“You said you’d grown up, yet you still act like a child.”
Ressas pretended as though Seiyad were a stranger, but the moment their hearts connected, the childishness would peek through. Inside him curled the scrawny, ragged boy who had once been isolated in the southern palace where no one came to find him.
That boy, long accustomed to a world where he wasn’t allowed to desire anything, endlessly longed for love but never truly believed he could have it. Just like now.
“Your Highness, what could you possibly be lacking that you’d say such things?”
Ressas, then and now, was simply a beautiful person. Not just in appearance—his entire being was beautiful. But even beyond that, there wasn’t a single flaw in him.
“Your Highness is the most diligent person I know. When there’s something that must be done, you never hesitate to show courage. And when something is important, you set aside the trivial without regret. There’s no one stronger than someone who can move forward without trampling others.”
That was why, in the past, Seiyad believed someone like him didn’t belong beside Ressas. Just as darkness feels deeper beside the sun, Ressas’s nature starkly contrasted with Seiyad’s own. While Seiyad had thrown everything away for revenge, Ressas had never wavered in the face of attack or blame. Instead, he had always tried to see the essence of things.
“Status and appearance don’t matter. What’s important is the soul of the person.”
Of course, Ressas was more beautiful than anyone in the kingdom. There wasn’t a single blemish in his appearance, and he lacked for nothing. Skilled in swordsmanship, quick to learn—there was likely nothing he couldn’t do if he set his mind to it. On top of that, he was the one who had to ascend as Crown Prince. He could rightly be called the finest in all the realm.
Which meant, if Ressas wished it, anyone would fall in love with him.
It was an obvious conclusion. Yet, when Seiyad imagined him with someone else, it left a bitter taste. And that despite the fact that it was Seiyad himself who had decided they could never be lovers.
“Do you remember?”
Seiyad lifted his gaze, startled out of his thoughts. Ressas wore a strange expression—eyes filled with longing, as if he didn’t know what to do with the emotions welling up inside him.
“What Eid said when he saw my hair and eyes—those that everyone else found repulsive. I remember it. He said they were like the black of the night sky where stars slumber freely, and my eyes were a gentle violet, like an ice snow flower that melts the cold. He told me I didn’t need to be ashamed, that it was a color unique in all the world.”
Seiyad remembered saying those words, though surely not in such poetic phrasing. He had told them to Ressas, who had hidden away crying after failing to dye his hair.
“Eid was the only one who loved me just as I was, even when everyone else hated me. He said he would go and find the moon that waited for someone as worthless as me.”
One by one, memories that had long been buried began to surface. As Seiyad quietly listened, he suddenly realized something felt off about the last part.
It was a line he had wanted to say—yes. But he had never actually told Ressas those words. They were part of a book he had written, never read aloud. And even after coming back to life, he had checked himself that Ressas never touched that book in the study.
…Had he mentioned it before writing it?
It wasn’t impossible. But once again, Seiyad was struck by the uncanny sensation he had felt from Ressas before.
Something flickered just out of reach, like it could be grasped but wasn’t quite there. Seiyad sensed the time had come to finally voice the questions he had set aside amid the chaos.
Ressas behaved like someone who knew events yet to unfold. He carried within him knowledge no one else could possibly have. And this particular unease hadn’t been present last winter. Back then, he hadn’t even known how to wield power. Yet in just half a year, he had grown far too strong.
“I’ve never told Your Highness anything about the moon.”
Like during their encounter in the forest yesterday, Seiyad didn’t press aggressively. He quietly pointed out the inconsistency. Ressas, who had been gazing into the distance like someone lost in yearning, fell silent. His expression barely changed, but his long lashes fluttered slightly—a clear sign of being shaken.
“Even just yesterday, Your Highness said the battle would take a full day. But watching how you actually acted…”
Seiyad didn’t even know exactly what he wanted to accuse Ressas of. It was hard to form a concrete question. After a moment of hesitation, he finally managed to shape his doubt into one.
“You act like someone who knows the future. No—more than that. You seem like someone who knows even more. Like someone who’s already lived through this time.”
There was no single behavior that clearly defined it, but the contrast with the Ressas from his past life was too stark. It made Seiyad wonder if Ressas, like him, had also returned from the future. But he hadn’t asked, because the Ressas he met after returning truly had seemed unaware of anything.
If time really had flowed backward and brought Seiyad to the past, then the moment of divergence should have been the same.
And most of all, Seiyad didn’t want to believe it.
He didn’t want to think the person standing in front of him—the one speaking to him with such tender affection—could be the same Ressas who had killed him.
They didn’t even feel like the same person. The Ressas of his past life had despised him. He had killed him without a hint of hesitation. It was impossible to believe that such a man could whisper love so desperately.
The more he thought about it, the more tangled it all became.
If this Ressas truly had returned from the future, then there were only two options—either he had loved Seiyad but killed him anyway, or he had never loved him, and all this was just an act.
A chilling thought ran down Seiyad’s spine. Either way, the premise alone was enough to drag his heart into the abyss.
He couldn’t accept it. Because if either were true, it would mean Ressas didn’t actually love him.
If someone could kill the one they loved, then it wasn’t love. And if he never loved him to begin with, then this was no different—there was no love in pretending, either.
Overwhelmed by a wave of revulsion, Seiyad shut his mouth. Even he couldn’t understand why his aversion was so intense.
‘Why am I even bothered by this, when we’re not even lovers? So what if he doesn’t love me? All we need is to maintain this kind of relationship and achieve our respective goals—nothing more.’
Yet logic and emotion moved in separate directions. While his thoughts remained cold and calculated, his heart grew increasingly restless as he awaited a response. Ressas showed no expression on his pale face, then slowly raised a hand and swept his hair back. In that fleeting motion, Seiyad caught sight of the veins standing blue beneath the skin of his hand. The color was unusually pale.
“You’re right. The sun has always been by my side.”
After a long pause, Ressas finally spoke. The poetic phrasing made it difficult to immediately grasp his meaning.
“…The sun? Are you talking about the god?”
“I can’t explain anything beyond what you, Grand Duke, have uncovered for yourself. The things I know—I’ve learned through events that have yet to occur. Speaking of them is forbidden. Words carry power, and they forge causality. Just a single word from me could change too much… So what I can say, for now, is…”
Seiyad found himself momentarily at a loss—not because Ressas’s words were absurd, but because it felt so foreign to know he had been hiding this all along. He had suspected Ressas knew something, but the idea of something akin to a god standing at his side…
“What happens if you break that taboo? Is it something that threatens Your Highness’s safety?”
If that were the case, Seiyad thought he could accept it, even if reluctantly. But Ressas wouldn’t even share that.
“That, too, I cannot say.”
“Then what can you say? How am I supposed to trust someone who speaks so vaguely? Don’t try to dodge the issue with beautiful words, like you did before. What I need now is at least one clear truth.”
Frustration welled up in him. And the emotion pressing hardest felt eerily close to disappointment. But it wasn’t the kind of unease that stemmed from discovering a new, unfamiliar side of someone. No—this was different. It was the bitter realization that even while claiming to love him, Ressas still chose not to reveal everything.
‘How can anyone trust someone who hides this much?’
“Just when did Your Highness acquire such an ability? Have you been deceiving me since the moment we met? If you knew so much all along, did you keep silent even while knowing what the Crown Prince was doing to me?”
“No, Eid!”
The accusations that had previously only been thoughts finally spilled out. The feeling that their souls had once been so intertwined now felt like it was unraveling—so bitterly that it chilled him to the bone. That’s when Ressas, panicked, reached out and grabbed him. The fierce glint in Seiyad’s eyes faltered at the sight of those frightened, violet irises.
“It’s exactly because of this… that I wanted to keep it hidden until I could tell you everything. But it’s not what you think. I didn’t just stand by, knowing everything. My power… it always comes to me too late…!”
His voice, trembling as if he were about to scream, barely managed to hold onto reason. Ressas bit down hard on his lip, eyes tightly shut as if in agony.
“Just like the devil from the founding myth stands beside us now, so too do the sun and moon walk with us. What the devil desires is to corrupt the sacred moon and trap it in eternal night. To do so, it had to kill the sun—and leave the moon isolated. That’s all I can say. I’ve already said far too much.”
The resolute tone was unlike anything Ressas had shown him before. It was so severe, so unlike the gentle man Seiyad thought he knew.
“You talk as if saying more would kill you.”
That icy demeanor reminded Seiyad of the colder version of Ressas from his past life. The warmth in his heart began to erode. But with that sharp-edged comment, Ressas returned to the familiar face Seiyad recognized.
“No… It’s that I would lose something even more precious.”
“If that’s the case, then I’ll stop asking.”
More precious than your life? That thought alone made it harder to accept. For most people, life is the most precious thing of all. If the taboo surrounding Ressas were tied to something like that, Seiyad could have understood. But something more precious than life? It sounded like an empty excuse.
Seiyad, sinking into cynicism, acted like his former self for a moment. Seeing this, Ressas approached with an anxious expression and took Seiyad’s hand. The once-warm hand felt like a corpse—chilled to the bone.
“Before winter comes… I’ll tell you everything. So please, Eid, don’t be angry with me. Don’t leave me. Not until you’re safe…”
When it came down to it, Seiyad found that he couldn’t pull his hand away. At the very least, he knew one thing Ressas said was true: confronting truths you can’t yet handle would only crack you open. Just like when he had learned the truth about his mother and found himself wanting to push Ressas away.
His instincts screamed that falling into those same cracks again would be a mistake. So—for now—he decided to endure the bitterness.
‘I should never have let emotions get involved in the first place.’
There’s nothing more foolish than acting on feelings when you know better. Yet just now, that strange pang of disappointment had overwhelmed him. Seiyad realized he was being dragged around by his emotions far too much where Ressas was concerned.
‘What do I even want from him?’
After taking a moment to compose himself, Seiyad regained clarity. His true objective had always been to avenge his parents and prevent himself from committing further sins. Even if Ressas was hiding something, if it didn’t obstruct that goal, then there was no need to interrogate him.
Ressas, after all, had already made it clear he didn’t want to become lovers—and Seiyad felt the same. So they should simply focus, as they always had, on their shared mission.
“Understood.”
Seeing how swiftly Seiyad calmed himself, Ressas gave off a fleeting expression that might have been relief—or maybe sorrow—before continuing his explanation.
“We don’t have much time left. My brother… always watches from afar and searches for weaknesses. If he knows I’m here, then many will die.”
Those words tightened the air between them. By saying this, Ressas was essentially confirming that Aster was the demon.
“Then tell me what I need to do.”
“As we purify the remaining three forests, there’s something we need to find. Now that I think of it… You already knew what the right path was, Grand Duke. That’s why you told me to become Crown Prince.”
“…What do you mean by that?”
“We need to find the sword.”
Ressas whispered.
“We must retrieve Holy Death from my brother.”
As he heard those words, Seiyad instinctively recalled the pale sword gripped in a hand. Though what he had always seen was Aster holding it during the Ritual of Invocation, the image that came to mind now was Ressas, standing there before him, ready to execute him.
A blade that gleamed white no matter how many years passed—sharp, as if it were carved from the moon’s bones.
Ressas had killed Seiyad with that very sword.
