Previously
As monsters close in, Heyer realizes the only true remedy for Luwan is to prevent Iris's arranged marriage to Sid Repos, and he charges toward a sacred Divine Tree to clear the swarming beasts.
A King Is Born on the Road.
Without fully understanding, Iris put one foot in front of the other.
Regardless of Heyer's parting words, she knew he had understood all too well what would happen if he felled a Divine Tree, yet had sacrificed himself because he believed in her.
Watching him all the way here, she had seen that Heyer was absurdly, almost unfairly strong.
That he was dead felt no more believable than the notion of him achieving immortality. To everyone who knew him, his death probably would have sounded like a joke.
Though she was uninjured because she had not joined the fighting, having grown up in the north also meant she was far more resilient to the cold than the knights from the south.
Even so, she was not tough enough to trudge through snow like this for hours on end. She knew full well that had the entire Tehas Knight Order not laid down their lives, she never would have made it this far. She could not let her grieving heart render that sacrifice in vain.
Her fever had spiked enough to bring her down at any moment.
From walking so long, the blood soaking her boots had frozen solid, leaving her legs utterly devoid of feeling. Even so, she was able to walk.
The moment she accepted that she had lost everything, a strange ecstasy finally took hold of her.
She knew the way.
From the day she was born, she had known the shape of this world, where the seas reached, and where the land came to an end.
Only now, at twenty-five years of age and facing the ruin of her homeland, had she finally discovered the one trait she possessed that surpassed all others.
She was so thoroughly immersed in using this gift that she felt no pain, reaching a state that the mountain-dwelling Kawat might call nirvana, until at long last, at the end of those mountains, she arrived at the North Gate.
Standing solitary amid the white snowfields was a wooden double door, one side left slightly ajar.
Though she knew her breath was fading fast, she widened her eyes and clung to the life slipping from her grasp.
“Not yet. Don’t die just yet.”
Even if this came to nothing, and even if Luwan would still fall under enemy occupation, Iris pressed forward. It was the only thing left she could do.
Iris Repos stepped precisely one pace beyond the wooden door.
Having reached her goal, she collapsed straight onto the snow.
Miraculously, the moment Iris crossed the North Gate, the ferocious winds died down as though the world had frozen in place.
The world fell so still it seemed everything in it had vanished. Looking up at the sky now, she saw a full moon, something Luwan had not seen in a long time.
Iris gazed steadily up at the full moon, the first she had ever seen in her life.
“How beautiful.”
There was nothing to see but the sky. And the stars in that sky were racing faster than the eye could follow.
Amid the rush of countless stars, Iris could sense something shifting.
Relieved at last, she finally wept. The tears she had held back so desperately trailed down the corners of her eyes.
Moments later, lying across the snowfield, she breathed her last.
* * *
Iris sucked in a sharp breath. Startled, she looked around.
“Wh-what happened?”
She was standing not in a snowfield, but in the convent where she had lived until her nineteenth birthday.
In her hands was the straw broom she used to sweep snow while fighting off sleep on her cleaning nights, and pinned firmly over her head was a black veil held in place by a white coif.
Located at the entrance to the northern highlands, the convent endured long winters and heavy snowfall.
On those endless winter nights, twenty nuns—each confined to the convent for reasons of their own, just like Iris—took turns sweeping away the fallen snow through the dark.
Iris stood dazed in the middle of the hallway for a long time until the chiming clock struck twelve, jarring her back to her senses.
She walked over to check the clock's spring-wound calendar, only to find that today was her nineteenth birthday.
The moment she confirmed she had returned to six years ago, Iris bolted toward the convent doors in a daze.
“Is that not where the boundary between the living and the dead lies? The minds of the living cannot fathom a way to save Luwan, so we must borrow the wisdom of the dead.”
Henke’s words echoed in her mind.
It did not take her long to realize that the price of crossing the North Gate was being cast back six years into the past.
Overwhelmed by a rush of tangled emotions, Iris sank to the ground, struggling to catch her breath.
Compared to the bone-chilling cold she had faced moments ago, it felt positively warm here.
Once she grasped the situation, longing for those who had been beside her brought tears spilling down her cheeks.
Because the Tehas Knights hated tearful goodbyes to a fault, Iris had never been able to weep for them.
As she pictured every fallen soul one by one, only one face remained at the end: Heyer Asheri.
“If crossing the North Gate changes anything… then do not love me. Never again.”
Iris shook her head hard, desperate not to recall his words. Even so, there was no stopping the ache that cut straight to her heart.
At any rate, if she had returned six years into the past, was he still alive?
Iris wanted to run to where the Tehas Knights were stationed this very moment, but even if she could leave a convent whose doors the nuns were not allowed to open at will, traveling all the way to the southern border was an impossibility.
Suffocated by frustration, Iris pulled off her veil and clutched it in her hand. The wind caught her pitch-black hair, sending it fluttering.
The nuns usually trimmed one another’s hair once a year, and with that time drawing near, hers had grown out as long as it could go.
White snow would be piling up as far as the horizon beyond the convent.
Having just journeyed to the northern edge of the earth guided by the map in her mind, Iris suddenly felt this convent was suffocatingly small.
As she stood gazing at the convent doors lost in thought, someone tapped her lightly on the back. It was Sister Agatha, a girl her own age.
She had apparently woken up and spotted Iris through the window; her eyes were still half-closed.
Agatha clasped her hands in greeting, then gestured to ask why she was not wearing her headdress.
Iris spoke.
“It feels stifling.”
Only after blurting that out did a deeper thought escape her lips.
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
What had become of the world?
Why had she returned here?
At the troubled words of an agonizing Iris, Agatha made an awkward face. Glancing around, she whispered to Iris.
“God will be watching.”
“I don’t care.”
What had come of her husband, Sid Repos, scorning the heathens?
Luwan had fallen, and the arrogant people of Suyeo, who believed their king was the incarnation of the god Tilla, had seized their land.
Having witnessed all that, Iris could no longer live her life fearing only the gaze of God.
That she had crossed the North Gate was thanks to the sacrifice of the Tehas Knights.
All the way to the edge of the world, they had spared her strength, and at long last, she had crossed over.
Puzzled that Iris, who usually went about quietly like a ghost, was making her presence known today of all days, Agatha stepped closer and spoke again.
“You don’t know why you were brought here, do you?”
It was the first time Agatha had ever spoken such a long sentence.
Since the Iris of six years ago had truly known nothing, she feigned ignorance and nodded.
Agatha checked her surroundings once more, picked up a twig, and began scratching into the snow.
“Here is the late king.”
When Iris nodded, Agatha drew a line straight down from it and continued.
“His Late Majesty had only one daughter. That was your mother, Princess Celios.”
Agatha, the daughter of a noble house who had been cast out of high society and locked away here after her betrothed ran off in search of love, went on.
“The late king believed he needed a son to pass on the throne, so he adopted his nephew, Eswa Repos, and passed the crown to him. But when the sages investigated, it turned out Eswa Repos was not a legitimate heir, but the son of a mistress.”
“…”
Iris had assumed Agatha was naturally reserved because she hardly ever spoke, but that was not the case at all.
Agatha was simply thrilled at the rare chance to explain high society from scratch to someone who knew nothing about it.
Agatha continued.
“Because of that, people began questioning whether Princess Celios was the true legitimate heir of the late king. And you’re her only child. So, well, this is just my guess, but your mother probably hid you here so the current king wouldn't harm you.”
“I see.”
Iris nodded, a faint, bitter smile tugging at her lips.
Having already lived six years inside the royal castle before returning, she knew her mother was never the sort of person to hide a daughter out of concern.
The look in her mother's eyes on the day they met after nineteen years had proven as much.