Had the other party known his name?
No, that wasn't the key. The key was, how had the other party learned about Sally?
Everyone who knew about Sally should have already been silenced by him back then!
How, exactly, had the other party learned all this?
After hearing John say Sally's name, Mark immediately felt an unprecedented sense of suffocation.
His already tenuous sanity began collapsing at an accelerated pace.
Cold sweat poured constantly from his body, soaking his clothes while making him feel colder than ever.
In truth, Mark's attitude toward this younger sister—born years ago when his mother had cheated on his father with a bard while his father was away fighting on the front lines—had always been extremely complicated.
He could hardly believe that this was something his gentle and elegant mother, famous for her fidelity, could have done.
When he first learned of it at sixteen, he had wanted to draw his sword and kill the bastard child himself, preventing her existence from becoming a stain on the family in the future.
But after his mother's desperate pleas—even threatening to die—he had ultimately abandoned the idea.
Instead, he personally executed everyone who knew about it, including his mother's lover.
As for the family bastard his mother had named Sally, he secretly arranged for her to be taken to a monastery within the family territory under the identity of a friend's illegitimate child, where the nuns raised her.
He had been worried that his mother might secretly visit the monastery and expose the family's disgrace.
Thus, after finishing the many lessons his father had assigned him at the time, he often went to inspect the monastery, preventing his mother from doing anything foolish.
Yet he had never expected that, through such long companionship—watching Sally grow from a