In the kingdom of Igrein, where swords and grace decide everything, commoners are trampled by nobles, and the law refuses to protect them. Allen, once a servant in the royal castle, knew Princess Juliana's hidden affection but retreated because of their difference in status. One night, he finally brought shame upon her and vanished from the castle. Carrying that sin and humiliation, Allen reincarnates and now stands on the battlefield as a young soldier of the Liberation Front.
Meanwhile, Julia
Until I Call You My Enemy - Embraced by chains, love scatters in blood.
That's wrong, he thought.
He understood it with his head. This was a battlefield — of course people died. And yet, why did his chest ache like this?
Allen Weiss remained on his knees in the mud, unable to move.
The Brenham Plain at dawn. Fog still crawled along the ground, and the night's chill lingered deep in his bones. In his arms, there was a warm weight. The collapsing weight of a man who had been laughing just moments ago.
*(Milos)*
He tried to call the name, but no voice came. His throat seized, his breath choked by the taste of blood.
—Barely half a bell ago, he had been right beside him.
"Don't leave my side today."
Before the sortie, Allen had said that.
"Hehe, hearing that from you, big bro, gives me courage! Leave it to me — I'm definitely coming back alive today!"
A young soldier with unruly red curls tied back with a cord. His blazing green eyes had gleamed as he stared toward the enemy lines beyond the fog. Freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. When he laughed, he looked boyish again in an instant, but when angered, the scar on his left cheek would twitch. Milos Grant. Nineteen years old. A new recruit of the Liberation Front, the Lamp of Revan. For some reason, ever since Allen's first battle, he had always followed behind him.
*(You're always like this.)*
*(Reckless, laughing, and then—)*
Allen thought this deep in his chest. He didn't say it aloud. He couldn't. His clumsy worry always came out only as a short command: "Don't leave my side."
A horn sounded.
A low, long note tore through the fog, echoing across the plain.
—It begins.
In that instant, the Brenham Plain turned to hell.
The Kingdom Army's heavy infantry surged over the hill. Iron armor deflected the pale morning light, and countless footfalls approached like the rumbling of the earth. The Liberation Front's full force deployed across the plain — Allen and Milos on the right wing, other units positioned on the left.
"They're coming!"
Milos shouted.
Allen drew his ash-iron sword. Forged from smuggled iron out of Torridge, it was the Liberation Front's standard armament. Inferior in quality to the regular army's steel swords, but mass-producible — a "commoner's sword."
Enemy soldiers closed in before them.
"Uoooooo!!"
Milos charged out first. Reckless and hot-blooded, with an extremely deep attachment to his comrades. On the battlefield, he always ran out first and often got scolded for it. But that courage roused his allies.
"Wait!"
Ignoring Allen's restraint, Milos struck at the enemy's front line.
His ash-iron sword swept across a Kingdom soldier's neck. Blood sprayed up like mist.
Allen followed.
He deflected an enemy spear with his sword, stepped in, and cut through the torso. Blood splashed back onto his face. Lukewarm. Before he could even suppress the nausea, the next enemy pressed in. He cut. Cut again. The sensation of his blade tearing through flesh traveled up his palm.
*(I am killing people.)*
Somewhere in his head, a cold voice spoke.
*(That's fine. This is a battlefield.)*
*(For the sake of those who died in the Ashwall District, too.)*
Allen clenched his teeth and kept swinging his sword.
But deep in his heart, another scene flickered.
Last night. The moonlit hill.
At the summit of the Three Oaks Hill, she had been crying. Her long, blue-tinged silver hair swaying in the night wind, tears spilling from her eyes — the color of blue after rain.
"Don't die."
That voice repeated in the depths of his ears.
*(Yuliana)*
As he cut off an enemy soldier's head, Allen thought of her name.
*(Where are you now?)*
*(Are you killing someone on this battlefield, too?)*
*(Or are you about to be killed by someone?)*
Don't think.
Allen told himself.
*(She is the enemy.)*
*(Someone I must defeat.)*
*(The queen who could not stop the Ashwall District massacre.)*
And yet.
The hand holding his sword trembled — just for an instant.
—The battle situation deteriorated in less than half a bell.
"The right wing has broken!!"
Someone's scream tore through the din of battle.
When Allen looked up, the right wing's line had collapsed. An eerie company was breaking through — heavy cavalry with black chain emblems on their chests. Oscar Halford's elite direct unit: the Iron Chain Knights.
Leading them was a single knight.
Silver armor. A white mantle. The blade of the sword in his hand shone with an impossible color. Red heat. The blade itself burned with a fiery red glow.
Gald Fein.
A knight under Oscar. His Grace, "Scorching Blade," heated his sword red-hot to melt through enemy weapons. Allen had heard he was one of the more brutal men even among the Iron Chain Knights.
"Commoner rabble, daring to challenge us as a disorderly mob."
Gald flashed his scorching blade.
*Ssss.*
A Liberation Front soldier's ash-iron sword melted from the base. In the same breath, Gald's sword pierced through that soldier's chest — armor and all. The smell of burning flesh spread across the battlefield.
"You bastard!!"
Milos struck at Gald.
"Milos, stop!"
Allen's voice didn't reach him.
Milos's ash-iron sword crossed with Gald's scorching blade.
*Clang!*
Sparks scattered. But in the next instant, Milos's sword turned red from the base and bent limply. The heat of the scorching blade had melted the ash-iron sword.
"Clever little wretch."
Gald's sword pierced through Milos's chest.
"...Eh?"
Blood overflowed from Milos's mouth.
"Milos!!"
Allen broke into a run. But the Iron Chain Knights' soldiers blocked his path. He cut. Cut. Cut. Still, the distance between him and Milos wouldn't close.
"This is the end, commoner."
Gald withdrew his scorching blade.
Milos's body slowly collapsed.
"Milos!!!"
Allen finally reached Milos's side.
He lifted him up. The blood wouldn't stop. It gushed from the wound in his chest, pulsing.
"A... Allen... san..."
Milos looked up at Allen, frothing blood.
"Don't talk."
"Please... protect Sara..."
Milos's hand gripped Allen's arm.
"That girl... she's a crybaby..."
"Milos."
"I... wanted to fight... more..."
Milos said that, and smiled.
And then, just like that, he stopped moving.
"...Milos."
Allen held Milos's body tight.
"Milos!!"
For the first time, he wept aloud.
—The battle did not end even when night fell.
The Brenham Plain was covered in mountains of corpses and a mire of blood.
Neither the Liberation Front nor the Kingdom Army withdrew, and the fighting plunged into a night battle.
Campfires burned here and there.
Their light eerily illuminated the mounds of the dead.
Allen knelt in a corner of the battlefield.
Wounds all over his body ached. The blood wouldn't stop.
But more than that, the pain in his heart tormented him.
*(Milos)*
*(Sara)*
*(I couldn't do anything.)*
Allen drove his ash-iron sword into the ground.
That was when it happened.
—At the edge of his vision, something white floated.
Moonlight.
The moon emerged from a break in the clouds.
Its pale light illuminated the rear of the enemy camp.
And then Allen saw it.
On a small hill behind the enemy lines.
A white figure floating in the moonlight.
A lone woman, silver hair swaying in the night wind.
Long, blue-tinged silver hair. Eyes the color of blue after rain.
—Yuliana Elemi Igrein.
Queen of the Kingdom of Igrein.
Allen's sin from a past life.
*(Yuliana)*
Allen's heart pounded violently.
*(She's there.)*
*(The enemy queen is there.)*
Allen gripped his sword anew.
*(I should strike her down.)*
*(The symbol of the kingdom that killed my comrades.)*
*(The liege of that Gald who killed Milos.)*
*(Oscar's queen, who massacred over a thousand in the Ashwall District.)*
Allen tried to rouse himself.
But.
The hand holding his sword trembled.
*(Why?)*
*(Why am I trembling?)*
*(She's the enemy.)*
*(Someone I must defeat.)*
*(And yet—)*
Last night's scene resurfaced behind his eyelids.
The moonlit hill.
At the summit of the Three Oaks Hill, the tears she had shed.
"Don't die."
That voice.
Those tears.
That silver hair ornament.
Against Allen's chest, her hair ornament was still hidden.
*(I can't strike her down.)*
*(I can't.)*
Allen remained frozen, his sword planted in the ground.
The death of his comrade and his hatred for the enemy.
And his inextinguishable feelings for Yuliana.
Caught between them, he could do nothing but stand there, rooted to the spot.
—In the darkness of night, within the Kingdom Army's encampment.
"Oh my, the queen herself showing her face on the battlefield."
The Minister of Military Affairs, Oscar Halford, narrowed his pale blue eyes — like thin ice — behind his monocle.
A man with short blond hair neatly smoothed back, aristocratic but cold in impression. His white-gloved fingers traced over a map. His figure seemed detached from the chaos of the battlefield, utterly calm.
"That little girl intends to interfere with me again, I suppose."
A cold smile crossed his face.
"But no matter. On this battlefield, her royal authority is in the palm of my hand."
Oscar signaled to an aide-de-camp.
"Order the queen's escort unit to withdraw, under the pretense of a royal command. Tell them I will explain directly to Her Majesty."
"Yes, sir."
The officer ran off.
Oscar traced his finger over Yuliana's position on the map.
"Now then, shall we dance? So that with my command, this war becomes mine."
Behind his monocle, his left eye flared red for an instant.
—Yuliana's encampment.
"Something is wrong."
Yuliana rose to her feet inside the command tent.
Her long, blue-tinged silver hair swayed along with her pearl hair ornament. Her hair was bound up tightly so as not to come undone even on the battlefield. Her eyes — the color of blue after rain — stared beyond the tent.
"The number of guards is far too few."
Only a handful of noble officers remained at her side.
"Y-yes. It seems that, by order of His Excellency the Minister of Military Affairs, they were sent to the front as reinforcements..."
One of the officers hesitated.
"Oscar did? Without consulting me?"
Yuliana's voice dropped a register.
"...I see. Very well. You are dismissed."
The officers filed out of the tent.
Yuliana was alone.
*(Oscar.)*
*(What is that man scheming?)*
She touched the slender sword at her hip.
As one who stood on the battlefield as queen, she was prepared. But what was this sense of wrongness?
Her chest stirred restlessly.
*(As if he intends to leave me here alone, abandoned.)*
Yuliana stepped outside the tent.
—In that instant.
*Whish.*
A fire arrow tore through the night sky.
"—!"
Yuliana twisted aside on reflex.
The fire arrow pierced the tent. The cloth ignited in an instant.
"Who goes there!"
The moment she drew her sword, countless soldiers emerged from the darkness.
Black cloaks. Masks hiding their faces. On their chests, the crest of the hardline nobles.
*(Oscar's private soldiers.)*
*(He means to kill me.)*
Yuliana raised her sword.
"Queen Yuliana Elemi Igrein. We'll be taking your life."
The soldiers attacked all at once.
Yuliana stood in their way, noble and unyielding.
"Who do you think I am? I am the one who carries the most exalted blood in this kingdom."
Her sword tore open the throat of the lead soldier.
Blood splattered across her white mantle.
"Come, then. I'll cut every last one of you down."
Yuliana cut down several of them.
But there were too many.
A fire arrow grazed her silver hair.
"—!"
Her white mantle tore.
In the next instant, several sword points were thrust before her eyes.
"Give up."
Yuliana bit her lip.
*(Does it end here?)*
*(Without ever seeing Allen again—)*
That was when it happened.
—Something burst through the darkness.
"—!"
The lead soldier was sent flying.
"Who are you!"
A man stood before Yuliana.
Soot-stained black hair. Deep gray eyes. A scar running from his left shoulder to his collarbone.
—Allen Weiss.
"...Allen."
Yuliana's voice trembled.
"Stay back."
Allen shielded Yulia
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