Chapter 3: Elaine Serzila
“We’ve arrived.”
Before my eyes stood a wall.
The wall of the Grand Ducal House of Serzila, dividing the continent from the Otherworld, its breadth and height impossible to gauge.
The wall had grown even larger.
The closer I got, the more I realized just how massive Serzila’s wall was. A sense of nostalgia stirred within me.
‘To think I’d see this wall again.’
The Grand Duke had been proud of this wall.
She’d loved the Northerners living within it and the warriors who pledged loyalty to Serzila.
Even now, as the Grand Heir, she must still feel the same.
So I had to feel the same.
I decided to see the back of Gullen’s head differently.
Thick snowflakes slid down his bald scalp. It wasn’t exactly a pretty sight.
Passing through the city gate, I saw a city.
Buildings, likely constructed in different styles, were unified in color by the snow covering them. The snow crunched underfoot, dirtied by my steps along the main road.
This familiar city. I draped my slipping coat over my shoulders and walked through it. Everyone wore fur clothing similar to mine.
That felt familiar, and I welcomed it even more.
It was for the Grand Duke’s sake.
If the Grand Duke had been the one to return, she’d probably be shedding tears right now.
The land Elaine Serzila loved most, the land she failed to protect, was right before my eyes.
‘You should’ve gone, like I said.’
The gate of the Inner Fortress opened.
Gullen, watching me, spoke.
“I’ll say it again, be careful.”
The gate of the Inner Fortress opened.
Gullen, still watching me, continued.
“Only the Inner Fortress knows you’re a mage.”
Mages were executed on the spot.
But Serzila chose to capture me alive instead of executing me. Naturally, this was a secret from the Church.
If my existence were revealed, Serzila would face great trouble.
“I heard there’s a Grand Heir.”
I muttered to myself.
Even after entering the Inner Fortress, I didn’t see the Grand Duke—no, the Grand Heir.
‘Come to think of it, not a Grand Heir but a Grand Heiress.’
Anyway.
In my previous life, I’d met her the moment the gate opened.
“Why are you looking for him?”
“It’s good to know. We’ll be living together from now on.”
“…Mind your own business. He’s a busy man. And you won’t have any reason to deal with him.”
My first meeting with Elaine, the Grand Heir, had changed.
Why?
‘Oh, we arrived a day late.’
It was because Gullen buried the villagers’ bodies after I killed the Magical Beast.
That hadn’t happened in my previous life.
Back then, Gullen had been the one guiding me. He’d avoided staying in the village, worried my identity might be exposed.
But this time, we stopped at the village.
Because I insisted on staying there.
‘The future changes with small things.’
An utterly obvious yet critically important point.
“You’ll meet His Grace the Grand Duke tomorrow.”
Another change.
Originally, I’d have had to wait a fortnight, but Gullen said I’d meet the Grand Duke tomorrow.
‘Probably because I killed the Magical Beast.’
In the future, Gullen would rise to Great Warrior, but the Gullen before me was a freshly minted knight.
He’d left his axe behind, though to me, that was trivial.
At this point, Gullen couldn’t have handled that Magical Beast no matter what he did.
And I, whom he thought was an idiot, took it down.
That’s probably why my meeting with the Grand Duke was moved up.
How long had I walked? I arrived at a separate annex. The smallest annex in the Inner Fortress.
The place where I’d stayed in my previous life.
I knew not only the building’s structure but also its secret passages.
There were no good memories. Back then, I was called an idiot everywhere I went. Even the Inner Fortress’s retainers didn’t like a hostage who only ate their food.
Because I wasn’t just a hostage—I was a mage.
It’d probably be the same this time.
Though I wouldn’t let it drag on for years like before.
“Tomorrow. You’ll come get me?”
“…Probably.”
Gullen left just like that.
His retreating figure felt a bit cold. There was a sense of disconnect.
“We were pretty close, though.”
Would it be the same this time?
I couldn’t be sure.
The future changes with small things.
This life would flow very differently from the last.
The annex’s door was open. There were no signs of life, and dust swirled faintly in the wind blowing through the door.
Crackle. Small sparks flickered around my nose and mouth. My magic reacted to the dust trying to enter my airways.
The Origin that every mage possessed.
* * *
‘What’s inside my heart?’
‘Besides Mommy and Daddy, what’s there?’
‘There’s a huge space. Bigger than our house, no, bigger than our entire estate. Mommy and Daddy aren’t there, but there’s a small sun.’
That’s what I, as a little kid, had said.
Inside my heart was a vast space.
Within that boundless interior floated a tiny sun.
A sun the size of a child’s fist.
‘Forget it. There’s no such thing as a sun inside you.’
My parents told me to forget it.
As a young child, I couldn’t, but as I began to learn about the world, I decided to forget.
The problem was… yes, that too was talent.
Even if I forgot, even if I ignored it, that tiny flame kept stirring me. Like a child begging for attention, it nudged my heart.
If I didn’t give it attention, a child would cry.
The tiny flame, instead of crying, blazed fiercely.
With each passing year, it grew to an unrecognizable size.
What had been fist-sized grew to a diameter as tall as me.
…Neglecting it had been the root of the problem.
I didn’t know how to control the sun, that vague power. I’d lived my life trying to forget it.
The flame that only knew how to nudge grew into a sun that couldn’t control its own power.
When the sun nudged my heart, its flames crossed the disconnected space and burst into reality.
Sometimes, when I woke from a nightmare, my bed was ash.
When I swung a sword, flames flowed along the blade.
Whenever I was agitated or focused, the sun acted like it would burst into reality.
One day, a handkerchief a servant gave me caught fire.
The flames spread from the handkerchief to the servant’s arm.
The screams of the servant burning to death were still vivid.
That death made me, already fragile, even weaker.
And it drew the Otherworld.
More precisely, a mage.
To a mage, another mage was both a comrade and prey.
They fed on each other’s Origins to nourish their own.
A rare flame like mine was more than reason enough to feed.
The mage killed all the servants and ate my parents’ hearts while they were still alive.
That night.
If Serzila hadn’t, by chance, come to Iagar for the same reason, I would’ve ended up the same…
‘This can’t be undone by returning.’
A vast space, with a sun floating on the left. Its height was low, not at the sky’s peak but at my eye level.
Because it wasn’t a real sun.
That was the magic I, Harad the mage, possessed.
A talent I’d had since birth, my Origin.
All mages were born with such an Origin.
Just as I had a sun in my heart, every mage had a unique Origin in theirs.
‘Was it this small?’
No matter how I looked, the sun was tiny.
I stared at the sun, as tall as me, with critical eyes. It had grown slightly in the past three days, thanks to the Magical Beast.
Compared to before my return, it was pathetically small.
Not long ago, my sun was so vast its edges were beyond sight.
‘I’ll just make it grow fast.’
It wouldn’t be a big problem.
The person here wasn’t the twenty-year-old Harad still reeling from the shock of his family’s extermination.
It was Harad, the Grand Duke’s escort, who’d been through hell and back.
The sun spewed flames.
To someone else, the heat might’ve been scalding, but to me, it was mere warmth.
The flames moved like a snake, burning on my hand. It was almost like a playful gesture.
Stretch. As I thought it, flames unraveled like threads from my ten fingers. They danced freely in the air, drawing shapes and writing letters.
My breath became fire. Though its power was feeble, it resembled the breath of a dragon from Otherworld legends.
The flames moved freely after that.
They became gauntlets, then a sword.
‘Even neglected, it’s 2nd Rank.’
A mage’s realm was divided into six ranks.
The 2nd Rank was a level an average mage could reach after ten years of training or consuming dozens of Magical Beasts.
I was already at that level.
Despite having done nothing but live.
Objectively, it was absurd. Magic was like a muscle—unused, it didn’t grow.
‘There were seven 6th Ranks in the Otherworld.’
Before my return, I was 5th Rank.
The greatest mage on the continent, yet the Otherworld had no shortage of mages equal to or greater than me.
‘6th Rank.’
I could reach it.
Facing my talent anew gave me certainty upon certainty.
‘The only idiot is the one who can’t do it.’
That’s when I heard it. A small cough.
‘First floor.’
Someone had entered the annex. A servant? Gullen? Whoever it was, this hadn’t happened in my previous life.
Back then, I’d been neglected. A maid brought food only at mealtimes.
‘It’s past dinnertime.’
I’d already eaten the hard bread the maid brought, warmed by my fire.
The coughing stopped. Instead, the presence grew closer. They climbed the stairs and reached the second floor. The door swung open.
“Harad Iagar?”
The man who barged in and asked wasn’t particularly large. His height was similar to mine.
But he didn’t look weak. If anything, he looked sturdy. Maybe it was my bias. I knew this man well.
“Are you the hostage from Iagar?”
Black hair and intense red eyes.
The man was strikingly handsome.
“I heard you look frail, and you do.”
In truth, the man looked frail himself.
But I knew he couldn’t have been frail from birth.
He was the North’s idol.
A figure destined to become an even greater idol.
“I’m Elaine Serzila.”
My lord and friend from my previous life.
* * *
Elaine Serzila.
A peerless genius and the sole heir of Serzila, destined to become the greatest Grand Duke in history.
It was a strange feeling.
The Grand Duke I’d served for ten years stood before me as the Grand Heir. No, in truth, the Grand Heiress.
‘Even seeing it again, I can’t believe it.’
Twenty years in Serzila.
Of those, I spent five years as Elaine’s rival and ten as her escort knight.
In all that time, I never once suspected her gender.
‘That’s a woman?’
The Elaine before me was, at best, a pretty man.
Exceptional within the category of men, but not enough to be mistaken for a woman.
‘Even now, I can’t believe it. How is she hiding it?’
Before my return, Elaine had shown me her true form.
It was unmistakably a woman.
A breathtakingly beautiful one at that.
If that woman disguised herself as a man, the result wouldn’t be the Elaine standing before me.
‘Must be a Magical Item.’
Likely a magical tool obtained from an Otherworld mage.
If there was a stone for returning to the past, why not a Magical Item to alter appearance?
‘Grand Heiress.’
I rolled the title on my tongue.
It felt awkward, but I’d likely never have to say it aloud.
‘It’s not important.’
It was just surprising, a trivial matter.
What mattered to me was Elaine, not her gender.
‘Did she dream?’
The future changes with small things.
Because I killed the Magical Beast and delayed our schedule, my first meeting with Elaine was in the annex, not at the Inner Fortress gate.
“Indeed. You really don’t feel the cold, do you? They said your Origin is fire.”
Not much had changed.
The location was different, but Elaine’s behavior was the same as in my previous life.
Elaine pulled something from her coat.
‘A cigarette, probably.’
Sure enough, it was a cigarette.
She put it in her mouth and leaned her face toward me.
“Come on. Light it.”
Elaine grinned, her eyes glinting with mischief.
That familiar playfulness was vivid. To me, it was all too familiar.
“It’s a cigarette from the Otherworld. Light it well, and I’ll give you one.”
If she’d dreamed, there’d be some sign.
‘She didn’t.’
All I saw in Elaine was keen interest.
And a hint of disgust.
“What are you doing, not lighting it? Can’t you speak?”
In my previous life, Elaine had acted like this too.
Like Gullen, she’d pressured me.
‘No surprise, they’re both Northerners.’
Back then, I couldn’t say a word.
The unfamiliar North, her status as Grand Heir, and her un-Grand-Heir-like behavior scared me.
I missed Iagar, my parents. So I just trembled.
“Are you deaf too?”
Even now, after returning, I didn’t answer.
Despite being used to the North and unafraid of her status as Grand Heir.
Elaine’s gaze grew cold.
If this continued, I’d repeat my previous life.
She’d lose interest, and years later, she’d take notice again.
‘I’ll probably dream. I’ll see this fading future in my dreams. Every time you, who took that artifact, stir me.’
Before my return, Elaine had said that.
‘What kind of stir?’
Physical? Mental? Elaine’s explanation was vague. Because the stone of return was magic.
“Man, you’re even more of an idiot than I heard.”
What kind of stir would bring back that old gaze? Make her dream?
“Looks like Serzila doesn’t teach manners. Or is it just ignorance?”
For now, I’d start gently.