Winter days are short. It was the small hours, with dawn still a long way off. The outer court of the Grand Ducal Castle was bustling.
"I, Haven Sladin, will protect the Young Master with my life."
Haven said it the moment the party, loaded with packs, stepped out through the Grand Ducal Castle's gate. Raizel did not even realize it was meant for him until two steps later.
Raizel looked at Haven as if he could not believe it.
"Young Master."
Haven bowed his head. It was a restrained motion, befitting a Knight Commander.
"The snowy mountain is full of unknowns. Especially in this season."
He chose his words carefully. He minded every word, every tone. It was consideration born of loyalty.
......Or perhaps, the anxiety that had become a habit for the leader of a knight order.
Snow buried the paths, and wind clouded judgment. A route that had been safe until yesterday could become a trap today. That was why he was asking. Whether they were prepared enough, or overconfident in their courage.
For human calculations could tear like paper at any moment.
That it was Raizel made him all the more uneasy. Before the unease in his heart, the fact that Raizel had already climbed the snowy mountain once carried no weight at all.
"......"
Raizel ignored Haven and walked on ahead.
***
Then it was around dawn.
They were now at the foot of the snowy mountain. The party had kept silent on the roads of the Grand Duchy, but once they reached the snowy mountain, Haven's unease woke his tongue again.
A transition zone of ice and snow, where eternal snow mingled with this year's winter.
Haven spoke to Raizel, who was looking around.
"It is dangerous here. The ground often gives way, so this is a place where you must be even more careful than higher up the mountain."
Raizel's gaze turned to Haven.
"If anything unexpected happens, we will clear the way first. The Young Master should follow from behind—"
Haa.
There was a sigh. So Haven stopped talking.
The boy could not speak. But sighing was no problem at all.
Haven read the subtle current in the air. He hesitated, but soon went on.
"I only mean that we should guard against recklessness."
He cleared his throat a couple of times, trying to establish some authority over the seemingly bored Raizel. Heir to the Grand Duke or not, he himself was the Knight Commander.
"If you push things forward in the name of courage, at some point it tends to stop being a choice and become mere momentum, does it not? Serving the Young Master is our duty, so we wish to leave nothing to chance."
His voice was sincere. The loyalty of a man who would follow an order onto the snowy mountain or into the flames. Only, that loyalty rested on a misjudgment.
A misjudgment of who the boy really was.
Raizel stopped walking. He looked back at Haven, then suddenly spread his fingers.
Three fingers.
Then he pointed at the three fingers with his other hand.
"Pardon?"
Raizel added one more to the three spread fingers.
Four fingers.
Then he did it again.
"Ah, could it be...... you are asking whether my realm is 3-Star or 4-Star?"
Raizel nodded.
Haven answered proudly.
"I am a 4-Star Knight. The same as His Highness the Grand Duke."
Haa.
The sigh came once more. The only one here who would dare sigh at the Knight Commander was...... without question, Raizel.
"Ahem."
The knight Oscar Braynnos cleared his throat and chimed in. Until a couple of days ago he had been on duty patrolling the snowy mountain's border area. Because of that, all he knew of the incident Raizel had caused was what he had overheard in his comrades' gossip.
"It is true that the Snow Beacon Flower is a precious herb, but where it can be gathered varies. Even if we find some, a reckless climb—"
At that moment, Raizel's gaze brushed over Oscar.
It was neither a cold look nor a pointed one. His gaze had merely touched him for a moment.
Even so, Oscar felt a chill run down his spine.
Just then, Raizel raised his sword, scabbard and all. Then he struck Oscar with it as though it were a club.
"Guhk!"
Unable to dodge, Oscar took the blow and went down. It was not a particularly dangerous attack, but dodging a surprise attack from a superior with your ankles buried in snow was not easy. From an enemy, perhaps.
Understanding caught up belatedly.
Why had he, a knight in his sixth year, gone down so feebly to a sixteen-year-old young master's attack?
His face flushed red with shame.
"Young Master......!"
Heir to the Grand Duke or not, this was too much. This went beyond a prank; it was outright abuse. It was the moment Oscar, sprawled on the ground, was about to raise his voice.
Crack.
The start of an ominous splitting sound.
Krrrraaack—!
Then the snow-covered ground split open with a roar.
"H-hhhk......!"
Horrified, Oscar scrambled away on all fours. The spot where he had been standing a moment ago collapsed, revealing a deep blue fissure. A crevasse. As deep as four or five men stacked one atop another. Anyone who fell in would have been all but impossible to pull out.
Haa.
Another sigh. Raizel, naturally.
He turned on his heel and went on ahead.
The knights grasped the situation a beat late. The first of them to come to his senses was Haven. Haven asked.
"......Are you all right, Oscar?"
"......I am all right."
Oscar nodded and got up. His face was still pale.
The knights looked at each other, exchanging glances.
It defied common sense.
Vestia, who had been reading the mood, gently cut in.
"......I think we'd better just hurry along."
Raizel's gaze moved to Vestia. Vestia showed no sign of being cowed. She hurried after Raizel.
Soon the knights shut their mouths and followed.
***
His second time setting foot on the snowy mountain.
The moment they entered the snowy mountain proper, color vanished, as if they had come into another world.
Raizel looked around at the scenery and thought.
'It seems colder than before.'
Even the line between sky and earth was blurred.
Pure white snow poured down from every side, and the view did not reach even a few steps ahead. The wind howled, blowing from no direction at all.
"Wow...... It's brutal out here."
The knight Ryuslagen Quint said it. But the words were soon buried in the blizzard. Whether anyone had even heard, he could not be sure.
The cold did not brush the skin; it felt like it was scraping away flesh.
Breathing in felt like freezing the lungs, and every breath out shattered in the air at once.
Sound did not travel far. Even the dull crunch of snow underfoot was washed away by the wind in an instant.
Still, it was not bad.
'It was not simple cold after all.'
Last time, he had climbed the snowy mountain with the Grand Duke before he had even reached 1-Star. What Raizel felt now was very different from then.
'So it was cold born of mana? No, is it mana itself?'
Before reaching 1-Star, and his senses after it. The difference was that of heaven and earth. What he had not known when he climbed the snowy mountain before, he could feel now. The snowy mountain's cold was not simply due to winter.
A grin.
A mountain lashed by a white blizzard. At that moment, when even the party's faces were hard to make out, the corners of Raizel's mouth rose slightly. It was a rare instant.
'This will pay better than last time.'
The Heavenly Slaughter Star's voice did not sound in his head. That meant nothing the Heavenly Slaughter Star would find amusing was going to happen. In other words, a situation that would benefit Raizel himself lay ahead.
He turned toward where the strong cold was blowing from. There was a cave nearby, and they had agreed to rest there before going on...... but that did not matter. He could hold out longer, and rest could wait. Naturally, it mattered more to drive the party on and get the Snow Beacon Flower flaunting its presence right under his nose.
But.
"Young Master!"
The slope was merciless.
As if it had no intention of welcoming people, the mountain reared up more sharply the higher they went. There was no flat ground. It was an angle at which one misstep would send you sliding down to who knew where.
Oscar, who had been stationed on the snowy mountain for a while, and Haven, a 4-Star Knight, kept up fairly well, but Ryuslagen and Vestia struggled.
'Should I leave them behind?'
The moment he thought so, the silent Heavenly Slaughter Star burst into scornful laughter.
「Is that even worth pondering? Press on. There is no need to look back at stragglers like those.」
Raizel glanced back.
Vestia, buried to the calves in snow, unable even to lift her feet. And Ryuslagen, squinting against the blizzard.
In his life, the Heavenly Demon's life, hesitation had never been the problem. Those who could not move forward had already fallen out. Survival was the outcome, and only the side that survived was right.
The moment you looked back, you would stand in the same line as the stragglers.
That had been the most important thing in the Heavenly Demon's life.
And also the most wretched.
A life in which even glancing back for a moment was a luxury.
「......What are you doing now?」
The Heavenly Slaughter Star was baffled.
Raizel stopped and thought.
Here, he could afford it.
He could be a little less wretched.
Haa.
Raizel's sigh rose as white mist.
He turned back and headed for the cave where they had originally agreed to rest.
***
Inside the cave.
The moment they crossed the entrance, the roaring wind cut off as if it had been a lie. Instead, a cold of ice and stone had settled in, and the air itself hung heavy.
Ryuslagen leaned his exhausted body against the cave wall, then jerked upright at the cold. Each breath spread slowly as a faint mist, then vanished as if clinging to the rock.
He looked at Raizel, who sat cross-legged deep in the cave with his eyes closed.
This came right after a chilling warning not to disturb him.
So no one could disturb him. Not only that, they were careful with every word and even steadied their breathing.
'Is this even working?'
Even, shallow breathing could be heard. The sight of him sitting with his eyes closed, doing nothing, was an unfamiliar one.
'I can't feel a thing. Usually, when someone's controlling mana this close, there's no way you'd miss it.'
Ryuslagen was the knight of the Grand Ducal House who had first met Raizel in the fog on the snowy plain, on the very day he returned to the Grand Ducal Castle.
Hair white as snow, eyes cold as metal, a face paler than the snowfield.
And...... the ghastly aura that lingered in those eyes.
Or rather, killing intent.
Eyes so honed and worn that no one would believe they belonged to a teenage boy.
It was not that there was no light, no glint in them. Rather, they had burned so hot they no longer flashed.
Eyes in which expectation, doubt, even anger had worn away. The handful of traces left after making countless painful decisions and cutting away countless rotten parts.
The eyes of someone who looked ahead but had forgotten what he wanted to see.
That sight had not left Ryuslagen's mind since the day Raizel returned to the Grand Ducal Castle.
Even though, the first moment he saw those eyes, he had thought he was seeing things.
Because that sharp impression kept coming back and sent a chill down the back of his neck. That was why he could not forget it. By instinct, at the level of his very nerves, he kept replaying that keen edge.
'It was more than a hard life with the Imperial Family could ever explain.'
So strong was the impression that day that, after Raizel's return, Ryuslagen had even followed the Grand Ducal Castle's veteran knights around to peer into their eyes.
The eyes of Sir Demantoid, who had survived the great battle against the yetis twenty years ago, were cold.
Because time had simply flowed on while the names of comrades and the meaning of victory stayed frozen.
The eyes of Sir Lindore, a former mercenary who had joined the Esseldria knight order fifteen years ago, were sharp.
It was the gaze of someone who knew all too well how easily trust dies.
The eyes of Sir Zenkreuz, the former Knight Commander who had retired nine years ago and handed the post to Haven Sladin, were weathered.
For it was the remorse of someone who had already come too far to speak of regret.
But...... none of them had eyes like Raizel's.
Despair and rage of unfathomable depth.
An abyss where a seething thirst for revenge coexisted with a resignation preserved like a specimen by the years.
The burden of one who had offered up even the strength to weigh right and wrong as a sacrifice to survival.
He could find such things in no one.
'If I had to find something close, it would be......'
Looking at Raizel, Ryuslagen went through everything he had ever seen.
In that search, one thing caught.
'An executioner......!'
One who had killed countless times, not by his own will, but to survive.
'No, but the Young Master and an executioner? It doesn't fit.'
But there was no other way to explain it.
Ryuslagen sank into thought.
'This is really strange.'
Would the Knight Commander see it? Wondering, he looked at Haven Sladin. Haven, too, was watching Raizel. But what Haven was thinking was beyond Ryuslagen's ability to tell. Perhaps he simply lacked the years.
One thought led to another. There was so much in the world he did not know. And Raizel Esselklein was...... the greatest of them all.
But there was not much time to ponder.
In the silence, Raizel opened his eyes.
He had finished running his technique.
He jerked his chin at the cave entrance. It meant they were leaving. After that brief signal, Raizel gathered his things and stood.
Ryuslagen's pondering was not over.
"Uh, it's still snowing......"
What awaited him was a situation in which even time to ponder was a luxury.