[17th Veyra, 495 IC, Dawnsworn]
[Emerald Castle]
The first thing Alden registered was the air—clean and cold, laced with incense.
"This is... my room." The words escaped, barely a whisper.
His eyes opened to velvet curtains and familiar stone. Not the frost, nor the lava he had grown so used to over the years.
'It had worked.'
He counted his breaths while pushing himself up. One. Two. Three. They all came the same—easy going in, easy coming out.
He could feel his chest, his hands, his legs. Everything intact. But the strangest sensation was the absence of pain. He closed his eyes again, bracing for the burn of fire in his chest or the bite of frost in his limbs—neither came.
Smooth, youthful skin stretched over his knuckles as he flexed them. The joints worked perfectly, silent and effortless, as if they'd never spent an eternity grinding against themselves.
But it wasn't enough proof. He needed to test more.
He blindly reached toward the bedside table, seeking a weapon that should have been dust by now.
His fingers closed around cold steel—it was there.
Without hesitation, he drew the blade across his finger. Crimson welled from the slice, and he watched with something close to fascination as the flesh refused to knit back together.
"This is it," he mumbled.
Throwing the knife away, he snatched the calendar from the nightstand, nearly knocking over the water glass in his haste. His eyes locked on the red circle: Seventeenth Day of Veyra, Year 495.
He stared at the numbers and the script on top and whispered, "Dawnsworn Era."
A date from before the curse. Centuries behind the last era he'd seen.
He let out a quiet, breathless laugh. "Finally... I am back."
Back in the Emerald Castle. Back to the time before everything burned.
And before—HER.
His hand sought the pendant at his throat. It pulsed crimson, and as his fingers brushed the stone, the curtains and walls dissolved into memory—the day his nightmare had begun.
She had sat upon the throne. A crown of frost and flame rested on her brow.
"Alden Alger de Leonhelm. Death would be a mercy you do not deserve."
Her lip curled. "Every human you dare to love, every person you hold close—they will die in agony. And as for you..."
She rose from the throne and walked past him, her voice cold, not a shred of the affection it once had held for him. "You will burn and freeze for eternity. No sleep will bring you comfort. No food will sate your hunger."
Then came the silence.
Alden had knelt in the wreckage of the palace as the horizon turned a violent orange. The screams and pleas for answers had been met with silence and indifference from a cruel deity who never glanced back. Not once.
Slowly, he'd stood and moved through the halls, his boots stepping over the corpses of everyone he had ever cared for.
The Empire had burned.
She had vanished.
And he had started dying.
He'd gotten rather good at it.
Getting up from his bed, he strode towards the window. Outside, guards and servants rushed back and forth soundlessly. Why were they in such a hurry?
The knock on the door broke the silence, pulling him out of his reverie.
"Your Highness? Are... are you awake?" A female voice. It was shaking.
Alden noticed a loose thread on the curtain hem. Red silk. He wrapped it around his finger until the tip went white.
"The Empress..." The servant's voice cracked.
This servant was Elara. He remembered her name. That seemed important, somehow.
"She... she passed. In the night."
The thread snapped.
Alden looked at the broken fiber on his finger, then at the door. The wood had a knot in it shaped like an eye. He'd stared at that knot in his youth, imagining it was watching him, protecting him.
His mother was dead.
He thought he should check—press his palm to his chest, see if anything was broken in there. But his hand just hung at his side.
The servant was crying. He could hear the wet, hitching sounds through the door.
Alden walked over and opened it.
Elara stood there, face swollen, eyes red-rimmed, clutching a velvet robe to her chest.
Alden walked past her without looking at the robe or feeling the chill.
"Your Highness, you must—the chill—" she stammered, holding out the robe.
Alden didn't stop. He was not naked anyway. Improper for a prince? Yes. But he had nightclothes on. So it didn't really matter.
He moved down the corridor, his bare feet making no noise on the cold stone. The corridor parted before him. Servants pressed their backs against the walls, heads bowed, making space for the Prince.
Alden stared at the back of a young guard's neck. In the fires of the capital, he had seen that exact bone snapped and charred. Now, the skin was smooth, pink with blood and life. What was his name again? He couldn't recall.
He walked past ghosts that breathed. They looked at him with pity, their eyes wet. They were mourning.
Taking a carriage to bridge the distance between the Emerald Castle and Arabella Castle, he made his way to where his mother lay.
It shouldn't have been so easy to navigate after such a long time. But it seemed his body guided him, muscle memory taking over even as his mind drifted.
The air in Arabella Castle smelled of blooming lilies and damp earth, mingling with the scent of moonflowers when the wind blew.
He pushed into the Empress's bedchamber. The scent here was heavier: stale medicine, old lavender, and the metallic tang of finality.
He took a step. Then another, approaching the bed.
For a moment, his mind reached for a memory—a feverish night, a cool hand on his forehead, a voice whispering stories of angels. But the image was faded, eroded by the relentless flow of years. Those gentler memories had dulled, leaving only impressions.
The palace hadn't held her portraits even in his past life. They were taken down one by one as the years passed, and she refused to wake up from her slumber. By the time she was gone, there were none left.
He looked down, and the blur sharpened into clarity.
She lay still, lips gray, the lines of pain around her mouth smoothed out.
Alden reached out. His fingers brushed her cheek—cold. The warmth was gone.
In his first life, this cold had burned him. He had thrown himself over her body, screaming at the ceiling, bargaining with deities who weren't listening.
Now, with a serene expression, Alden pulled a chair to the bedside and took his seat.
Hours passed. The sun climbed, shifting shadows across her face. Servants came in with water, with linens, whispering about protocols.
When the room emptied, leaving him in complete silence, he finally leaned forward.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
The words were barely a whisper. "It has been so long... I forgot what you wanted me to become."
He turned his head toward the window, staring out at the blue sky that stretched over the empire. His eyes were dry.
"But Mother..." He stood up, the chair scraping harshly against the floor. "I hope you understand."
He turned away from the dead, his gaze fixing on the door threshold.
The teachings she had given him—he had spent his entire past life following them, only to learn the hard way that the world wasn't a kind place. If he didn't grasp what was his tightly enough, the entire universe would scheme to take it away.
There was so much he had to do.
He crossed the door threshold, whispering low. "I will start with those in the mud, trying to reach the sky, until I bring down the sky itself."