Far away, dawn spread across the pitch-black horizon.

When the last star, breathing faintly into the cold air, went out, Valeri opened his eyes.

He did not jolt awake from a nightmare, nor did he struggle to open his eyes through lingering exhaustion. His starlike eyes opened quite naturally, as though he had been born anew.

Yet beneath that outward calm, his heart was pounding fit to burst.

By the time that violent heartbeat from the brink of death began to subside, the light in his eyes was slowly fading too, like the last star vanishing at dawn.

Next came the discomfort of rough bedding beneath and around him. It felt both familiar and strange. A contradiction, certainly, but that was how it felt.

Familiar because he had felt it every day in the past; strange because he knew it should have been impossible. He had distinctly felt the sharp sword point pierce his throat, felt that foreign presence inside him.

And yet the sensations of his body were so vivid and powerful that they reduced the events of the past ten-odd years to a dream in an instant.

Bewildered, Valeri sat up. Outside the covers, the icy dawn air slipped into his clothes and swept over his body, and he felt an unfamiliar sensation in his left hand.

More precisely, it was not unfamiliar, but something he had forgotten long ago.

He raised his left hand and stared down at it. Two fingers that should have been missing were attached as though they had every right to be there. His little finger and ring finger.

Feeling awkward, he twitched them, but they moved naturally despite his unease. He repeatedly clenched and unclenched his fist. The empty sensation left by the missing fingers was gone.

"..."

For a while, no thoughts came to Valeri. He simply sat there in a daze, losing all sense of time.

When he finally collected himself and looked around the dim room, he found the private chamber he had once occupied in House Winslow. A single hard bed, a small table and chair, an oil lantern, neatly arranged documents.

One obvious fact crossed his mind, but none of the magic he had heard of could turn back time.

Even so, the feeling of being alive grew ever more vivid, and the fact that he had returned to the past became increasingly clear.

Then a question occurred to him. What did any of this mean? Did he have to die again?

KNOCK, KNOCK.

Amid his confusion came a knock, followed by a boy's voice from beyond the door.

"Wid, are you still asleep?"

Wid was the name Valeri had been called while living as the earl's bastard.

He recognized the voice, but rose and opened the door, wanting to see whether this truly was real.

A blond boy stood there, already dressed to go out despite the early hour. He was Harald, the same age as Valeri but smaller in build—the only son of House Winslow, its legitimate firstborn.

Valeri's heart seemed to stop at the sight of him. Harald had been the last person he killed before Earl Æthelred's eyes. And he had not simply killed him. He had cut off both ears, sliced off his nose, burned out his eyes...

["Do you have to go this far...?"]

The words had come out like a groan as Harald lay dying. Valeri had expected him to beg for his life.

"Want to go hunting?"

The Harald of the present broke through his thoughts of the past. Or should he say that the Harald of the past had broken through his thoughts of the future?

For some reason, Harald seemed to be watching for his reaction. Valeri gave a start and came to his senses, which Harald took to mean that he was still half asleep.

"How old are we?" Valeri asked after a moment of confusion.

"I haven't had my birthday yet, but today's yours. So I'm still thirteen, and you're fourteen now."

"..."

His birthday... Valeri had never paid attention to such things. He considered them worthless.

But what had that feeling been, as though his heart had stopped? Guilt? Him? He could not tell.

He vaguely remembered this day. He had probably turned down the invitation to hunt and gone to work.

Valeri had handled receipts and payments for House Winslow. Work involving direct access to money could not be entrusted to just anyone, yet it was also considered menial, making it suitable for a bastard.

A bastard was an awkward, uncomfortable presence in a noble house. Neither commoner nor noble, but something in between. To the countess in particular, he was little better than a thorn in her side.

Valeri had learned his place early. He had spent nearly all his time working, trying to avoid entanglements with others as much as possible.

Harald, by contrast, had retained a certain innocence as he grew older, and Valeri had thought him terribly immature.

"Are you coming? Come on," Harald urged again.

In the still-dim dawn, Valeri quietly studied his dark blue eyes before answering.

"I'll come."

Valeri washed quickly, put on his outdoor clothes, and left the room. His outdoor clothes amounted to a thin tunic, without even a coat.

He had separate clothes for work, but those consisted of a one-piece robe that covered him from around his face down to his legs, leaving him looking much like a jester.

And so he was very cold in the early dawn of early spring, with the last chill of winter still lingering.

Leaving the keep and reaching the castle gate, he found Harald and the somewhat older Gidwin. The son of a knight serving House Winslow, Gidwin was the earl's squire as well as Harald's friend and bodyguard.

"Well, look at that. You actually came out," Gidwin said at the sight of Valeri.

"Where's your coat?" Harald asked.

"I don't have one."

"Huh? Why not?"

"What do you mean, why? Honestly..."

Gidwin quietly chided Harald for his ignorance of the world.

Coats made of good leather or fur were expensive. Earl Æthelred might provide food and shelter, but a bastard received no comforts beyond that.

Gidwin took off his own coat and handed it to Valeri. At seventeen, his broad shoulders and sturdy build already surpassed those of most grown men.

Being well built hardly made a person immune to the cold, but looking at his size, one could imagine he felt it less.

Somewhat awkwardly, Valeri accepted his kindness. The fur-trimmed coat was a little large on him, though not enormously so. Valeri was not small himself.

And whether it fit or not, the soft fox fur brushing his neck and the coat holding in his warmth against the cold felt rather pleasant.

"Let's go," Harald said, setting off first.

Gidwin naturally fell into step beside him, while Valeri followed a short distance behind. Because he was a bastard.

Wait. A bastard? Him? No, he wasn't. The ingrained behavior left Valeri feeling a slight disconnect.

And it was strange that it should be ingrained at all. After more than a decade of political maneuvering, conspiracies, and war, why now?

Still, revealing that he was a prince would not let him accomplish anything immediately. For now, he decided to keep quiet and let things take their course.

"What are you doing? Come over here."

Up ahead, Gidwin jerked his head, inviting him to walk with them.

Once, Valeri would have declined out of a sense of propriety—back when he had originally been this age, before returning to the past. But not now.

Letting things take their course, he moved up to walk beside Gidwin.

"What's gotten into you? Coming outside and all," Gidwin asked.

It seemed mostly curiosity, though there was something watchful about it too. Unlike the wholly innocent Harald, he was not entirely ignorant of adult affairs.

If he judged anything unusual, he would tell Earl Æthelred. Then the earl would decide whether anything needed to be done and act accordingly.

"No particular reason."

"Really? Saying you're a grown man now? Starting to take an interest in women?"

Valeri had only turned fourteen today, but as boys approached adulthood at fifteen, they tended to undergo a change of heart and grow more interested in women.

"No."

"What a waste of that face. Maids and village girls are a bit of a problem, so how about going to the city sometime?"

Even for a noble, dallying with a maid was deeply dishonorable. Getting involved with women from the villages around the castle could also invite all manner of gossip.

In a world where reputation defined a person's worth, even nobles were better off conducting themselves properly whenever possible.

Of course, the world held all sorts. Somewhere there might be a lout who went after maids and village women indiscriminately, but not here, at least.

There was also a superstition among the Nords that knowing a woman before reaching adulthood at fifteen weakened a man's fighting prowess.

Gidwin had known a woman before coming of age, yet he was still the best fighter among his peers.

"Don't go tempting him with anything strange. Wid isn't like that," Harald said reproachfully to Gidwin.

"How would you know what he's like? You talk as though you've been close all this time."

"We don't have to be close. You can tell from how he does nothing but work every day."

"You never know what's inside someone's head. How do you know he isn't holding himself back? Look, he came out with us today, didn't he?"

"So, are you going? To the city?" Harald asked Valeri.

"No."

"See?"

"Well, that's a shame. Couldn't you at least come along? If you're going to waste that face, let me put it to use."

"What are you talking about?"

"It'd be much easier to charm women with you beside me."

As though the suggestion did not deserve an answer, Valeri merely shook his head in silence. Gidwin smacked his lips in disappointment.

In truth, Valeri was exceptionally handsome. His was not a wholesome sort of beauty, but something decadent enough to feel almost out of place. Like a dark crimson rose.

If not for his somewhat strong features and thick eyebrows, he would have been lovelier than most beautiful women.

His sharply defined nose and sculpted jaw alone were enough to draw attention, but above all, it was his eyes that made his appearance extraordinary.

Perhaps because of the subtle striations in his irises, his pale sky-blue eyes called to mind an eternally frozen lake in the distant north.

Even without deliberately sharpening his gaze, there was something so intense in it that people struggled to meet his eyes when he looked at them directly.

That intensity either doubled his appeal or halved it. Like a double-edged sword, his gaze captivated some and overwhelmed others.

"Don't we need hunting equipment?"

For the first time, Valeri volunteered a question. Gidwin shook his head.

"What, you think we're up to a driven hunt? We'll just roast whatever squirrels or rabbits have been caught in the traps."

Meat was precious, and commoners seldom ate it. Nobles and knights ate it nearly every day, but the meat served daily was not in particularly good condition.

Eating fresh meat from a newly killed animal was therefore a very special occasion. All the more so when the animal came from the lord's hunting grounds.

Everything within those grounds belonged to the lord. Taking anything without permission was a crime on a par with stealing his property.

Of course, matters were different for the lord's only son. As the legitimate firstborn, Harald was the next head of House Winslow, the future earl who would one day rule its lands.

"Do you go to the hunting grounds often?" Valeri asked.

Harald shook his head.

"No. I told you, today's your birthday. That's why we're going."

Valeri saw no value whatsoever in birthdays, so he struggled to grasp this at once and briefly considered whether there was some hidden meaning. He still could not work it out.

Harald continued, as though explaining further.

"You're supposed to celebrate being born on your birthday. You can give presents, too."

"That's news to me."

"That's what nobles do."

At those hopelessly naive words, Valeri gave a derisive little laugh.

"So you're going to treat me like a noble, are you?"

"Hey."

Gidwin frowned in warning at the edge in Valeri's response.

Harald, however, showed no sign of offense.

"I put that badly. Whether you're a noble or not doesn't matter. What matters is that we're brothers."

At the word brothers, Valeri's thoughts seemed to stop for a moment. He had killed all his brothers, then all his nephews—their own flesh and blood—and become king.

Of course, Valeri and Harald did not share a single drop of blood. Yet as things stood, they were half brothers. At least, that was how Harald understood it, and he apparently considered it important.

"Do you mean that?"

With Gidwin between them, Valeri turned to look at Harald. Even faced with that emotionless gaze, Harald answered with a bright smile.

"Of course. I don't lie."

"..."

Valeri considered this in silence before replying.

"Don't tell people so freely what you truly feel. It can become a weakness."

"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"

"..."

Valeri did not answer. He knew perfectly well what his words meant, but even he struggled to understand the intention behind them.

Perhaps he had said it to express gratitude for being treated with sincerity, but something about it was still badly out of alignment. For now.

The sun was slowly rising in the east. Its light crossed the clear blue morning and shone on the three of them as they walked the lone road toward the forest.

When it touched Valeri's face, his platinum-blond hair gleamed, and he truly seemed like a flower bud slowly unfolding its petals into bloom.

Yet his characteristically indifferent gaze still lingered in the deep night that had passed.