Elios recited each prayer that Snow had selected for him. After contemplating with an “Hmm” sound, he finally broke into a bright smile and said he liked them all. Snow grumbled that this defeated the purpose of her selection. In the end, the task of choosing the final prayer fell to Snow as well.

Lying in bed with a drowsy, hazy expression, Snow quietly recited to herself the prayers she had selected for Elios.

The freshly washed and dried blanket was incredibly cozy. Now she could sleep with the window slightly open without feeling too cold. The weather had warmed up that much. Sleeping with the window open allowed the scent of spring to fill the room all night. It was a fragrance far more subtle and soothing than the strong perfumes worn by noble ladies.

As Snow recited the prayer while breathing in the spring fragrance, her voice grew progressively softer until it stopped completely before even reaching the halfway point of the prayer. Her eyes gently closed. Her entire body felt languid and comfortable, as if wrapped in clouds.

‘Ah, I’ve fallen asleep’, Snow thought.

No, is it possible to think for oneself while asleep? She suddenly wondered.

Everything before her was tinged with a misty white. The cloud-like substance that had been enveloping her body grew increasingly abundant until it completely swallowed her. Snow simply surrendered her body, or rather her soul, to it. Only her soul was awake.

Things visible to physical eyes could not be seen in this soul-only state. Things that the body could feel were not felt by the soul. But instead, she could see what the physical body could not see, and feel what the physical body could not feel. Snow flew through the air, completely separated from her physical form. She thought she was flying in a dream.

Snow, who had been floating, suddenly dropped.

The scenery blurred together. Black, blue, red, yellow… All kinds of colors spun rapidly and flew around.

It was dizzying. If she had had a body, she would surely have felt nauseous. Such sensations apparently weren’t felt by the soul.

Just as she was thinking this, the slowly rotating scenery stopped. A faded, worn-looking landscape appeared before her.

“Brother…”

A voice was heard. There was the metallic sound of someone in armor walking, and the sound of something being dragged along the ground. All sounds came through muffled, as if heard through a thick curtain.

However, someone’s emotions flowed intensely into Snow. Unlike other impressions, this was extraordinarily vivid, as if she herself were experiencing these feelings.

Snow wanted to collapse from the agony. If she had had a body, she certainly would have done so.

A building that looked like a castle or a large mansion came into view. It was half-collapsed, having been burned. Thin wisps of smoke were still rising from both near and far places. It had dyed even the sky gray.

She could see people lying fallen, bleeding. There was a woman being dragged along, her feet scraping the ground, held by her arms on both sides by two armored soldiers. Snow’s senses were focused on that woman. It was she who had called out “Brother.”

Her feet, dragged carelessly along the ground, were already in terrible condition. The soldiers occasionally used their feet to push aside the arms and heads of fallen people to clear a path.

“Please, don’t do this…”

The dragged woman moved her burst, bleeding lips. But no one listened.

Though covered in dirty ash, she was a beautiful woman. Her green eyes, though somewhat faded, were like precious gems. It was like watching a flower withering away.

The emotions flowing from that woman were unlike anything Snow had ever experienced. Pain, pain, and more pain. Something numb rose up her throat, swelling more and more until it felt like it would burst her open.

Snow wanted to scream. But the current Snow had no voice with which to do so. No fists to pound against her chest. Only her soul was forcibly bound there, vomiting anguish like blood. The frail woman in the soldier’s grasp sobbed in Snow’s place.

The woman had just lost her beloved brother to the soldiers’ hands. The very soldier who was roughly dragging her was the one who had stabbed her brother.

‘Please let me out of here!’ If only she had a voice to speak with, Snow would have cried out thus. It was an unbearable sight for Snow, an unbearable emotion.

The woman was thrown into a dungeon deep within the castle. She was thrown onto the stone floor exactly as the soldiers tossed her, without being able to offer any resistance.

She breathed heavily with difficulty. Her shoulders trembled violently.

She had lived with illness since birth. Unable to withstand the cold and filthy prison environment, her body grew weaker and weaker. She desperately crawled to the bars. With hands that could barely exert any strength, she gripped the bars and continuously murmured “Ikanel, Ikanel” with the loudest voice she could manage. But to others, it sounded like a whisper.

After a few more days, however, she became so weak that she could no longer even hold onto the iron bars. She was slowly dying. Ikanel, Ikanel. After repeating it tens of thousands of times, she finally accepted the fact that he would not come. It was that man, “Ikanel,” who had killed her brother and her father.

She came to accept that her father’s last words, spoken in anger as he struck her cheek—”You fool”—were the only truth. She had been foolish. So terribly foolish that she had been betrayed by the one she loved. Used as a tool and discarded.

On a night when the blood-red full moon shone eerily, her breath ceased. Ikanel. She called out that name aloud as usual. Suddenly, she found everything unbearably amusing. She laughed out loud. Then she murmured something different from usual.

“I cannot forgive you.”

Only a stream of red moonlight came through the narrow window. She had collapsed right in the spot where the moonlight fell. The red light cast the shadow of iron bars on her dirty skirt.

“Neither you, nor your world. I cannot even forgive myself for loving you.”

The moon seemed to be wailing on her behalf, on behalf of Snow who was watching. It was emitting such a sorrowful light. It also resembled a darkly reddening, cooling sun. At the moment just before death, she momentarily wore a startled expression, as if she had realized something. However, Snow, who had been sharing her thoughts until then, could not glimpse what she had realized in that moment.

Snow realized that the distance from which she was watching the woman was gradually decreasing. Snow was approaching her. It wasn’t by her own will.

The woman smiled with blood-crusted lips. At that moment, the distance between Snow and her completely disappeared. Snow became her. She felt the cold, chilling sensation of the body, the pain, the stone fragments against bare skin.

The woman was still smiling, and Snow joined in her sad smile.

The sensations she had been feeling soon faded into the distant beyond. She—Snow—sensed the end approaching. Something flickering behind those faded green eyes disappeared with a blink.

‘So I probably won’t be able to close my eyes, even in death.’

She—Snow—thought. It was the end.

Her vision went dark.

Snow woke from the dream. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She rubbed them vigorously to wipe them away, but they wouldn’t stop.

Outside the window, white snow was falling. The flowers that had been in full bloom were crushed by the weight of the snow and fell to the ground.

It took a long time to compose herself and stop crying. The final moment of the dream was still so vivid. Who was she? Snow wondered.

There was one person who came to mind.

Ikanel. Snow knew the name that the woman had called out longingly until the end.

How could she not know it? Wasn’t it the name that Patrick the High Priest had written clearly on paper when they were studying the noble families of the empire? Even if not, anyone who wasn’t an illiterate country farmer would know that name. The Ikanel that Snow knew was the only one in the entire empire.

Ikanel Riman Akelan.

It was the Emperor’s name. He was the Emperor, and Elios’s father.

♣ ♣ ♣

“You say you had a dream?”

Ceres asked in a serious tone. Snow nodded heavily.

“I’m not sure if I can call it a dream…”

The scenery, dark and faded like looking at an old, poorly maintained oil painting, was clearly disconnected from reality. So were the buzzing sounds, as if submerged in water. But the emotions were so vivid that Snow had almost been swallowed by them. Perhaps she had been swallowed and then spat back out.

Invisible, sticky clumps of emotion were still clinging to Snow.

The flowers had withered and fallen pathetically due to the snow that had fallen overnight, and the sky, which had been high and blue without a single cloud, now seemed to have descended almost within reach. It was a cold and lonely sight. It was just like the heart of the woman Snow had glimpsed yesterday.

“I saw what a woman was going through. She was being dragged away by men in armor. Thinking about it now, they might have been knights. The woman was imprisoned in a castle dungeon… It seems she was already quite ill before being imprisoned. She grew weaker and weaker until she finally died. But… at the moment of her death, I became her. This might be hard to understand… but it really happened. At that moment, I saw what she saw, and I felt what she felt.”

She couldn’t forget the emotion that had surged like a wave about to explode as death approached. Anger. Resentment. Despair. Emptiness. It seemed like a collection of all dark and negative emotions.

Snow tried her best to explain what she had felt. But it was impossible to properly convey that strange sensation, that experience, through human language alone. Snow was still trembling.

Ceres took Snow’s hand. The white, soft hand was as cold as if it had been dipped in a frozen winter lake. No matter how much she rubbed and wrapped it with her own wrinkled hands to warm it, it wouldn’t thaw. As if she had been born that way.