Temar had a dream.

No—that was an old memory.

A memory from the day he left Ren behind and set out on the road while it snowed.

Ren’s face, clinging to him and crying all night for him not to go, was streaked white with dried tears.

For some reason, Ren had been especially fussy that day. Usually he would send his brother off properly, like a good boy—but that day he cried and screamed and fought desperately, begging him not to leave.

He should have collapsed from exhaustion and fallen asleep, but Ren had stubbornly forced himself to stay up all night. His eyes were as red as a rabbit’s. Temar put on the thickest winter clothes he had and left the village with hardly any luggage at all.

And Ren followed him.

Even when Temar ran far ahead, even when there was no way Ren could still see him, Ren kept chasing after him, stumbling and falling without ever giving up.

Even if Temar were already gone from the village.

As if he meant to stare at even the road Temar had taken after he was gone. As if he thought that if not now, he would never see him again. Ren came after him screaming and sobbing like his life depended on it.

With the merciless hearing of a Hero, Temar could hear every single breath Ren took.

When that crying could be heard even from a hundred li away, how was he supposed to pretend not to notice?

In the end, Temar had no choice but to turn back and stand in front of Ren, who had fallen while running over a hill.

The sleet that had started falling at dawn had piled up enough to leave footprints.

Small desperate footprints stretched all the way from the top of the hill. Here and there, the trail broke where he had rolled and fallen. Snow clung all over the little body, and that face, red and raw from the cold, slowly lifted to look at Temar.

Ren looked slowly at Temar’s worn shoes.

Then Temar’s little brother, tears still dropping from his face, slowly raised his head and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. And when Ren met Temar’s eyes, his own curved beautifully into the brightest smile.

As if he had forgotten he had cried all night begging him not to go.

As if he felt no hurt, no resentment at all toward the brother who had run far away alone because he didn’t want to show him his back as he left—who had ignored his plea to stay together just one more night.

As if he had forgotten every last bit of that desperate, sorrowful crying.

As if all of that sadness were gone.

Ren smiled brightly, as though he had forgotten it all.

In that village frozen white with winter snow and brutal cold, Ren alone smiled like spring.

Looking at Ren’s clear eyes shining with tears, Temar ended up smiling too, without even realizing hot tears were running down his own cheeks.

And so little Ren saw Temar off all the way to the entrance of the village.

Temar soon disappeared from sight, but once Ren could no longer see him, he stopped walking. The signs of Ren struggling back toward the shack kept Temar from being able to leave. Leaning his back against a huge tree, Temar waited until Ren safely made it inside. He had run down in a single burst, but it took Ren two full hours to get back to the shack.

Temar arrived late to the procession because he had been tracking Ren’s presence, and the people who disliked the young Hero beat him for it. A Hero’s body was sturdy and felt little pain, but it was still violence too harsh for the boy Temar to endure. Only the miserable feeling remained sharp in him, and so Temar chose simply to forget it.

After Ren returned to the shack, he came down with a terrible cold and was bedridden.

The reason his walk home had been so slow was because he had followed the footprints Temar left in the thin layer of snow.

That was something Temar had no way of knowing.

Just as Ren never knew that Temar had hidden himself and waited there for him.

And of course, Temar never knew Ren had fallen sick because of it either.

Each of them knew only their own part.

The scene changed. The bright blue sky was still the same, but something about it felt wrong. Temar stood there for a moment, holding his breath against the ringing in his ears that made his mind swim, when someone smacked him on the back.

“What are you doing? We have to go!”

It was Luman, still carrying a young face.

His blond hair shimmered like it had trapped sunlight inside it.

Cut short, the loose strands fluttered messily in the wind.

Temar’s hand moved on its own and straightened Luman’s hair for him.

“Oh, come on. You’re so meticulous. Anyone would think you really do have a little brother.”

Luman said it like he was teasing, then broke into a wide grin. After that, he patted Temar on the shoulder as if thanking him.

No.

That didn’t feel like something he had done.

His body was moving on its own.

Temar thought someone was controlling him.

His unmoving mouth made a sound anyway, letting out a softer voice than expected.

“Yeah.”

The young Heroes, their faces bright, were all wearing tense expressions.

Those youthful Heroes mounted warhorses twice the size of their own bodies and rode proudly toward Dirus Cliff, a place so infamous people said one wrong half-step was enough to send you plunging to your death with a broken neck. Their horses stopped at the cliff’s edge. Their destination was the battlefield below. A place of bloodshed, where broken bodies and ruined souls tangled together into something worse than hell.

But there was no fear on the Heroes’ faces.

Only glory—

and the intoxication of repeated victory.

Or maybe they were merely pretending to have forgotten the fear that came afterward.

“Let’s try not to get hurt if we can help it.”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful.”

“And especially you, Temar! Don’t go hogging all the extra pay just because they’re offering more!”

Luman’s mocking jab made Temar grin broadly.

The smile resting on that masculine face, with its narrow space between the brows and eyes, made him look like a boy his age after all, and everyone snickered and laughed along.

What did it mean, to have comrades going with you?

Temar was neither afraid nor scared. His blood only ran hot with cold tension and the certainty of victory already waiting ahead. That was all. He believed firmly that everyone here would come back safe. Because they were stars that would never lose, the king’s proud swords, immortal Heroes who would not die. They were Heroes—beings raised high by the people, commanding battlefields, carving terror into the souls of enemy soldiers.

There was nothing they needed to fear.

“H-hey, guys.... L-let’s really try not to get hurt. Please....”

There was always someone timid, no matter where you went.

Even among Heroes, there had been one.

“□□□”

What was it? 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

As though fog had rolled through his mind, as though worms had eaten through it, Temar couldn’t remember that face or that name. Only the trembling voice and gentle way of speaking remained vivid.

“You worry too much. You’re great in battle, so why are you like this?”

“B-because if we get hurt....”

“We’re Heroes. We don’t die that easily!”

“Geloman. Are you nervous?”

Temar’s mouth moved.

Geloman, the biggest of the Heroes.

Though still only a boy, he had a body far larger than any grown warrior.

He blinked his cow-big eyes.

“About what?”

“Never mind.”

Everyone reacted exactly like, Of course he would say that.

Geloman was a Hero without fear.

So his comrades didn’t need to be afraid either.

But □□□ always worried too much.

Despite having the most battle experience, despite being the most skilled.

As always, they took it for nothing more than the excessive worrying of a gentle friend, and that day too, the young Heroes never doubted that they would all return in victory without a single injury.

But that certainty shattered with death.

“Get ahold of yourself! Get ahold of yourself!”

“Priest! Call a priest!”

“T-the Hero.... The kingdom is finished now... it’s doomed....”

“H-he’s losing too much blood....”

“That can’t be right.”

“...□□□?”

“......”

“□□□! H-hey, snap out of it.”

That certainty never should have broken.

But on that day, it was smashed to pieces.

So completely it could never be put back together.

It was the third death Temar witnessed—

and the death that marked the beginning of the long seven-year war.

A scar carved into all of their minds.

Something that could never be washed away, something that stole whatever humanity they had left.

Even while feeling the agony of bodies torn apart and pieced back together on blood-soaked battlefields, they had been all right because they believed that at least their comrades would not die.

It took the sacrifice of one life for them to understand that.

After that, no one ever smiled on the battlefield again.

No one ever spoke the names of family or friends on the battlefield again. Hope, feeling, peace of mind—all of it had been buried in the war /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ zone along with the death of that young Hero.

Temar was no different.

He only rampaged across the battlefield like a butcher, returning the death carved into him as terror to the enemy.

Temar had always wondered.

The Hero’s power that had saved him every time he suffered a mortal wound, every time a deep stab scarred his back—the authority that had been more than enough to save the lives of the other stars too, that “miracle of the Hero”—

why, why had it not worked for that one person alone?

Temar had always wanted to know.

But the seven-year war was long. Too long. And as he passed through day after day drenched in blood, Temar forgot even that.

At the end of that long war... nothing remained.

When the seven-year war ended and he stood looking at the burning corpses, watching the flames rise high into the air, Temar thought that maybe it was a mercy the other one had died early.

He had thought it would not have mattered if that had been him instead.

Only when it was finally time to return did Temar think of Ren.

By the time Temar finally made it back to the shack where Ren was waiting, something inside him had already broken.

Maybe it had broken long before that.

Temar, who had gone on pretending to be fine, needed something to lose himself in.

Ren was no longer a little boy before he knew it.

Staring at the younger brother standing on the border between boyhood and manhood, feeling that strange unfamiliarity, Temar...