Previously
Iris dons travel leathers, promises a foreign yellow handkerchief to Annie, and is reunited with Rain, the resilient spotted horse she treasured in the previous timeline.
The King Is Born on the Road
When Iris stepped outside the temple, she saw a bitter expression settle over Heyer’s face—a stark contrast to his usual easy, teasing demeanor.
He had felled a Divine Tree, one said to have been planted by Tilla to save humanity from monsters. Only a handful of people even within the Tehas Knights knew of this deed.
Had the people of Luwan discovered he cut down a Divine Tree, Heyer would have faced eternal excommunication—a fate far more agonizing than execution.
It would make no difference even if he were a hero who had halted the monsters poised to breach the forbidden lands and swarm Luwan.
Raised as royalty, Heyer must have understood that truth better than anyone, yet he had still chosen to cut it down.
In that sense, Iris regarded him as a pragmatist, but even more so as a man driven by a sense of justice bordering on youthful recklessness.
When Iris said nothing about his refusal to enter the temple, Heyer looked puzzled instead and asked,
“Aren’t you going to ask? Why I won’t step into the temple even after coming all this way.”
“Well…”
Iris wanted to comfort him. To drive such bitterness into so playful a man proved how torturous his inability to enter the sanctuary must be.
Iris said,
“It isn't as though God actually resides in there. It’s only a statue.”
“…”
“You must have your own way of greeting God.”
With those words, Iris offered him a gentle, nonchalant smile.
Heyer did not smile back. He looked at her quietly for a moment, then turned away.
Watching his retreating back, Iris wondered if her attempt at comfort had struck a nerve and wounded him instead.
At that worried thought, she let out a quiet sigh. Hearing it, Heyer looked back over his shoulder.
“Ah, um…”
Just as Iris began to scramble for an excuse for her sigh, Heyer spoke.
“Thank you.”
“Pardon?”
Iris asked in surprise, but Heyer offered no further reply and turned away again.
* * *
The day he felled the Divine Tree.
Heyer had spent hours kneeling beneath it in prayer.
Like any child of Luwan’s great noble houses, he had been baptized exactly one year after his birth.
From that time until the day he cut down the tree, he had never failed to visit the temple to pray once a month, no matter the circumstances.
The crisis emerging from the forbidden lands had undeniably been spreading, claiming the lives of the mountain folk at the hands of monsters.
During a skirmish near the Divine Tree, a subordinate had nicked its trunk, and that accident brought Heyer a crucial revelation.
The monsters had frozen in that instant, a pause sensed simultaneously by Heyer and the most skilled knights of the Tehas order.
At that moment, the truth became inescapable.
The Divine Tree no longer served to repel the monsters.
Instead, its role had inverted, fueling their vigor.
The instant he realized this, Heyer knew he had no choice but to cut the tree down.
What other alternative was there? It was the only way to save countless lives.
After a long prayer, he chopped down the Divine Tree. Though he hadn’t noticed it then, a wound appeared on his lower back—a prick no larger than a thorn from a briar.
Heyer had always healed quickly from every injury, but this wound proved different. No matter what medicine was applied, it only festered and grew.
And so he accepted it as a ‘curse’ laid upon him by Tilla.
He believed that God would never forgive him. That grief ran incomparably deeper than any shallow decree of excommunication men could pass.
‘You must have your own way of greeting God.’
Heyer recalled the words Iris had spoken to him as he choked back his grief before the temple, and the gaze from her cool eyes.
Ever since felling the Divine Tree, he had not set foot inside a sanctuary. He feared that Tilla, the God of All Creation, would only see a man who had destroyed His gift.
He had never dreamed he would receive such consoling words from someone looking at him with eyes as calm as ice.
While he was lost in thought, Iris entered the building to the right of the Great Temple to receive her name plaque.
It was where new plaques matching the status of believers were crafted.
Iris had likely carried a plaque before, but it would have marked her as a nun bound to a convent. Now, they would be fashioning a new plaque to prove her identity as a royal princess.
While waiting for her, Heyer was met by his subordinates from the Tehas Knights who were arriving at the Great Temple.
“Commander!”
Annamaria and Henke ran toward him in high spirits. Seeing how glad his men were to see him brought an effortless smile to his lips.
* * *
While Iris spoke with the bishop, her new name plaque was being carved.
It was fashioned from the wood of a hawthorn tree, a species that grew abundantly in Luwan. The design of a plaque denoted its bearer’s station or vocation; nuns carried ones painted in alternating black and gray.
The new plaque presented to Iris was bordered in gold leaf.
“Your Royal Highness, would you care to inspect the gemstones?”
the bishop asked. In House Repos and the realm’s high noble families, plaques were often adorned with radiant jewels corresponding to one's closeness to the line of succession.
Iris shook her head.
“Not just yet.”
Her rank in the line of succession was not yet decided, making jewels unnecessary.
Iris strung a gold cord through the plaque and lifted it with both hands. It was an ornate, striking object.
To her, the new plaque felt extraordinarily heavy, overlapping in her mind with the one she had carried as queen.
Tucking the plaque away, she stepped outside to find members of the Tehas Knights gathered in a noisy knot.
Seeing the faces of the knights she had lost one by one on the road to the North Gate, Iris pressed her lips together to hold back sudden tears.
Yet she knew it would look utterly absurd to them if a woman they were meeting for the first time burst into tears on the spot.
As she fought down the urge to weep, Heyer’s right hand, Annamaria, whispered to his left hand, Henke.
“What's with her? Do we look that scary?”
“I don't know, aren’t the rest of us decent-looking enough, minus you?”
“Hey, you punk. Say that to my face.”
“Gladly.”
Just as when they had first met, Annamaria and Henke squabbled without a moment's pause.
Yet for all their bickering, Iris had never once seen them come to genuine blows.
Indeed, the bond between them had seemed so tender that she had once wondered if they were lovers—a suspicion that had long since melted away.
Henke, who was at least the second son of a noble house and knew the proper etiquette for greeting royalty, dropped to one knee.
“I am Henke Heywin, Vice Commander of the Tehas Knights and son of Dale Heywin.”
“I am Iris Repos, daughter of Celios Repos.”
After they exchanged greetings, Iris offered her hand to Henke as he stood, and he took it with a smile.
Annamaria spoke up.
“Now that we're in the capital, let’s go get a drink!”
At that, Heyer let out a weary sigh.
“You're planning on wrecking another tavern, aren’t you? Keep it in moderation.”
“Commander, you’re not going to drink in moderation either!”
“I've never broken any furniture.”
“I didn’t break it on purpose either! They just put out flimsy things that fell apart!”
Grumbling under her breath, Annamaria set off toward a tavern they frequented whenever they visited the capital.
Apprehensive at the phrase ‘wrecking another tavern,’ Iris followed along, only to find the tavern keeper sprinting out so eagerly he forgot to put his shoes on. It seemed the Tehas Knights must have brought him a rather handsome profit in the past.