Prologue: Even My Death Was Snow
Snow. Goddamn snow.
My whole life had been tangled up with the stuff.
I was born on a scrap of land stuck to the Korean Peninsula that somehow managed to be colder than Russia at its worst—Cheorwon—and I grew up in midwinter snowfields.
When I finally became a grown man and thought I'd left those drifts behind me for good, enlistment dumped me right back into Cheorwon, where I burned through the rest of my youth. That was supposed to be the elite track to the top, or so they said.
Hey, mutt. You want stars on your shoulder or not? No field time at your age and you'll never make general, you idiot.
Screw that. Who cares about stars.
Looking back, my life really had been a twisted joke. I'd been played by the sugar-coated pitch of the man who was basically my mentor as a kid—that bald, octopus-faced three-star general—and I'd poured my entire existence into this snow because of it.
Why?
"Cough. Didn't think I'd go out in a snowfield at the end too."
Pure white snow. The drifts that had always been so viciously, blindingly white were, in this final moment, dotted with red stains. Knowing most of that blood was mine, I almost felt like I'd left something behind on a snowfield I'd expected to stay white forever.
"Blood trail!"
"He's around here—search every inch!"
"He can't have gone far. Tear the place apart!"
Thud, thud, thud—
The savage stamp of combat boots closed in. In a world that was nothing but white winter country, the blood I'd shed must have stood out like a neon sign.
A moment later the door of the abandoned outpost where I was hiding flew open, and a squad of soldiers poured in.
"Captain Heo!! Hands up!!"
"You're surrounded!"
"It's over—surrender!!"
"…It's over, huh."
The last one's words were right in more ways than one. Besides the through-and-through from the round in my gut, half a dozen other wounds were announcing that the end of my life had drawn very, very near—and everything I'd set out to do at that cost was already done.
Even if they took me in now, they'd get a front-row seat via live news broadcast as the nest of the higher-ups they'd been so desperate to protect was dragged into the open for the whole world to see.
So—
"You bastards. You know who I am?"
"Wh-what? Captain Heo, what's that in your hand—!"
"I'm Heo Yi-geon, the Cheorwon mutt, you sons of bitches."
If I was going out, I was going out on my own terms.
"Shit!! Get out—all of you!!!"
"Move!!"
"That crazy bastard!!"
The men who'd stormed in bristling with gear and swagger started pouring back out of the ruined outpost even faster than they'd come in. Too late.
The timers on the explosives wrapped around my body and strung through the room—the ones that had made them go white the second they spotted them—were already racing toward zero.
And then—
"Heh. Even a mutt gets home-field advantage—"
BOOOOOOM!!!
The blast tore free before I could finish my last words. The whole world shook, and so did mine.
Ah. Of course. A mutt's life to the bitter end.
Who would've guessed I'd go out without even getting one proper cool exit line. It was funny even to me, but—
Whatever. Close enough.
I hadn't exactly built a legacy, but I'd stopped the tanks of greedy superiors from crushing my hometown under their treads. For a last stand, that was good enough.
Thud—
But for fuck's sake, how is it snow at the end too.
That pathetic thought was the last thing I had as I sank into the deep drifts under the falling flakes and closed my eyes.
"…Or so I'd thought."
I opened my eyes.
What I saw was a world of pure white—an endless snow-country landscape even more brutal than the Cheorwon where I'd been born, raised, and finally ended. I stared blankly, mouth working, and watched my breath turn white in the air.
Then—
"Second Young Master."
A voice from behind me. I'd been staring vacantly past the watchtower; only then did I turn around.
"If you stay out here too long, you may catch a cold."
"Didn't you people used to say northerners don't get those?"
"There are always exceptions."
"You're saying my mother isn't a northerner. That's racial discrimination."
"Come now. Someone like you, Second Young Master, is a northerner down to the soul."
"Yeah, right."
Waiting for me was a pack of them. Freshly butchered animal hides thrown over their shoulders, frames so massive you couldn't tell if they were men or bears, hair tied up any which way, and vicious grins splitting their faces—looking at that lineup of thick-skulled mugs was enough to make the sighs come in waves.
"…Ha. How is it that my life never gets a single summer."
"Summer? What's that? Something you eat? Don't go looking for that kind of thing in the North."
Yeah. No shit.
Fine. What was I going to do about it?
Winter in my last life, winter in this one. All four seasons, all the time: Winter Soldier.
That was me. Heo Yi-geon… no—
"Anyway, we should hurry, Second Young Master. The Northern Grand Duke is waiting."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm coming."
—that was the life of Logwell Wintershield, Second Young Master of the Northern Grand Duke's house.