Elaine Serjilla

"We have arrived."

The Great Wall stood before his eyes — the fortress wall of the Grand Duchy of Serjilla, dividing the continent from the Outlands, its length and its height alike beyond measure.

It only seemed to grow more immense as he drew near. Anew, the sheer scale of Serjilla's rampart pressed itself upon him, and something like nostalgia stirred.

'To think I would ever lay eyes on that wall again.'

The Grand Duke had been proud of that wall. He had loved the northerners living inside it, and the warriors who had pledged their loyalty to Serjilla. As the Grand Duke's heir, he was surely no different now.

So Harad had to be as well. Which was why he chose, instead, to admire the back of Gulen's head.

A fat snowflake slid down the bald pate. It was not a particularly lovely sight.

Past the gate, a city spread out before him. Buildings raised each in their own fashion, unified into a single color beneath the snow; an avenue of slush that squelched and stained ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠underfoot. That familiar city. Harad slung his sodden coat over his shoulder and walked through it. Everyone around him wore furs much like his own.

He was glad of it — glad, and then gladder than he had any right to be. That surplus belonged to the Grand Duke. Had it been the Grand Duke who returned to the past, he would surely have wept.

The land Grand Duke Elaine Serjilla had loved most — the land he had failed to protect — lay right before Harad's eyes.

'Well. You're the one who told me to go.'

The gates of the Inner Castle opened.

Gulen, who had been watching him, spoke. "I'll say it again — best we stay careful."

The gates of the Inner Castle opened.

Gulen, who had been watching him, spoke. "Only the Inner Castle knows you're a magician."

A magician meant summary execution. But Serjilla had chosen to take Harad alive rather than put him to death — kept strictly secret from the Order, naturally. If his existence ever came to light, Serjilla would find itself in a world of trouble.

"They say the Grand Duke's heir is in residence."

Harad asked it as if murmuring to himself. He had entered the Inner Castle, yet the Grand Duke — no, the heir — was nowhere to be seen.

'Come to think of it, the heir was a daughter, not a son.'

Either way. In his previous life, they had met the moment the castle gates opened.

"Why do you want to meet them so badly?"

"Can't hurt to know. We'll be living together from here on, after all."

"...None of your concern. A very busy person, that one. And there'll be no call for you to keep company with them regardless."

His first meeting with Elaine the heir had changed. Why, though?

'Ah. We arrived a day late.'

They had killed the magical beast, and then Gulen had gone and buried the villagers' corpses. None of that had happened in his previous life — because back then it had been Gulen guiding him down that road, and Gulen had refused to lodge in any village, wary that Harad's identity might be needlessly exposed. This time they had stopped at one, because Harad had asked to stay.

'So the future turns on the smallest things.'

An utterly obvious point, and an utterly crucial one.

"Tomorrow, you will be brought before His Excellency the Grand Duke."

Something else had changed, too. By rights he should have waited a fortnight, yet Gulen said he would meet the Grand Duke as early as tomorrow.

'Must be on account of the magical beast.'

In the future, Gulen would rise all the way to Great Warrior, but the Gulen before him was a green recruit who had only just been knighted. Partly because he'd left his axe behind, no doubt, but to Harad's eye the man seemed trivial. The beast of this era was one Gulen could not have caught no matter what he tried — and Harad, mistaking it for a worthless cripple, had simply gone and killed it. That, presumably, was why his audience with the Grand Duke had been moved up.

How long had he walked? Harad arrived at the annex — the smallest detached residence in the Inner Castle. It was where the Harad of his previous life had lived. He knew the building's layout, its secret passages, all of it.

He had no good memories of the place. Back then, wherever he went, people called him a cripple. Even the servants of the Inner Castle had no love for a hostage who did nothing but eat their bread — because Harad was not merely a hostage but a magician. It would be no different this time. Though it would not drag on for years, as it had then.

"Tomorrow. They coming to fetch me?"

"...I imagine so."

Gulen left it at that and walked away. Something about his retreating back felt cold, remote. There was a distance there that hadn't existed before.

"And yet we were rather close, once."

Would it turn out so again this time? Harad could not be certain. The future turned on the smallest things. This life would flow along quite a different course from the last.

The annex door stood open. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠No living presence stirred inside; dust gathered in every corner drifted hazily about on the wind slipping in through the door.

Crackle. Tiny sparks burst to life around his nose and mouth — his magic reacting to the dust trying to slip in through his breath.

The Origin that every magician without exception carries.

That was what Harad had said, back when he was nothing but a scrap of a child.

Inside Harad's heart lay a vast space, and in its boundless interior hung a tiny sun — a sun no larger than a child's fist.

"Forget about that. There is no sun inside you."

His parents had bade him forget it. Young Harad could not — but once he began learning how the world worked, he made up his mind to try.

The problem was... yes, that, too, was a kind of talent. No matter how he forgot, no matter how he turned his face away, the little flame never stopped needling him. Like a child begging for attention, it poked and prodded at his heart.

And if you still refuse it attention, a child cries. The little flame did not cry — it blazed. With every passing day it swelled beyond recognition, until what had once fit inside a fist boasted a diameter as tall as Harad himself.

...Leaving it to grow like that had been the root of everything.

Harad had no idea how to handle the sun, that formless power; he had spent his life trying to forget it. The flame that knew nothing but how to poke grew into a sun with no notion of how to temper its own strength. And whenever that sun jabbed at Harad's heart, its fire leapt clean across the boundary of that severed space and burst into reality.

He would wake from a nightmare to find his bed reduced to ash. He would swing a sword, and flame would come running down the blade. Every time agitation took him, every time he concentrated, the sun rolled and roiled as though straining to spill into the world.

One day, a handkerchief a servant handed him caught fire. Through the handkerchief, the flame flowed up the man's arm. The scream of a servant burning alive from head to toe remained vivid to this day. That death made the already fragile Harad more fragile still — and it summoned the Outlands. Or to be exact, a magician.

To a magician, another magician is comrade and prey alike. They render each other's Origins into fodder for their own. And a flame as endlessly rare as his was more than reason enough to feed. The magician killed every servant in the house, then tore the hearts from Harad's father and mother and devoured them alive.

That night. Had Serjilla not happened, by sheer coincidence, to come calling at Iagar for much the same reason, Harad would have ended exactly the same way...

'So this is the one thing regression didn't bring back.'

A vast space, with the sun drifting lazily at its left. It hung low — not at the crown of that sky, but at the height of his eyes. Which was only natural; it was no true sun. That was the magic carried by the magician called Harad — the talent he had possessed from birth, his Origin. Every magician is born bearing such an Origin. Just as a sun lives in Harad's heart, a different Origin lives in the heart of every magician.

'Was it ever this small?'

However long he looked, the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sun remained small. Harad glared at the fist-tall sphere with resentful eyes. Even this was larger than it had been three days ago — by a sliver, thanks to the magical beast. It was a size too paltry to bear comparison with what he'd had before his regression, when his sun had been so vast its farthest reaches lay beyond his sight.

'Then I'll simply grow it back. Quickly.'

It would be no great ordeal. The man standing here was not the twenty-year-old Harad still reeling from the annihilation of his house. This was Harad, the Grand Duke's escort — a man who had survived everything the world could throw at him.

The sun spat fire. Heat that would have melted another man was, to Harad, no more than warmth. The flame moved like a serpent and blazed above his palm, a gesture almost like a pet begging to be petted.

Stretch. At the thought, thread-fine fire unwound from all ten of his fingers and roamed the empty air at will, tracing shapes, writing words. Breath became flame. However modest its power, its shape resembled nothing so much as the dragonfire of Outland legend.

The fire roamed freely after that — now a gauntlet, now a sword.

'Neglected all these years, and still 2nd Tier.'

A magician's attainment divides broadly into six tiers. The 2nd Tier is a height an ordinary magician reaches only after ten years of training or devouring scores of magical beasts — and Harad was already standing upon it, despite having done nothing in his life but live.

Objectively speaking, it was absurd. Magic is, at bottom, like muscle: what goes unused does not grow.

'The Outlands had 6th Tiers. Seven of them, no less.'

Before his regression, Harad had stood at the 5th Tier. He had been the finest magician on the continent, and yet the Outlands held no shortage of magicians his equal or better.

'The 6th Tier.'

He could reach it. The talent he was rediscovering laid conviction upon conviction.

'So a cripple, then, is simply one who cannot.'

Just then, a small cough reached his ears.

'First floor.'

Someone had entered the annex. A servant? Gulen? Whoever it was, this had never happened in his previous life. Back then, Harad had simply been left to rot; when mealtimes came, a single maid dropped off food and left.

'Supper's long past, though.'

He had already eaten the hard bread the maid left behind, warmed over fire. The coughing ceased. In its place, footsteps drew near, climbed the stairs, reached the second floor — and the door burst open.

"Harad Iagar?"

The man who barged in demanding answers was not built especially large. He stood about Harad's height. And yet he did not look weak — if anything, harder. It might have been preconception. Harad knew this man very well.

"You're the hostage from Iagar, then?"

Black hair, and eyes a fierce, burning red. The man was uncommonly handsome.

"Frail-looking, just as I was told."

In fairness, the man looked frail himself. But Harad knew better than anyone that this man could never have been born weak. He was the idol of the North — and one day he would be a far greater idol still.

"Elaine Serjilla."

The liege and friend of his previous life.

Elaine Serjilla. The sole heir of Serjilla, destined to be reborn as a genius without parallel and the mightiest Grand Duke in history.

Harad's feelings were a tangle. The Grand Duke he had served for ten years stood before him now as the heir. No — in truth, the Grand Duchess.

'Seeing it twice doesn't make it any easier to believe.'

Twenty years in Serjilla. Of those, Harad had spent five as Elaine's frenemy and ten as his escort knight. In all that time, he had never once doubted Elaine's sex.

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'That is a woman?'

The Elaine before him was, at his most generous, a pretty man. Exceptional within the category of "man" — nothing that could be mistaken for a woman.

'Seeing it twice doesn't make it easier to believe. How is it being hidden?'

Before the regression, Elaine had shown Harad his true face. She had been a woman beyond any doubt — and a peerlessly beautiful one. Had that woman dressed as a man, the result would hardly have been the half-measure standing before him now.

'An outside artifact, then.'

A magic tool procured from an Outland magician, most likely. If something like the Regression Stone could exist in this world, surely one little bauble that reshaped appearances did too.

'Grand Duchess.'

Harad rolled the title across his tongue. It sat awkwardly — but he would never actually have occasion to use it.

'It doesn't matter anyway.'

Merely surprising. A trivial thing. What mattered to Harad was Elaine — not Elaine's sex.

'But had it truly dreamed, I wonder?'

The future turns on the smallest things. Because hunting the magical beast had thrown off the schedule, his first meeting with Elaine took place not at the Inner Castle's gate but here in the annex.

"I see. So you truly can't feel the cold. They did say your Origin was fire."

Not much had changed. The setting was different, but Elaine's words and manner were exactly as they had been in the previous life. Elaine drew something from inside his coat.

'A cigarette, presumably.'

A cigarette, sure enough. He set it between his lips and leaned his face toward Harad.

"Come, now. Let's see you light it."

A grin split Elaine's face, his eyes alive with that unmistakable mischief. There was nothing in the world more familiar to Harad.

"Cigarettes from the Outlands. Do it properly and you can have one yourself."

If he had dreamed, it would have betrayed itself somehow.

'So he didn't.'

All Elaine betrayed was brisk, thriving curiosity — and a trace of distaste.

"What are you waiting for, then? Don't tell me you've lost your tongue as well?"

Elaine had been like this in the previous life, too. As Gulen had, he rode Harad hard.

'As though being fellow northerners made it all fair game.'

The Harad of those days could not manage a single word. The unfamiliar North, the weight of the heir's station, conduct so unbecoming of that station — all of it terrified him. He ached for Iagar. He ached for his mother and father. So he simply shivered and shook.

"Have your ears stopped working too?"

The Harad who had regressed said nothing either — though not because the North was strange to him, nor because the heir's rank frightened him. He knew this world. He feared neither.

Elaine's gaze went cold.

Left as it was, the previous life would simply replay itself. The interest would die — and years down the road, he would take it up again.

That was what Elaine had said, once, before the regression.

'What kind of provocation, though?'

Physical? Mental? Elaine's explanation had been vague — for the simple reason that the Regression Stone was itself magic.

"Good grief. You're even more of a cripple than I'd heard."

What manner of provocation would it take for that gaze to turn back the way it once had — for him to dream?

"It seems Serjilla neglects its home education. Too ignorant to manage it, perhaps."

'Gently, for now.'