By the time I came to my senses, the snow-covered plain had vanished without a trace.

"Your Highness!"

Instead of the howling north wind, all I could hear was Marquis Bielefeld calling me over and over. His voice, too, felt strangely unreal, leaving me dazed for some time.

"Your Highness! Your Highness! I've sent for someone. Please hold on!"

Unaware that I had recovered my senses, the marquis kept shouting. His face was so pale that anyone would have thought a disaster had struck. If I left him to it, this would get out of hand, so I endured the dizziness and raised my hand.

"Your Highness! Your Highness! Your Hiiiighness... Mmph!"

I covered his mouth.

"I'm fine. Though you're about to change that."

The marquis stared at me, his eyes round.

"So stop shouting. And back away a little. My head's ringing."

Only after he nodded did I take my hand away.

"Forgive me. You suddenly clutched your chest and groaned, and I was so startled..."

Having put a little distance between us, the marquis spoke with relief on his face, though his concern had yet to fade.

"My chest suddenly started aching. It seems the demonic sword's curse wasn't entirely harmless after all."

"Then isn't this serious? To think you've been afflicted with the curse of that dreadful thing!"

The marquis immediately began fussing again. I told him it was nothing quite so serious.

Moonveil was not a weapon of sufficient stature to scar my soul in the first place. At least, that was what I knew of it. The problem was that my answer failed to account for the four hundred years I had spent asleep.

I could only imagine how much blood Moonveil must have drunk in those four hundred years—enough for a paltry demonic sword that had never come close to matching me to affect me. Even so, its fundamental stature had not changed. Despite cutting me dozens of times, all it had managed was to show me a single vision.

I recalled the vision Moonveil had shown me. The image of the man kneeling with his head bowed on that snow-covered plain rose in my mind. Not one piece of the iron armor covering him was intact, and there was not a patch of his cloak or clothing free of sword cuts.

Who knew how long he had been there? Snow lay thick on his head and shoulders, and the bare skin exposed between his torn clothes and armor had frozen blue. That image of him, like a corpse frozen in the depths of winter, remained especially vivid.

My heart throbbed. Merely retracing the memory made it ache. The pain I had felt when the man drove his sword into his own chest returned with startling clarity.

"Your Highness...?"

If not for the marquis's voice, I would have remained dazed, caught in its lingering grip for a long time.

"Oh, it's nothing. I just had something to think about."

"Are you truly all right?"

"I told you, I'm fine."

Despite my repeated assurances, the marquis insisted on summoning someone to examine me. Only then did he relent.

"Please remember. Many people are hoping that the Knight of Dawn will remain hale and hearty. I am one of them."

After lecturing me for a good while longer, the marquis left, and I was alone again. The snowfield swept by the bitter wind came back to me. I could vividly picture the man moving his lips with a sword plunged into his chest.

Recalling the shape of his lips, I tried moving my own. It was not easy. Everything else had been clear, yet his face alone had been strangely blurred. I refused to give up and imitated those movements again and again.

"Dawn's light. Darkness, sunlight, boundary..."

A string of disconnected words whose meaning eluded me. After countless attempts, I finally pieced together the first sentence.

"Through darkness rent by dawn's light, morning comes...?"

The moment I spoke the completed sentence aloud, a terrible headache struck. It felt as though a red-hot skewer were stirring my brain. My mouth fell open. I could no longer even think of the words I had painstakingly assembled. My mind went blank. For a long while, I could do nothing but writhe in agony.

By the time the pain subsided, I was drenched in sweat. My body tingled, its every part still haunted by the lingering pain. I was a wreck.

And yet, I laughed.

"Well, look at this."

Everything about this felt far too contrived.

"It seems that wasn't just a vision."

At first, I had thought it was a memory belonging to one of the poor souls Moonveil had devoured. Not anymore. The pain had struck the instant I assembled the words. The timing was much too convenient to dismiss as mere coincidence.

It was almost as though...

"A seal..."

As though something unknown were deliberately interfering with my thoughts.

To test my suspicion, I recalled the words I had just been turning over in my mind. Before I could even speak them, the headache began again. My vision went white with pain, as though my brain were burning.

"Through darkness rent by dawn's light, morning comes."

Even as I writhed in agony, I kept piecing the words together.

"Before the radiant sunlight, twilight fades to naught."

My tongue slurred as though I were drunk.

Everything was telling me to stop. To go no further. Of course, I had no intention of doing so. The worse the pain became, the more stubbornly I resisted.

"With no place to abide in either night or day."

Blood trickled from my nose. Something metallic rose in my throat.

EEEEEEE.

My ears felt stopped up. All I could hear was a piercing ringing. The sky overturned, and the earth rose. I could no longer tell whether my feet rested on the floor or on empty air.

My body slowly began to fall. Down, down.

SPLASH.

A sound that seemed like an auditory hallucination reached my ears. Cold enveloped my entire body. A chill seized me. Only a moment earlier, my head had felt as though it would burn away. Now, my body felt as though it would freeze.

Even then, I was sinking. I reached out, but could grasp nothing. I kicked my legs, but touched nothing. All I could do was sink endlessly.

I looked down. Darkness like a bottomless pit waited for me with its jaws wide open.

I looked up. It felt as though I were peering at the world through a lake's frozen surface from beneath the ice in midwinter. I could see my room. I had been there only moments ago, yet it felt strangely distant.

My sense of touch disappeared. I could no longer even feel the cold. My senses of smell and taste went numb. The metallic taste and scent that had filled my mouth were gone. The world around me grew faint.

The deeds I had accomplished. The bonds I had forged. One by one, everything scattered like illusions. Among those vague, indistinct things, I began to distinguish the real from the false. Then I reached a conclusion.

I had been dreaming. During my long, long sleep, I had dreamed a pleasant dream.

I felt relief, and at the same time, emptiness. I smiled at the comfort of solid steel rather than fragile human flesh. I sighed at the numbness of a body made of cold metal.

I was confused. Was I human, or a sword? Was I happy, or sad? And then, at some point, even that confusion vanished, leaving nothing behind.

There, in a world that had returned utterly to nothingness, I murmured softly.

『Through darkness rent by dawn's light, morning comes.』

『Before the radiant sunlight, twilight fades to naught.』

The comforting darkness surrounding me changed abruptly. Baring its teeth, it lunged at me. Darkness upon darkness tore ravenously at my soul.

『With no place to abide in either night or day.』

Rather than scream, I kept moving my lips. Amid agony that threatened to annihilate my soul, I finally completed the last sentence.

『Dawn's light can only wander the boundary between.』

At that very moment...

CRACK.

The world surrounding me fractured.

And then...

CRASH.

It collapsed completely.

All at once, my sense of touch returned. My sweat-soaked clothes felt unbearably unpleasant. Taste and smell returned as well, and I grimaced involuntarily at the blood filling my mouth.

"Whew."

Forcing my face to relax, I drew in a deep breath of fresh air. Only after breathing in and out several times did my faint sense of reality return to normal.

With all my senses restored, the sensations I had just experienced came back even more vividly. I shuddered.

"I'd rather die than become a sword again."

I had experienced the sensations of my life as a sword for no more than an instant. Yet the suffering had felt like an eternity. Being trapped in a lump of metal, peering out at a hazy world, was far more terrible than I remembered.

I clenched and unclenched my fists, moved my body, and breathed deeply. For a long while, I simply savored the sensations of being human.

"I don't know what bastard put a seal on my soul, but they were a truly vicious piece of work."

Only then did anger come.

If I could, I wanted to find the being who had placed that seal on me without my knowledge and repay them in kind. Unfortunately, the chances of them still being alive were exceedingly slim. The seal predated even the life as a sword that I remembered. It came from before the Great War.

After standing there blankly, I picked up the sword hanging at one side of the room. The ancient-looking name engraved on its scabbard caught my eye.

Of all things, the sword I had acquired bore a name meaning dawn's light, and the song that man had recited had been about dawn's light. What a remarkable coincidence.

The image of the man plunging a sword into his own chest rose before my eyes. I felt none of the pain from before. My thoughts were simply tangled.

"A past life...?"

I had believed I had been a sword from the very beginning. To think that might not be true. I could not put the feeling into words.

Once more, I recited the song of the man who might have been me in a past life.

『Through darkness rent by dawn's light, morning comes.』

『Before the radiant sunlight, twilight fades to naught.』

『With no place to abide in either night or day.』

『Dawn's light can only wander the boundary between.』

The loneliness, grief, and unfathomable sorrow that the seal's agony had kept me from feeling now washed over me. My chest throbbed. Somewhere around the spot where the man had driven in his sword, it hurt strangely.

I shook my head sharply. What I had been in the past did not matter. What truly mattered was the present and the future, not the past. And right now, I had something to do.

My eyes fell on the greatsword propped in a secluded corner far from my bed. A foolish demonic sword that had failed to cut the soul it was meant to, cutting an entirely unrelated seal instead. I grasped Moonveil.

An ominous energy seeped through my fingertips.

"You really have drunk a horrifying amount of blood."

The stench of blood wafted up. I frowned involuntarily.

It was not simply because the smell was so strong. I had caused more than my share of bloodshed during my life as a sword. Even so, I felt utterly disgusted.

Most of the blood Moonveil had drunk had not belonged to soldiers and knights on the battlefield, but to the powerless.

"Children, women, the elderly."

"This isn't even a sword."

Moonveil did not deserve to be called one. It was merely a hideous monster. And I had no intention of leaving a monster that brought nothing but harm to the world alone.

I turned my head. Against one wall stood an insolent sword that still disapproved of its other half. I strode over and took hold of my original body.

It immediately trembled and spewed cold. The air froze in an instant.

"Mealtime."

No sooner had I spoken than the frozen air thawed. The cold that had been creeping out of it vanished without a trace.

HUMMM.

It quivered, almost as though it were trying to be cute.