? Why would you hide this from me?!" I said angrily. "This letter defines my existence. Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"
Father slowly got up from his seat. He came close to me and put his hands on my shoulders. "Son, you have to understand. We did not have a choice here. I hope you know how important it was to hide this from everyone."
"Why is it such a big deal? Shouldn't this be a good thing? You can strengthen the bond between our families and solidify our family's position." I questioned.
"This is why I told you to pay attention to your studies." Father sighed. He turned around and picked up a silencing seal and applied it to a wall.
"Listen carefully Valerio, because this is of utmost importance." He started. "As you are aware, before Kartenia was formed, the first emperor and his army fought and defeated the tyrant, Gladius, who was ruling this nation. As a result of that, he ascended the throne and his officers became nobility. Including ours, there are a total of four noble families - The Kreuz of the West, Eckes of the East, and the Piks of the South, otherwise known as the Holy Nobles."
"The real reason behind that title is because of our bloodlines. Each of the founders received a blessing from God, purifying their blood. This caused their most powerful traits to become engraved in their genes, which when passed onto their offspring, would result in the child having the same traits as the parent. This is why every member of the Herz family is an exceptional swordsman. It's because your grandfather's swordsmanship was engraved into his blood."
I clenched my fist. So, this is what he meant that day. Thirteen years ago, the day I won the academy tournament, it wasn't because I worked hard. It was because of the blood that flowed through my veins. My heart broke. I didn't want to do anything anymore. But I couldn't show this to Father.
"I don't get it. If having a bloodline is so great, why hide it from me?"
"It's because of this power that we had to hide it from you. When Kartenia was formed, the four founders made a pact with each other in the presence of the emperor, a pact that wasn't broken until your birth. They vowed to never let their bloodlines mix."
He paused to take a deep breath.
"But why would they do that? Wouldn't it be better to mix the bloodlines? They could have ended up with stronger children and increased the strength of the nation as a whole. Doesn't this pact just hold us all behind?" I asked.
"They said that it was to preserve the state of the family's purity, but that was all just a front for the truth. In reality, they didn't want to risk creating a being who would be too strong for them to control. A being so strong, that the balance of power would be shifted. A being so strong, that they would decide to take the throne for themselves."
"This is exactly why we had to hide your true heritage from everyone. Not even the current emperor knows about this. I hope you can understand why people would try to kill you if they found out that you had not just the bloodline of the Herz, but also that of the strongest Holy Nobles – the Piks. Being a really strong swordsman had already put a target on your back, but if it came to light that you would also be skilled in magic? Only God can know what might happen."
This was a lot of information. Everything now started to make sense. This explained why my parents didn't tell me that Mother was a Holy Noble even before she married into our family. It explained why they couldn't let me meet Mother's side of the family, even pretending that they were dead. It explained why they hide from me that my real name is actually Valerio Herz-Pik.
But there is one thing that I do not understand. Something that can be considered a plot hole.
"If Mother was actually part of the Pik family, how did she marry you? And even if you managed to elope, wouldn't people be able to identify her? Or at least notice that she was missing?"
Father winced. This was obviously a question that he did not want to answer. "While your mother was a Pik, she wasn't one by birth. She was taken in by an exiled member of the Pik family after her birth parents had been killed. Because of this, nobody from the Pik family had seen her before. Her adoptive mother had injected some of her blood into her to help with her injuries, which technically made her a Pik. After this, she remained in hiding for a long time, until her adoptive mother passed away, after which she moved into the Herz territory to avoid getting killed by anyone who could have possibly identified her." he concluded.
"How would anyone identify her if she had been hiding her entire life?" I replied.
"It was because of her heritage. Her adoptive mother wasn't exactly exiled. She had escaped from the Piks because she saved your mother. Your mother's father - your grandfather, was the most dangerous man in the world before he died. It took an entire army just to stop him."
"Your grandfather was the tyrant that ruled these lands before the Great War, Gladius."