The northern Empire. A frigid land where, barely ten years ago, winter starvation and death from cold were considered ordinary facts of life.

A supply unit from the Imperial regular army arrived at a village buried under the new year's blizzard.

"Additional stoves and food rations, correct?"

The unit commander, Second Lieutenant Mans, peered at the middle-aged woman before him and furrowed his brow slightly.

"Yes...... yes. That's right......"

"How did you manage to run through all the fuel already? It should have lasted the whole winter and then some."

The woman kept her head bowed and answered quietly.

"My son went out hunting and got hurt...... keeping the stove running while going back and forth to the doctor......"

"Tsk. Why push yourself to go hunting in the middle of a blizzard?"

"My grandson was sick in bed, and I needed money for his medicine......"

"...... Good grief."

Tsk, tsk. The lieutenant clicked his tongue and lowered his monocle. It was an authentication tool issued for verifying the legitimacy of family registers.

"At least you kept your family register in good condition."

Theft and forgery of family registers were prosecuted as serious crimes, and corrupt officials who turned a blind eye to such offenses, or soldiers who used them to extort civilians, faced even more severe summary execution. Not long ago, several soldiers had falsely declared a genuine family register a forgery and demanded bribes, only to be caught. Every last one of them was beheaded. The Sentinel had intervened directly, and rather than cutting off the tail, they had lit the fuse and followed it all the way up until they blew a one-star officer to pieces.

"Let's see. Pure Aran bloodline. Two sons. Husband is deceased?"

"Yes......"

"Here you are."

The lieutenant held out a bundle of food and a mana stone stove.

"Thank you, thank you so much......"

"No need to thank me. Thank your blood and your country. More to the point, has your son's injury healed?"

"Yes. His leg is still quite stiff, but he's almost fully recovered, thankfully......"

"Good that he got treatment in time."

The lieutenant studied the woman for a moment, then produced an extra package of chocolate cookies and a single sheet of paper.

"When spring comes, tell your son to think it over. How long does he plan to live by hunting alone? Every young man has his own ambition."

"......"

The woman took the poster in her wrinkled hands.

[ Northern Assault Battalion, newly formed. Volunteers being recruited. ]

[ For the Aran, for the homeland! ]

......

The Sentinel. The Empire's most singular, supra-legal elite order of knights.

In the past, they had maintained a de facto policy of non-interference toward knights' conduct, leaving all matters to the knight's personal honor and conscience. Rules governing a knight's duties and responsibilities had therefore long gone unwritten, but Kairon, as the order's next commander, intended to codify those standards.

A knight's code of conduct, formally called the Knight Doctrine.

The doctrine Maximilian had authored himself was dense with principle: personal integrity and transparency, anti-corruption, the eradication of crime, and above all, a philosophy and conviction centered on the purity of the Aran.

"The Knight Doctrine code and the new knight combat manual have been distributed across all Imperial knight orders."

"And Empire Point?"

"It has already been adopted as an official theoretical subject. Classes will begin at the start of the new term without delay."

Kairon received his chief secretary's report and nodded with satisfaction.

"Good. Two months left until the official investiture?"

"Yes. Also."

The secretary handed him a framed item sealed like a work of art. It was the family register of Kairon's own house.

"The verification of your deputy commander's family register has also concluded without incident."

"Did Maximilian handle it personally?"

"The certificate of authentication is enclosed on the back of the frame."

-- "Certificate of Authenticity for Family Register" --

...... The above family register has been examined in accordance with heraldic and archival authentication procedures, and the continuity of the recorded bloodline and the authenticity of the seals therein have been confirmed without defect......

It is hereby certified that the above family register is authentic.

----

A certificate required of anyone seeking high public office above a certain rank. Its trustworthiness, however, varied enormously depending on the name of the person who had conducted the appraisal.

"The finest family register certification available in the Empire today."

The name listed at the bottom of the document as "appraiser" was Maximilian von Albrecht Ebenholtz, the foremost authority in the Empire on Aran ideology, family registers, and questions of bloodline.

"I hear the nobles these days are desperate to have Maximilian appraise theirs...... oh, how is the national registry compilation project coming along?"

"We have dispatched knights to monitor and oversee it on an ongoing basis."

A registry certifying Aran bloodline was currently being compiled across the Empire. Because the project was led directly by the Imperial household, the Sentinel took on the role of final administrator, controlling and monitoring the process from behind the scenes.

"Which knights were sent?"

"For now, we dispatched Knights Hanna and Dare Tan to the imperial palace."

One from the bottom of commoner society, the other from the high nobility, yet both had a thorough grasp of the concept of "pure Aran." Hanna had apparently been auditing university lectures lately and had even submitted a paper, so it was a fitting combination for such sensitive work.

"Appropriate."

Kairon smiled with satisfaction.

"Please prepare carefully for your investiture as knight commander."

"Not much will change, really."

Old man Eberich had long since been all but retired in practice. It was simply a matter of moving into the long-vacant top office of the order and swapping out the nameplate.

"The question is who comes after me."

Deputy commander of the Sentinel. Kairon privately thought of Yulian, but the man had given every sign of not wanting the post, so the question of a successor would need considerably more thought.

......

The Gennen Autonomous Territory.

Elias Walter, Gennen's chief secretary, stood on the governor-general's balcony and looked out over the lively city streets below.

"My term ends next year."

A voice from behind him. Governor Fabian walked over and stood at his side.

"You've worked hard all this time."

At Elias's words, Fabian smiled with a touch of bitterness.

"The fact that I get to retire without incident is entirely thanks to you."

As the governor's chief secretary, Elias had scrubbed away the remnants of corrupt predecessors and transformed Gennen into a stable autonomous territory.

"Elias. What do you think of how Gennen has changed?"

Elias answered with pride.

"I'm proud of it. Gennen is no longer even classified as a quasi-applicable bloodline territory."

An achievement made possible through lobbying in the central government and Maximilian's tacit support.

"The same as the Empire's Aran. Aran brothers who lived for a time as citizens of another land, now finally returned to the Empire's embrace."

Elias Walter had worked tirelessly to elevate Gennen's status, and the single most effective factor in that effort had been his own family register. Pure Aran. The ancestors of House Walter, imperial nobility. It was the very noble bloodline he had once despised that allowed him to bring about Gennen's revival. Gennen, where oppression and corruption had been everyday facts of life, had advanced into a prosperous logistics hub, a bridgehead connecting the Empire and the East.

"You've become a proper politician, Elias Walter."

Elias offered a faint smile.

"...... Thank you. Even so, now and then in the back alleys I still come across strange signs of unrest, or eyes as flat and dead as a fish's."

Subversive elements still lurked in society, nursing their grievances.

The governor watched him quietly for a moment, then drew something from his breast pocket and held it out.

"I thought it was time you saw this."

It was a coroner's report.

"Back during the Gennen civil unrest, quite a few of the former governor-general's officials who were executed turned out to be alien species. They had deliberately engineered that unrest for their own benefit."

Alien species were identified by the mana mutation in their hearts.

"I know. Kasim, who shot me...... was Izenheim."

Elias had steadily had people tracking the former Gennen Central University student council officers.

They had endlessly immersed students in the politics of struggle, stirring up division and conflict. That his one-time close friend Kasim had been an Izenheim who worshipped a religion called Izent had been proven through testimony, circumstantial evidence, and autopsy.

"I don't want to carry a prejudice."

Their betrayal remained a trauma difficult to erase, but Elias had worked through that wound.

"But those who commit treason that causes severe harm to the Empire."

He faced reality with cold reason.

"Are, for the most part, Izenheim."

He gripped the coroner's report tight.

A significant share of the Empire's ideological crimes originated with Izenheim. They hid underground and spread strange religions and ideologies. A thoroughly suspicious people.

"Governor. Izenheim are like uninvited guests who appeared without warning in continental history."

From some point on, the intellectual hunger and knowledge that Elias carried had moved in a completely different direction from what it had been in his university days, growing sharper and sharper, like an awl.

"...... Uninvited guests?"

"Yes. A people with a history far shorter than even the Empire's, with no traceable connection to any other ethnic group."

Perhaps from the day he had accepted his noble Aran bloodline and become certain his choices were right.

"Do you think such a race could exist?"

The effort to justify oneself, to find a reason for hatred, sometimes lands on an answer after all......

* * *

Maximilian's office in the Sentinel order.

"Sir knight. It's finished."

Johann Georg Goetze. He handed me a thick manuscript.

I took the envelope and spoke.

"Lately the offshoots of ideology have been getting out of hand."

Since the Imperial Citizenship Act had taken effect, incoherent and uncoordinated interpretations of race and class were springing up everywhere among intellectuals and knights alike.

"The paper Hanna supposedly wrote this time...... honestly, it wasn't good. She seems to have no talent for writing at all."

Hanna was a genius at wielding a sword and working in the field, and her will and passion for the Empire were exceptional. But she had no gift for writing. Her logical leaps were wild and her sentences were clumsy.

"Yes. That is precisely why this book is necessary."

Johann pushed his glasses up and said with conviction.

"Your book will serve as the solid foundation that binds fractured ideology into one."

"......"

I pulled the manuscript from the envelope and looked at the cover.

The title was Moonlight Below. I had deliberately avoided blunt words like "struggle" and replaced them with metaphor.

[ I was born in the Ebenholtz family seat in Imperial Central. My father is Sebastian, and my mother is Cecilia...... ]

It opened with a quiet, composed prologue, then gradually revealed the skeleton of an ideology. All of humanity's creativity, emergent discovery, art, magic, and advances in mana engineering were achievements realized solely by the Aran. The Aran were the evolved exemplars of humanity, the guardians of civilization, and this great Aran people rightfully ought to rule the continent and establish order. If the Aran fell, this world would surely perish.

...... Many educated readers would not believe it, but every word was true. It was the proposition closest to the truth.

I kept skimming the manuscript.

Chapter One, the longest by far, covered my life and my Knight Awakening.

Chapter Two covered imperial history and the legitimacy of Aran bloodline.

Chapter Three covered the world to come and the path the Empire must take.

From Chapter Four onward: race in full. An analysis of alien species, the continent's impurities, and peoples without history, blood outside the fold.

It was a layered structure Johann himself had designed with precision, escalating emotion in the reader before expanding the argument.

"The arrangement of the sentences and the white space is excellent."

I turned pages and smiled.

Before the regression, Johann had written a book similar to this one in its ideology. But at that time it had been far too heavy-handed. The sentences written for propaganda were stiff as bricks. It was considered required reading for Imperial subjects, but most people had simply kept it on display.

"Well done."

This book was different. Above all, the prose was noticeably richer, and Chapter One, where I underwent my Knight Awakening, read almost like a novel, the kind of thing an ordinary reader could find genuinely engaging. Johann had taken the fragments of my thinking and polished them beautifully with his own pen.

"This part in particular."

I pressed a finger to one paragraph.

[ The Aran are humanity's North Star. Even in the darkness of reality as vast and deep as the ocean floor, we can look to that star and press forward without losing our way. An eternal landmark lighting the path before humanity...... ]

At the praise, Johann smiled faintly.

"That line came to me thinking of you, sir knight. Every Imperial subject who reads this book will probably think the same."

His gaze carried a deep, earnest admiration.

"Whenever I see you, sir knight, you are always so lofty and apart."

Before the regression, he had been loyal to the Emperor and the Imperial Guard. Now he spoke words like these to me.

"Even amid confusion and chaos, you remain unmoved, simply present, illuminating the darkest night to guide us, yet so refined and high above that one dare not reach for you. The moon in the night sky."

Johann's praise stirred a strangely ordinary feeling in me. Something almost small.

"In these turbulent times, you are the North Star the Empire should follow, sir knight."

The sense of superiority, of standing above others and receiving their veneration.

"Johann."

But I must not become overconfident in myself. I am not a saint or a hero that anyone could rightly look up to.

"Everything I do is ultimately to survive. Don't place me too high."

What I had been given was the miracle of regression and a calling to ensure humanity's continuation. The weight of those obligations pressing down on my shoulders was no cause for pride.

"...... Yes."

Johann seemed to take my words as humility and bowed his head deeper.

......

Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter!

The rotary press spun with a roar. Amid the smell of ink the machine breathed out, books poured forth like a waterfall.

"......"

Celine Dubois, editor-in-chief of the Jemion Daily, stood with her arms folded and watched the printing process without expression.

"Man~ This book is really something. There'll be a full-page ad in Jemion too, right?"

The print shop owner held up a freshly printed copy with pride. A fine leather binding with gold foil lettering. It was plain he had poured money into it with no thought for cost, only to raise the book's authority and prestige.

"Editor-in-chief. Have you read Chapter One?"

Celine stared silently at the cover.

Moonlight Below.

As an avid reader she had, of course, already read this book, in manuscript form, before it was a book at all. That was exactly why she was worried.

Once this dangerous ideological tract was scattered across the whole Empire, how would the air on the continent change? How would the public come to see Maximilian?

"Reading it gave me chills all over. A knight's awakening, a knight's code of conduct...... the Knight Doctrine!"

The shop owner shuddered as though his skin had gone to goosebumps.

"...... Is that so?"

"Oh, absolutely!"

Most people would probably think exactly as this man did. Without knowing it, they would be stained by his ideology.

"Gosh~ Just reading the sentences you can picture it. Truly, what a proud Imperial......"

He kept chattering away. Celine watched him blankly for a moment, then quietly turned away.

......

The most visible display window and the center table of a large bookstore in Imperial Central.

Sonnet Kandel stopped before a mountain of a single book. Hundreds of copies of the same title, stacked together.

Moonlight Below

- Maximilian Albrecht von Ebenholtz

An autobiography written by Maximilian himself, though it took the form of a political and ideological treatise. From the moment it was published it had seized every bookstore across the Empire. It was placed in university libraries. Hundreds of thousands of copies were scheduled to be distributed free of charge to the military.

"......"

Sonnet reached out and picked up a copy. The smooth leather cover met her fingertips.

Rustle. Rustle.

She turned pages with an expressionless face and read once more through the blueprint for the Empire that Maximilian had drawn.

"-- The next reading discussion."

A voice from beside her, sudden.

Sonnet turned to look.

"Let's use this book."

Ezel Runselot. She picked up Maximilian's Moonlight Below, and smiled, a smile that looked somehow sad.

"My old friend's autobiography."