(This chapter is written from a third-person perspective.)
Dead.
Everyone was dead.
The subjects, the rebels, the king’s army, the foreigners from across the sea—all were dead.
Those who deserved to die, those who did not, those who were human, those who were not—all perished in this rebellion.
Corpses littered the entire land, blood congealed into black clumps, leaves and weeds had all withered yellow.
The glorious royal city was plunged into boundless darkness.
Both the living and the dead were devoured by this darkness.
The only one still alive, the only one still capable of movement, was the monster at the heart of the royal city—the source of this death.
That monster had killed King Uther, stolen Uther’s crown, and now sat alone upon a throne carved from stone.
More monstrous than all monsters, darker than the deepest darkness, its body, though as small and delicate as a maiden’s, was withered like a dying elder, seemingly devoid of all vitality and vigor.
This monster called itself Vortigern, claimed to be King Uther’s “elder brother,” brought foreigners across the sea, colluded with power-hungry nobles, and instigated this rebellion.
The rebellion succeeded.
Yet this was not a victory for the foreigners, nor for the nobles.
This victory belonged solely to Vortigern.
The darkness it unleashed devoured all life, brought death like a deity, turned the glorious royal city into hell, and gradually corroded this already barren land.
Outside the royal city, rebels were fleeing, the king’s army was fleeing, the foreigners were fleeing.
Like animals sensing a spreading wildfire or an impending earthquake, they fled the forest merely to survive.
The new king sat upon the throne.
Apart from the stolen crown and scepter, apart from the stone-carved throne beneath her, she possessed nothing.
Hollow golden vertical pupils gazed through the shattered gates toward the distant horizon, as empty as a corpse.
Or perhaps she was a corpse, merely a body that could still move, a heart that still beat…
Her soul, that despairing soul, had already accepted its own death.
—The moment she sat upon the throne, she had already died.
…
…
Two days later.
Thirty kilometers from the royal city, there was a dilapidated wooden hut.
Probably built by a hunter for temporary shelter, the hut was extremely cramped—only about one and a half meters tall and two meters long and wide.
From the moment of its construction, it could only serve as a tiny dwelling.
Moreover, it had been abandoned for a long time; a small portion of its planks had fallen off, letting in wind and rain, and the remaining planks maintaining its structure were rotten, likely to collapse with a gentle push.
Inside the hut, a girl of about seven years old was curled up.
Her golden hair was disheveled, stained with mud, and tangled.
Her clothes, made of coarse linen, were full of patches—or perhaps they were simply stitched together from various scraps of discarded linen.
…
She huddled in the corner of the small hut, eyes closed, brows tightly furrowed, face pale, cheeks flushed with an unnatural redness.
Due to the darkness created by Vortigern, the sky was covered with dark clouds.
Day was as dark as night.
Rain fell incessantly, and the howling wind sounded like the wails of ghosts, trying to flee the royal city, to escape the monster sitting upon the throne.
There was no food left at home; everything had been requisitioned by the king for the war effort.
During the rebellion, the villagers survived on bark, roots, ants, and anything else edible.
Land taxes had been prepaid for twenty years ahead; poll taxes were levied even on ancestors.
Men were conscripted into the army or forced into labor.
The village was left with only women; even the children were taken.
Yet the fleeing soldiers did not believe this.
Their homes were not here; their homes were far away.
To return home, they believed they must survive.
Escaping required strength, and strength required food.
Driven mad by hunger, they did not believe the words of the women left in the village.
If they did not hand over food, they would kill and use human flesh to sate their hunger.
Then…
Dead.
Everyone was dead.
Mother, grandmother, everyone the girl knew in the village…
all were dead.
The fleeing soldiers were no longer human; they had become monsters like Vortigern, emerging from nightmares.
The girl escaped.
She hid in the small hut her father had built for hunting, awaiting death.
Death would come soon.
The wind and rain stole her body’s warmth.
She had developed a high fever; without treatment, she would soon die.
In these circumstances, no one would treat her.
Her fate, like that of everyone on the island of Britain, was sealed.
She slept, falling asleep in the cold, lonely hut.
Quiet as an exquisitely carved doll, no longer feeling hunger, fear, or suffering.
…
…
—That should have been it.
That should have been how the girl died.
After an unknowable amount of time, she opened her eyes.
Emerald-green pupils had transformed into golden vertical pupils like those of a wicked dragon.
Her golden hair gradually lost its color, turning silver with only a faint hint of gold remaining.
Her fever-flushed skin gradually became as pale as a corpse’s, nearly transparent, with veins clearly visible.
The wounds cut by tough grass and shrubs faded away, even the hardened calluses smoothing into a princess-like softness.
The girl looked around blankly, unsure if she was still alive.
Only after pressing her thumb’s nail against her wrist, feeling a slight pain, did she finally slump into a sitting position and let out a heavy sigh.
Then, speaking a language not native to this land, she began to mutter to herself.
Afterward, she slowly checked her own condition, then slowly examined the surroundings through the hut’s cracks and gaps.
Determining it was safe, she sighed heavily again and continued her soliloquy.
“Avalon has merged with me.
I can summon Excalibur at any time.
But…
what’s with this body?
Why is it so small?
Around six years old?
Did I shrink because of the massive loss?
And why so thin?
It’s just skin and bones.
Wasn’t King Arthur fostered in Sir Ector’s household from childhood?
How could the malnutrition be this severe?”
The girl had no answers to her own questions and couldn’t understand the reasons.
No one answered her.
The hut was as silent as a tomb buried ten meters underground.
She remained confused for a while, dazed for a while, but ultimately stood up.
Now, she would accept her circumstances—that is, first solve the immediate problem.
Her body had recovered from death, but she felt ravenous.
Not the kind of hunger that makes your stomach growl, nor the kind where you feel you could eat an ox.
It was the kind where you no longer feel your stomach’s existence, your limbs are utterly weak, your mind is foggy, your whole body stiff and sluggish—a hunger close to unconsciousness or having just barely awakened from it, the hunger of someone starving to death.
The girl staggered to her feet and pushed open the hut’s door.
The sky was still as dark as night, the wind continued to howl, and the rain still fell in a steady drizzle.
After only a few steps, she collapsed onto the grass.
The water on the grass soaked her clothes, sending a chill through her entire body.
It felt not like late spring in Britain, but like a Siberian winter.
Staggering upright again, the girl had to lean against a tree and ungracefully sit down.
“What rotten luck…
Looks like I’m going to die again soon.
But there’s no helping it.
Without rescue, death is certain…
But why must a dead spirit like me experience death repeatedly?
Is this punishment?
I can’t understand…”
After saying this, the girl shook her head.
She knew well that her state of mind was not right.
To put it nicely, she was calmly facing death.
To put it bluntly, she had not a shred of will to survive left—utterly resigned to her fate.
The girl simply sat by the large tree, gazing at the overly dark sky until her mind went blank.
However, the Britain of now was not a land that allowed a girl to lose herself in thought.
The girl heard a sound—a heavy sound, the clatter of metal, irregular, like a man on his last legs, or perhaps someone as starved as she was, for whom even walking had become a struggle.
Almost instantly, the girl felt all her…
Simultaneously, memories not her own surfaced in her mind—several fully armed soldiers pressing swords against the necks of an old man and a woman, shouting loudly.
Then came the woman’s scream, followed by silence, leaving only crimson mingling with the rain, corpses that could no longer speak, and herself, fleeing in terror across the wilderness.
The killers overlapped with the footsteps, the screams overlapped with the clanging of armor.
Boundless terror erupted in the girl’s heart.
She mustered all her strength, moved her body, and hid behind the tree.
Then she covered her mouth, curled into a ball, desperately suppressing her breathing, like a mouse hiding in a burrow, silently waiting for the terrifying predator to pass by its hole.
The rain had stopped, all animals had fled, and the wilderness was eerily quiet.
Thus, in the girl’s world, the sound of her own heartbeat became thunderously loud, even her pulse seemed to creak.
Closer and closer…
the sound of clanking armor grew nearer.
The girl’s heart leapt into her throat.
Time slowed, slowed to an extreme, nearly coming to a halt.
“Bzzz—”
The girl’s body jolted violently, instinctively gasping for air.
This wasn’t an actual sound she heard; it was physiological tinnitus induced by extreme panic.
Then, the hut collapsed.
The sound of wood hitting the ground was like a bomb exploding in the wilderness.
The girl heard the sound…
she definitely heard it; such a loud noise was impossible to miss.
But…
afterward, she heard nothing more.
All sound vanished from her world.
Even the sensation of wind, of cold—all feeling disappeared completely, leaving nothing behind.
It was as if she were not in reality, but living in a dream—a dream with no monsters, no enemies, only emotions composed of fear, despair, cruelty, and numbness; an illusory dream where, upon waking, only faint sensations remained.
In such a nightmare, the girl froze, like a mouse caught by a cat.
The owner of the footsteps paced around, trying to identify tracks on the ground—the girl remained motionless.
The owner of the footsteps viciously kicked a piece of wood—the girl remained motionless.
The owner of the footsteps sat down, breathing heavily—the girl still remained motionless.
Time flowed in the real world, but in the girl’s world, it had completely stopped.
An unknowable amount of time passed…
An unknowable amount of time passed.
Time began to flow again in the girl’s world.
The sky was completely dark, stars glittered on the horizon, insects chirped once more, night owls whispered continuously.
Her stiff body managed to rise, her golden vertical pupils anxiously scanning the surroundings.
Footprints were clearly visible on the ground; their owner had indeed left, heading toward the road built by the Romans.
The small hut had been violently dismantled, wooden pieces scattered everywhere, reduced to ruins.
The surroundings were safe—no murderous monsters, no hungry beasts.
Finally, leaning against the tree, the girl took a deep, desperate breath.
The air carried the scent of earth after rain, bringing her a sense of peace.
“…Exactly as I said back then.”
The girl muttered to herself, a trace of bitterness like bitter medicine curling at the corner of her mouth.
“What did I say back then…
It was probably while drinking with Gilgamesh and Iskandar.
I said I was different from natural-born kings like them.
I had experienced the most extreme hunger, witnessed the cruelest suffering.
After losing my foster parents and foster grandmother at eight, nearly starving to death in the wilderness, I lost the feeling of ‘fear’ and the ability to understand people’s hearts—truly identical, not a single detail different…”
Nerves have gone numb, consciousness has gone numb, the soul has gone numb.
Even if she considered herself a poor actress, the girl could truly no longer feel fear.
And it wasn’t just fear.
Fear had been forcibly torn out, like a hyena tearing a prey’s body to shreds.
Along with fear, parts of other emotions were also dragged out.
Is this a dream?
Panicked to such an extent, how could it possibly be a dream?
Studies say that for cats who have lived indoors since birth, their dreams are monotonous.
Humans are the same; we can only dream of things we have seen and understood.
This level of panic, this level of suffering, surpasses everyone’s imagination.
Even if someone had truly experienced it, falling into such a dream would cause them to wake up quickly by instinct, their body bolting upright in reality, only to collapse back onto the bed in relief upon realizing it was a nightmare of the past.
“I don’t know who is torturing me like this.
Is it really fun?
I don’t think so…” Talking to herself, the girl tried to analyze.
“The stage play of the Holy Grail War has ended.
Next is the prequel…
is it King Arthur’s prequel?
A King Arthur different from all records—I wonder which screenwriter would come up with such a boring play in their head…”
The girl closed her eyes.
In the first act of the prequel play, it seemed as if everything had happened, yet also as if nothing had happened at all.
But the flow of time will not stop, the ongoing play will not cease; even if the audience is empty, the girl continues to perform on stage…
Still, singing.