——Standing atop the hill, the man gazed toward the distant horizon.
Time had long since passed since sunset, and the poorly lit hamlet stood no chance against the veil of night. With so many of the village's men injured and fewer bonfires blazing than usual, the sight of a man standing alone in the darkness struck the girl as deeply strange.
Bandits had been raiding the surrounding villages, and this homeland had been their target—livestock and food stolen, men left wounded in a devastating blow.
Still, that the village hadn't been completely destroyed was a mercy amid misfortune, and the man standing on the hill could be counted as one small piece of that luck.
When the bandits had attacked, the men who resisted were killed or wounded, and the women and children were taken one after another. The girl herself had faced the prospect of being sold off or subjected to something even worse—until the man on the hill and the soldiers dispatched from the capital appeared.
In the blink of an eye, they had surrounded the bandits and annihilated them with almost no resistance.
Afterward, they had garrisoned near the village under the pretext of protection and rebuilding, and with brisk efficiency they had given the village sturdier walls than it had ever possessed before the raids.
Once the men's injuries healed, the village would be safe for the time being.
The girl, like the other adult women, had been rushing about busily—tending to the wounded, preparing food for the soldiers, and looking after the village children.
She spotted the man on the hill while heading home after things had finally settled down.
"............"
The man stared into the night without a word, and one could have called the sight almost comical. Straining one's eyes toward a darkness where nothing could be seen was the height of futile behavior. In the cruel customs of the Empire, an act that produced no result held no value.
But to the girl, the man did not seem comical at all.
He stared so intently toward the distance that she felt as though he was trying to confirm something invisible to anyone else.
And she had grown desperately curious about what it was he was trying to see.
"Wouldn't counting the stars in the sky put your heart more at ease than staring into the pitch dark?"
Before she knew it, she had called out to the man's back.
The man turned, a faint surprise flickering in his eyes, and for some reason that made her swell with pride.
——That was the meeting of the girl and the king, the one that would be told and retold for ages to come in fairy tales.
△▼△▼△▼△ ——Their reunion was something no one could have predicted.
Whether it was fate's cruel prank or the mysterious workings of providence, it was beyond anyone's say.
In the Volakia Empire, which now faced a crisis of unprecedented scale, virtually everyone came to learn at the same time the full extent of what would be called the "Great Calamity."
The march of the dead, risen as corpse-people, plunged every living soul into a maelstrom of chaos.
But even as that chaos engulfed them, there were those who clawed their way back up.
Those who rose as spiritual strongholds regardless of physical prowess—individuals who appeared to the ordinary eye as heroes or extraordinary figures. Such strength often coincided with physical might as well, and their actions would heavily determine the fate of the Imperial Capital.
The Great Calamity's ambush against the living had ultimately produced damage far below what simple projections would have suggested.
But that did not mean the living had fought brilliantly, nor did it mean the best possible outcome had been achieved.
For the simple reason that certain individuals who should, by rights, have been counted among the extraordinary were swallowed by the initial assault before they could even rise from the first wave of confusion.
"Hm..."
A faint breath escaped between her lips as consciousness drifted slowly toward wakefulness.
Eyelids framed by long lashes trembled, and like a sun dreading the dawn, her pupils gradually took in the world—one blink, two blinks—until, in the next instant, the gossamer dream popped like a soap bubble and awareness anchored firmly to reality.
"——!"
She tried to sit up in a hurry, and what greeted her eyes was an unfamiliar place.
The room was high-ceilinged, and both the materials of its walls and floor and the craftsmanship behind them were first-rate. Fine furnishings befitting a fine chamber were arranged about, making it unmistakably a place of noble character.
The fact that she had been laid upon a soft bed in the midst of this spacious room only reinforced that understanding—but the understanding itself was deeply strange.
When measured against her most recent memories, the fact was utterly, impossibly unnatural.
"I was... at the battle in the Imperial Capital..."
She recalled that she should have been there, turning the thought over within herself.
Instantly, there surged back memories of a world stained crimson from horizon to horizon, of a miraculous reunion with a girl, and of the desperate effort to soothe a wailing infant.
It had been a handful in the most literal sense, but the attempt should have succeeded.
And yet, here she was in this place. It was far too inexplicable, and— "——My kimono—"
It was at that point that she belatedly noticed the unfamiliar sensation of her own hand pressed against her chest.
Looking down at her body on the bed, what covered her limbs was not the kimono she was accustomed to wearing, but a blue dress fashioned from equally luxurious fine fabric.
Her hair, previously bound up, had been let down, and her hair ornaments and earrings had apparently been removed as well.
All of those things were irreplaceable to her—things that should never have been taken from her while she was unconscious—and— "You've awakened, my star."
Just as she moved to leave the bed in search of her lost accessories, that voice reached her.
"A—"
The voice that struck her eardrums without warning stole every faculty of her brain without exaggeration.
It had come from the room's entrance, and between here and there, a variety of elegant and resplendent furnishings were lined up in a way that seized the eye. But not a single one of them registered.
As though her ears had been captured, as though her heart had been captured, her awareness was drawn inexorably toward that place.
For her—for
"............"
Eyes wide, Yorna fixed her gaze upon the figure standing at the entrance.
It was a small figure. The height was considerably shorter than Yorna's, who was tall for a woman, and there was a childlike delicacy to the build—but the features were those of a properly stern man, sharp and imposing.
Hair that was a near-black green, falling to about shoulder length, and unhealthy-looking eyes deep with what seemed like perpetual discontent—these things vividly reflected his reclusive personality.
But in truth, Yorna knew that people feared him while he did nothing to drive them away. In fact, he had never tried to push her away.
Even in that final moment, with death staring them in the face, he had refused from the bottom of his heart to cast her aside.
That was why she was here now. Yorna knew this.
She knew it, and so— "Is that... Your Excellency?"
"You speak strangely. But I shall forgive it—all things that concern your soul."
The small man replied to Yorna, who had asked with disbelief still clinging to every word.
His voice, blunt and surly and heavy with a gloomy weight, was packed with far more emotion than its brevity would suggest—as though it might burst.
It was an obsession that exceeded what a human being ought to possess, and the origin of that obsession was love.
The man before her was in love with Yorna Mishigure.
Not because Yorna possessed the specialized gift of being "loved," but because the emotion was so blazingly obvious that anyone present would have recognized it at a glance.
Of course, the idea of anyone else being present here was utterly impossible.
After all, this was— "It has been nearly three hundred years since our last meeting. I will not allow anyone to come between me and you."
"............"
"Show me your face. No matter how you may have changed, I wish to see your eyes from up close."
As the man slowly approached and spoke those words, the heart of Yorna's chest trembled.
She could not clearly say what emotion had caused it. Of course there was the joy of this impossible reunion, the impulse to leap into his arms.
But there were also three hundred years' worth of reasons why she must not do so. The most immediate of those—the events of the past several decades—were what had kept Yorna from acting on impulse.
And so, Yorna held those contradictory feelings at bay, her lips quivering as she spoke— "Your Excellency... Eugold Volakia."
At the sound of his name, the man's steps halted, and Yorna pressed her lips firmly together.
If he had stopped at being called by that name, then she had not been mistaken. In truth, there was no possibility of mistaking him. No matter how others might misidentify him, Yorna alone could never mistake who he was.
Yorna alone—no, this soul that had begun with a girl named Iris—could never err in recognizing Eugold, the one called the "King of Thorns."
——Iris and the King of Thorns.
It was an old fairy tale told since ancient times in this world, and simultaneously a historical account from an age long past.
The story was known for depicting the meeting, the parting, and the tragic end shared between a girl named Iris and the Volakia Emperor called the "King of Thorns."
And the soul of that Iris, which had not ascended to the heavens but remained bound to the Empire's soil, cycling through countless reincarnations—that soul was Yorna Mishigure. The one who had bound Iris's soul to the Empire's earth was none other than Eugold Volakia, the King of Thorns himself.
In other words, this was the untold sequel to "Iris and the King of Thorns"— "——What a thing to say. This could never be such a beautiful story."
Slowly shaking her head, Yorna suppressed the impulse surging within her chest.
Reuniting with Eugold after their unwanted parting—it could rightly be called Yorna's deepest wish. In a sense, one might say this was the moment that wish had been granted.
But no. The reunion Yorna had envisioned had never looked like this.
"I never wanted to see Your Excellency wearing such a face and such eyes."
Harboring a sorrowful anger at the cruelty of fate, Yorna looked upon Eugold.
He had stopped his steps and was receiving her gaze—the beloved Emperor, with his pale skin and golden eyes, had changed beyond all recognition from the form Yorna had known.
She did not know exactly what had happened to him.
But she was certain that Eugold's current state was far from normal, and that it could hold no good influence upon herself or the ones she loved.
Eugold, who had undergone this terrible transformation and achieved an impossible resurrection—if this unfamiliar place where she had awakened happened to be a room in the Crystal Palace, then the worst possibility flashed through her mind.
That something catastrophic had occurred and the very nature of the Empire had been irrevocably changed.
"Your Excellency—my lord—what exactly happened to bring you to this state..."
There were as many things she wanted to discuss as there were undried tears.
But Yorna shook them off and tried to ask the question that needed asking.
However— "My star."
Yorna's question was sealed by Eugold's gesture of raising a single finger.
It was not that the gesture itself possessed the power to silence her. Rather, the sharp pain that clenched her heart in tandem with the gesture was what sealed her words.
"Ah—Ugh..."
Pierced through the heart by that acute pain, Yorna let a moan spill from her lips instead of a question.
Her hand reflexively flew to her chest, and when she looked down, she saw an addition that had not been on the dress before—gray thorns.
The thorns swirled at the center of her chest, piercing through her pale skin and reaching all the way inside.
They had driven their spikes into Yorna's heart, and an excruciating pain seized dominion over her entire body. Moreover, when she tried to touch them with her hand, her fingers passed through the thorns as though they were intangible.
Amid the thoughts going white with pain, what flashed through Yorna's mind was Eugold's epithet—each successive Volakia Emperor had been called by various names depending on their governing style or the conquests they had achieved, but the one that denoted Eugold was the "Thorn Emperor."
Literally, Eugold bound and subjugated others with the pain of thorns.
He had planted these untouchable thorns and through them commanded the citizens of the Empire, expanding its territory to its current form by wielding pain and fear. He had been a great Emperor who did exactly that.
Tortured by unbearable pain, Yorna gasped, her throat trembling.
And then she remembered—within that battle that had engulfed the Imperial Capital, after she and Priscilla had subdued the weeping, thrashing
It was nothing, really.
She had been so struck by the sight of Eugold appearing on the scene that she had failed to avoid the binding of the thorns. And so, binding Yorna and the unconscious Arakiya together, Priscilla had been forced to face Eugold and the many golden-eyed followers who trailed behind him— "Is... Prisca safe?"
The question was spoken in the midst of searing, violent pain.
The fact that meaningful words escaped lips that had been reduced to groans of agony was entirely because her determination had overpowered her pain.
In truth, the pain being inflicted upon her had not wavered by even a fraction.
Eugold did not loosen the binding of the thorns. It was the same whether the other party was Yorna or Iris. Eugold's actions were never motivated by anger or punishment.
Planting thorns and binding others with them—it was as natural to Eugold as breathing.
Just as a person walks upon two legs, Eugold binds others with thorns.
The tears of those pierced deeply by his thorns, the blood that flowed from them—these were nothing more than his means of making contact with others.
And so, to be with him meant to be with this pain.
Having recalled this through lived experience, Yorna allowed a faint smile to grace her lips even as she posed her question.
"Are the two who were with me at that place—the two who were beside me—are they safe?"
"If they were with you, they did not enter my eyes. The only one who enters my eyes is you, my star."
"I see..."
Her repeated questions had not yielded the answer she wanted.
But seeing Yorna's tone falter at that response, Eugold narrowed his golden eyes as though moved by something— "However... the '
At these additional words from Eugold, Yorna drew a faint breath.
Unlike the indigo eyes she remembered, his pupils were now black orbs carrying a golden light—but the softness of his gaze as he looked at her, and his clumsy concern, reminded her of the man he had always been.
And feeling a different kind of pain from the thorns constricting her chest— "Then, Your Excellency, I have a request."
"A request?"
"That... the 'Witch,' as you called her—could you confirm for me whether the people she admitted into the castle include my companions?"
She wanted to confirm that Prisca and Arakiya were safe.
For Yorna, who had not yet grasped the full picture of the current situation, their well-being was the foremost priority.
If that could be arranged— "Have you given up on death, my star?"
The words Eugold spoke pierced Yorna's heart yet again with a different kind of pain.
"............"
Without a sound, Yorna raised her face as Eugold looked down at her.
Yorna could find nothing to say in response to those words. The idea of calling it nonsense was utterly out of the question. They struck unerringly at the truth of her heart.
Her soul bound to the Empire's earth, dying over and over only to be reborn in a different body with a different name—that was the wish Iris had carried, the wish that Yorna had carried through her endless cycle.
And Eugold Volakia had seen through to it with perfect clarity.
"...Blood tells, as they say."
And the same had been true of Vincent Volakia.
That was why Yorna had chosen to join forces with Vincent, throwing herself into the battle to reclaim the Imperial Capital from the rebels. The ruined Magic City certainly played a large part in that decision as well, but to hesitate over where her true feelings lay—that, in Yorna's view, would be a failure of honesty.
And so, Yorna nodded in answer to Eugold's question.
"If it will save those children's lives, then my death is a trifle indeed."
"Very well. I shall hear your wish, my star."
Yorna, smiling through her pain, received a nod from Eugold without a change in expression.
And then, he resumed the steps he had paused, coming to stand directly before Yorna, and reached out a gentle hand to touch her cheek.
His touch was tender, but his fingers were cold, and the closer the distance, the deeper the thorns sank.
"Wait here a moment."
Releasing Yorna—who was experiencing the pain that pierced both heart and body—he turned his back and left with those parting words.
As always, once he decided on a course of action, he moved quickly.
Holding that thought, Yorna called out to his retreating back as he headed for the door.
"What happened to the kimono I was originally wearing, and my hair and ear ornaments?"
"They are not to my taste. But they are adornments that belonged to you. I have kept them."
Saying this, Eugold indicated a shelf beside the bed with a gesture, and without further words, he brought his response to an end.
The cool detachment with which he left the room was quintessentially Eugold as Yorna knew him. In life, he had always hurried through his days as though chased by time itself.
She had wanted to tell him that he didn't need to rush—and so Iris had walked beside him— "...I'm being as fragile as some helpless little girl."
Slowly shaking her head, Yorna slipped from the bed and reached for the shelf.
Opening the drawer, she found her kimono and obi neatly folded, and the drawstring bag containing her hair ornaments and earrings placed together with them. A sigh of relief escaped her.
Perhaps that relief was too great— "A—"
A small, uncharacteristic sound leaked from her throat at the same moment that heat crept into her cheeks.
"Ngh—"
Bending forward, Yorna clenched her teeth and held back a sob.
She must not cry. Tears were a curse that would drag Yorna Mishigure, the mistress of the Magic City, back to being nothing more than a village girl named Iris—the curse that would undo the "vivid spectrum" she had so painstakingly constructed.
To return to being Iris meant reducing all of her love to a single person.
It meant erasing the entirety of three hundred years spent as someone's daughter, someone's parent, someone's wife—everything she had lived through—wiping it all away as though it had never existed.
"Why, Your Excellency... why now, of all times?"
She wanted to remain who she was—someone who could love Prisca, the residents of the Magic City, and the countless others living in this Empire.
But the pain of the thorns, thrusting their spikes within her chest, was trying to make her forget that.
That unbearably familiar, maddeningly sweet pain—Yorna was terrified of it.
Absolutely terrified.