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Prologue

It is only one answer. An answer to why one should live.

As my answer to why I should live, I intend to end my own life.

My name is Valeri, fourteenth prince of the royal House of Vǫlsungr. But until I turned twenty, I knew nothing of my birth and grew up as a bastard of House Winslow.

The reason lay in the kingdom’s method of succession. Princes were taken from their mothers’ arms as soon as they were born and raised in ignorance of their identities. Only when the king died did they learn who they were and enter the contest against their brothers.

Put simply, one had to kill every other brother and nephew and survive alone to inherit the throne. Age made no difference. They all had to die. Either that, or I would.

This peculiar—or barbaric—method of succession existed because the kingdom still retained customs from its tribal days. After all, the kingdom had been founded just over sixty years ago through the conquest of this land, Astria.

The conquered natives who had originally lived here—the Astrians, in other words—called us Nords.

The royal succession was both an inviolable law and a kind of religious rite. People believed that House Vǫlsungr was the last bloodline of the dead gods, and that once a single prince survived to become king, loyalty to him would lead them to heaven.

Before the succession began, however, the princes enjoyed special protection. Once the king died, that protection ended.

When the king died, lords and nobles resorted to every kind of conspiracy and assassination, even war, to place their chosen prince on the throne. Royal succession was merely a pleasant name for it. In truth, the entire country plunged into a struggle for power.

Nor was it a fair contest. Some princes discovered their identities early and gathered supporters in advance, while others were too young to compete.

In my case, on the very day the king died, Earl Æthelred—the man I had believed was my father—immediately tried to kill me. His liege supported another prince.

That was when I learned I was a prince. And that House Vǫlsungr possessed a trait passed down only through the male line.

At birth, the princes’ eyes shone with light. That light faded over time, but apparently a faint trace remained, visible with something like carbon paper or upon close inspection in a very dark place.

People considered this trait sacred. Some said the men of House Vǫlsungr were born with swords in their eyes; others called them stars of the dawn.

But sacred or not, it did nothing to help me survive. If anything, it was something I had to conceal at all costs.

After barely escaping House Winslow, there was nothing I did not try. Cold and hunger were suffering beyond compare, and they made me capable of anything. I begged. I killed a man for a scrap of bread.

Things improved a little when I joined the thieves’ guild, but there was a quota: money we had to pay the guild, whether through picking pockets or stealing. Fail to meet it, and you lost a finger.

I helped a few of my companions out of simple goodwill and lost two fingers for it. The little finger and ring finger of my left hand.

Perhaps six months had passed when I took my first assassination job. By then, the shadows of the night no longer frightened me. They felt as familiar as well-fitting clothes.

The target was a dog dealer at a dogfighting pit. Something about skimming the wagers, I think. After killing him, I disposed of the body by cutting it into pieces and tossing them to the dogs he had abused.

I killed all sorts of other people, too: moneylenders, corrupt priests, traitors within the guild, incompetent pimps, perverted mages, and more.

If assassination taught me anything, the first lesson was that no one in this world was unkillable. The second was that judging people by a standard of good and evil was meaningless.

But the guild chose its victims purely for business reasons. That made its limitations clear. It might reign as an object of terror in the back alleys, but in the world of giants, it could hardly rise above being a mere rat.

Three years after the king’s death, the civil war was steadily intensifying. When one prince’s army occupied the city and began slaughtering people indiscriminately, there was nothing the guild could do. Nothing but die beneath their boots.

The guild killed people for business reasons. The truly powerful needed no particular reason to kill.

Then perhaps I did not need a reason either. What was stopping me? I was a prince, too.

I promptly assassinated the prince who had occupied the city—my brother. Then I spoke before his soldiers.

["I am Valeri, the fourteenth prince. Kill me and offer my head to another prince, or follow me. Choose."]

I told them to choose, but in truth they had no choice. Unless they had extraordinary nerve, striking at a prince themselves was a frightening prospect. Above all, only another prince could replace the one they had followed.

I immediately ordered the guild master and his officers captured and hanged. I made sure that all the wealth they had amassed, along with every stream of money flowing through the city, went to me alone, without a drop leaking away.

That allowed me to maintain the army for a time without resorting to constant plunder.

Next, I purged the nobles under my command. I could not trust those who had served the previous prince.

Then I confiscated their estates and distributed the fiefs primarily among capable field commanders and knights.

Once I had complete control of the army, I expanded my power. I seized the families of the strong and threatened them. I won over the worldly with bribes, and sullied the honor of the virtuous with slander.

Dressed up as a war of succession, it was really nothing more than robbery and extortion. And at such things, I was more adept than anyone.

What was more, I never lost a battle. I defeated enemies several times my number. I knew that if you made your opponents impatient, deceived them, and fostered divisions within their ranks, superior numbers became a burden rather than an advantage.

When I conquered the earldom of Winslow, where I had grown up, I first had Earl Æthelred’s family brutally executed before his eyes. I saved the earl for last and had him torn limb from limb.

To my surprise, I felt nothing. I had expected more satisfaction.

After that, I pressed on with even less restraint. I used anything I could get my hands on. Money, honor, status, desire, love, friendship—anything.

I used them for all they were worth and discarded them when I no longer had any need for them. Anyone who stood in my way died, whoever they were, however many there were. I even burned an entire city to the ground to root out a single nephew.

Some asked how a human being could do such things. Others said it was an honor to remain loyal to me until the end.

Everyone who followed me came to grief, and every woman who passed through my life was left unhappy.

Even so, I became ever more impossible to defy. When at last I had killed all my brothers and nephews, people called me Valeri “the Heartless.”

Tomorrow is my coronation. Yet even on the day before it, the royal castle was filled with nothing but a heavy silence. Noble and lowborn alike feared me.

The king’s bedchamber was stark to the point of austerity, without so much as an ordinary tapestry or a single ornament. No, it looked less like a royal bedchamber than a bleak barracks.

Thick curtains kept the room dark. Between them, sunlight entered in sharp slices. Red. The light of the setting sun was passing across my toes.

People harbor hope so they can live to see tomorrow. One such hope was the belief that their king would lead them to heaven.

Unfortunately, I have no hope. Now that all the other branches of the royal bloodline had been severed, only one thing held any meaning for me.

I took up the royal house’s treasured sword, said in legend to have slain a dragon. A sword named Wrath—Gramr.

I drew it and examined the blade. More than a hundred years old, yet its edge was as keen as new. The red light of sunset flowed along the blade and gathered into a single droplet at its tip.

I braced the hilt in a corner of the floor, set the point against my throat, and leaned my weight onto it without hesitation.

To end the royal bloodline with my own hands. That was my wrath at being alive—and my answer to it.

Prologue – One Answer.