From that point on, time flowed as swiftly as a fierce blizzard.
Time in the snow mountains was honest.
You grew as much as you ate, and you grew stronger as much as you fought.
But the thing called human growth was sometimes unfair.
“Get up, mutt. Already tired?”
Kara’s scorn poured down onto the crown of my head, planted in the snow.
Ten years old.
At this age, girls were the absolute tyrants of growth spurts.
Kara was a whole head taller than me, overwhelming me in both strength and skill.
She toyed with me like a younger brother—or rather, like a punching bag.
“Kuh... I haven’t lost...!”
I used my axe as a cane and staggered to my feet.
But Kara stood with her hands behind her back, leisurely, and tapped my forehead with a finger.
“Call me big sis and I’ll let you off.”
“As if!”
“Then you’ll just have to take more hits.”
Thwack!
That day too, I buried my face in the snow.
Up until then, there was no romantic atmosphere between us whatsoever.
There was only the cheerful mischief of trying to one-up each other—or rather, Kara’s delight in trampling me.
But it was known that Barbarian genes bloomed late.
The year I turned fourteen, a storm swept through my body.
When I woke up, my joints ached, and my clothes had grown too small, often tearing apart.
It happened during a sparring match one day.
“Haap!”
As was her habit, Kara aimed her wooden sword at my head.
An attack that, on any other day, I would have had to roll to avoid.
Clack.
But instead of dodging, I caught Kara’s wooden sword with one hand.
“...Huh?”
Kara’s eyes went round.
Her gaze turned upward.
Before she knew it, I was looking down at her.
My shadow had grown large enough to cover her entire body.
“That doesn’t work anymore.”
The moment I smirked and tried to overwhelm her with raw strength.
Swish.
“Moron.”
Kara’s body slipped into my embrace like a ghost.
“Huh?”
Using the center of my attempt to overpower her against me, Kara sent my massive frame flying into the air.
Thud!
“You’ll die if you rely only on size and act cocky, little brother.”
I was planted even more miserably into the snow.
Once the physical gap reversed, Kara became even fiercer.
Since she couldn’t win a contest of strength, she honed her skills to the absolute limit.
Her movements grew more precise, her swordsmanship so sharp that the eye could hardly follow.
In the end, even after I grew a head taller, I never managed to defeat Kara even once.
She was an insurmountable wall to me.
And at sixteen.
It was truly the age of storm and stress, the season when hormones ruled the brain.
“Hah... hah...!”
Rough breathing scattered across the snowy plain.
Two shadows tangled and rolled about on the snowfield.
Combat?
No, this was sparring.
But their posture was so odd that anyone watching might mistake it for the courting ritual of beasts.
“H... hey. Aren’t you letting go?”
Kara, pinned beneath me, growled.
Her silver hair lay disheveled across the snow, and her cheeks were flushed red from the fierce movement.
I licked my lips as if troubled.
The situation had started with me forcibly stopping Kara’s brilliant technique with raw strength, only for our legs to get tangled and us to fall.
Somehow, I ended up in the dominant position.
My hardened, thick thigh pressed against her pelvis, and both my hands restrained her slender wrists.
A submission technique we had performed without a second thought when we were younger.
But now.
‘...Soft.’
The supple curves felt beneath me, and the scent of sweat mixed with the smell of flesh paralyzed my reason.
We were siblings not related by a single drop of blood.
On paper, we were adoptive siblings.
Even though I knew this shouldn’t happen, every time my heart raced of its own accord, a strange sense of immorality swept down my spine.
It seemed Kara felt the same.
She, who had honed her skills to defeat me since she was fourteen, had now stopped resisting and was looking up at me with strangely trembling pupils.
A brief silence.
A distance close enough to hear each other’s heartbeats.
Kara bit her lip and whispered in a trembling voice.
“...Move. You’re heavy.”
Those words snapped me back to my senses.
I started and quickly raised myself up.
“S-sorry.”
“...Hmph.”
Kara dusted off her dirtied clothes and whipped around.
The tips of her ears were dyed red.
This fresh, subtle tension.
But the snowy plains held tactless, uninvited guests.
Over there, behind a thick spruce tree.
“Yes! That’s it! Pounce! Awaken your instincts right there!”
Goreugon, the chieftain and my adoptive father, pumped his fist and sent devious cheers.
“Will I get to see a grandchild this year! Hang in there, Bareugeu!”
“Shh, be quiet. You’ll break the mood for the kids.”
Beside him, Granny Baba was squatting and chewing dried jerky as if it were popcorn.
“Such a racket. You save your strength when you’re young to use it at night. What’s the point of wasting it during the day?”
“No, Granny, beasts don’t care about day or night. That’s my philosophy of education.”
Under the adults’ rowdy voyeurism, our romantic tension was growing awkwardly intense.
A short while later.
The result of the resumed sparring was my defeat.
Thud!
“Ugh...!”
This time, it was the opposite.
I was lying spread-eagled on the snow, and Kara was straddling my chest, pointing her wooden sword at my neck.
Victory and defeat were clear.
But Kara’s expression was not that of a winner.
She pressed the wooden sword against my neck and asked in a low, sunken voice.
“You held back again, didn’t you?”
“......”
“Why won’t you get serious?”
I smiled as if frustrated.
“That’s frustrating. I’m always serious. You’re just too fast.”
“Liar.”
Kara’s eyes sharpened.
“You don’t open those eyes unless it’s a ‘real crisis.’ I’m talking about those creepy red eyes.”
“......”
“You mean you’ll never harbor killing intent toward me? That I... am no longer even a threat enough to draw out your true strength?”
Bitterness seeped into Kara’s voice.
Kara lowered her wooden sword and got off my chest.
Relief and regret.
A complex gaze in which the belief that I wouldn’t harm her coexisted with the sense of being slighted because I wasn’t going all out.
But her gaze soon turned toward her own body.
An inevitable change that could never be defied, no matter how much she swung her sword or trained her body.
This ‘uncomfortable mass,’ utterly cumbersome for a warrior, that had just been pressed against my firm chest rubbed Kara the wrong way.
Her irritation at her own chest as she became a woman, and the ever-widening physical gap.
“This is no fun.”
Kara whipped around and strode away.
I lay in the snow and scratched my head.
“I’m telling the truth...”
If I got serious, you’d get hurt.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it and swallowed the words.
Watching from afar, Goreugon’s expression shifted subtly.
The corners of his mouth, which had been smiling in satisfaction, drooped, and it seemed the heavy responsibility of a chieftain settled in their place.
“Hmm... Did I make Bareugeu too human? He’s holding himself back.”
He muttered such nonsense with a serious face.
Then he soon smiled and added,
“In my day, I would have gone for it right there with that kind of mood.”
Goreugon stopped talking for a moment and fell into thought.
“...Ah, wait. Was I the one who got pounced on?”
“......”
“That’s right, Kara’s mother couldn’t hold herself back and pounced on me. Uwahaha!”
At the chieftain’s rowdy lament, Granny Baba, who was beside him, clicked her tongue as if in pity.
“But Goreugon.”
Granny Baba asked quietly.
The playfulness was gone, leaving only the deep voice of a prophet.
“Are you truly going to accept the Grand Duke’s title? That means we must leave our homeland.”
Baba ripped at the jerky she was chewing and added roughly.
“Besides, the ‘fief’ that the Grand Duke bastard is granting is called ‘Winter Sword,’ isn’t it? Winter Sword... tch. They must be planning to use us as tools of the Empire.”
Goreugon silently gazed out at the snowy plains.
“Granny. It’s been 100 years since the sealing.”
The chieftain’s bear-hide cloak flapped in the biting wind.
“You know too. Before the Keuroatina Empire... humanity was at each other’s throats.”
Goreugon looked up at the sky and murmured quietly.
“Until one day, when Gates opened all across the continent and demonic beasts flooded out.”
“...I know. My father died then.”
“The Empire was created to stop that, and eventually all Gates were sealed. It’s already been over 100 years since the Empire has endured.”
Goreugon’s gaze turned beyond the Empire’s southern border.
“But nothing lasts forever. Just as the seal weakens, the Empire will eventually split apart. Before that chaos comes...”
And he clenched his fist tight.
“If we don’t get inside the walls first, the tribe cannot survive.”
The chieftain’s eyes were resolute.
A declaration that he would bend the pride of barbarism to enter the order of the Empire for the tribe’s survival.
Granny Baba spat out the jerky she was chewing.
“Tch. Look at that thoughtless Goreugon, acting all grown up in front of an old woman.”
And she got up from her spot and snapped.
“If you’re leaving, go after I’m dead. Those Empire bastards make me lose my appetite, so I can’t live with them.”
* * *
Rustle.
The silent snowy plains.
My father, Goreugon, and I were out hunting, just the two of us.
A peaceful afternoon.
Winter sunlight scattered across the snowfield, and we hid behind a bush, aiming at a massive elk.
“Bareugeu.”
Goreugon asked laconically as he drew his bowstring.
“So, have you made any progress with our Kara lately?”
“Huh?”
Startled, the bowstring slipped from my hand.
Twang!
The arrow shot absurdly into the sky, and the startled elk dashed away.
“Ah....”
I’m screwed.
I flusteredly looked at my father.
He wore a mischievous smile, as if the fleeing elk was the last thing on his mind.
“Wh-what do you mean... w-we’re siblings, so...”
“Uwahaha! Siblings? I saw the two of you sneaking out to Moonlight Lake at dawn? Was that my reflection in the mirror?”
He stroked his beard and guffawed.
“Well, you do take after me. You’re not related by blood, but you’re my son. Hah, I suppose that’s exactly why you’re being more careful.”
“......”
I had nothing to say.
My face turned red as a ripe radish.
I was found out.
I hung my head in embarrassment, and Goreugon chuckled and tapped my shoulder.
“No need to be shy. Look at you, acting all bashful—you cute little thing.”
A deep affection hidden behind the mischief dwell in Goreugon’s eyes.
The warm gaze of a chieftain—no, a father—toward his prospective son-in-law.
“So, how far have you gotten? A man shouldn’t hesitate so much. If I may offer some advice as your senior in life...”
He lowered his voice and whispered secretively.
“Kara’s other half is Kara’s mother, you know? You probably never met her, Bareugeu.”
“Huh?”
“Anyway, because she’s that half, if you hesitate, Kara definitely won’t be able to hold herself back and...”
Shwick—
A chilling sound of tearing air ripped through the peaceful atmosphere.
Thunk!
“...Kuh?”
Goreugon’s laughter was cut short.
An arrow with black fletching was embedded in his right shoulder.
“Father!”
I reflexively supported Goreugon.
But Goreugon’s massive body collapsed powerlessly.
Dark red blood flowed from the wound.
Poison.
A nerve-paralyzing deadly venom made from the fangs of a Frost Viper, at that.
In that instant, a terrible vision flashed through my mind.
A nightmare as vivid as if I had glimpsed the future.
Goreugon’s corpse, turned into a porcupine by hundreds of arrows, its neck severed and discarded on the cold snowfield.
And before it, Kara pulling out the arrows embedded in her father’s body one by one, wailing as if vomiting blood.
‘Dad... Dad...!’
Her sky-like pupils no longer shone.
Her sorrow soon turned to madness, and she led the tribe into war to reclaim her father’s head.
Everyone dead, everything burning—a future of destruction.
“Kuh... it’s an ambush...!”
Goreugon’s groan shattered the vision.
At the same time, the snow-covered bushes all around rustled.
Figures wearing red wolf skulls.
It was the Blood Fang tribe.
They aimed their bowstrings with fishy smiles.
“Goreugon, the traitor who abandoned Lady Sandra!”
In that instant, the terrible vision was engulfed by red fury.
My vision was dyed red.
I heard the sound of reason snapping.