He awoke with a sticky, feverish sensation clinging to his entire body; his limbs felt heavy, and his eyes burned faintly. Yet, Igfrid felt an uncommon thrill as he faced the familiar yet long-forgotten faces of his retinue. His gaze swept over the servants assembled before him, preparing him for the day. He remembered one of them perfectly—the girl who had poisoned him in early childhood, triggering his mana fever to erupt at five instead of seven. Back then, he had grown unnaturally powerful for his age, as his unchecked mana kept him in a feverish stupor. The poisoning had been so severe that he truly lost his mental faculties for years, until his body adapted to the overwhelming mana his system produced in a desperate bid to survive.
The nursemaid's freckled face and green eyes gave her an innocent appearance. She was a mid-ranking noble trapped in her role as caretaker to the son of the monarch's first wife—a woman stripped of her title as Kralice by a foreigner and cast into obscurity.
Any sane person would naturally be content to serve the House of the Krals, even if attending to a second prince whose political faction was practically nonexistent, thanks to the deranged obsession of the disgraced Vassel kralice.
Yet this girl, deceived by the very woman Igfrid loathed (the one who called herself his mother), had allied with Sigurd's faction. How had Rosemarie, the Kral's first wife, tricked the foolish nursemaid into believing she'd been contacted by the current kralice and not by Rosemarie herself, a mere second queen? With the talents of the woman who bore him, Igfrid was certain it hadn't been difficult—her schemes undoubtedly lurked in the shadows of the crown.
That nursemaid, whose name had faded from his memory in his past life, was Hilderange: silent, forgettable in appearance, yet competent. Likely, that last trait had made her a target for Rosemarie's machinations.
He also recalled that Hilderange's end had been neither sweet nor merciful. Even targeting a prince with no apparent faction was a sin punishable by death.
Igfrid mused that even if he acted cautiously around this foolish girl and the rest of his retinue, their fates would likely remain unchanged. With his small body, his magic was barely enough to use his innate abilities or strengthen his muscles in emergencies. He needed to gather ingredients to mitigate the effects of the poison they would soon administer. Merely thinking of the consequences he'd suffered the first time this tragedy unfolded shook him—he refused to waste years of his current temporal advantage just because he was a resourceless child.
He had no desire to sink back into the mental numbness that followed the poisoning, a state that had convinced everyone he was the disabled prince, a facade he later used to escape.
It would be easy to dismiss the girl and accuse his own mother, who, in the previous timeline, had likely poisoned him as a trap to frame her rival. The Kral might not fully believe him, but doubt would take root, acknowledging Rosemarie's obsession could drive her to such extremes. She'd surely be separated from him —though this would cause more problems than benefits, as Rosemarie's family was a resource Igfrid could exploit. Another option was to play along and accuse the Kralice of assassination, but that might spark premature conflicts he couldn't handle yet, like his elder brother's emotional fracture or an early uprising in Duat, given that Kralice Emmanuelle was a mixed-race princess from the colonies.
In the end, he resolved to confront the matter head-on: brew the necessary potions and settle his unfinished business with the woman who bore him, in that order.
As a prince who had yet to receive the gods' blessing, most of the palace remained off-limits to him. His education was foundational education for the imperial court , devoid of magical studies until his first accelerated growth fever manifested just before the age of seven. His sword training mirrored that of any mana-less squire—a wooden blade his five-year-old body could barely lift. Due to his noble rank, he trained alongside his brother Sigurd, two years his senior. In his memories, Sigurd's treatment of him had always been neglectful, though Igfrid still enjoyed marginally more freedom than his foolish elder brother.
Later that morning, at the royal guards' training grounds, he relived these memories. The blows from Sigurd's sword—lauded as that of a prodigy—forced Igfrid backward as if he were battling a giant. The disparity in their age and physical development made it unfair, even though Sigurd was forbidden from using his magical abilities, having already received the gods' blessing and completed his first major growth phase. When the first strike landed on his tender flesh, Igfrid stifled a cry, though it burned on his tongue.
The Igfrid of the past would have endured these unjust sessions silently, waiting for his brother to exhaust his barrage of strikes while Sir Rafreid, the princes' instructor, barked defensive maneuvers. The elderly knight belonged to the old school, favoring brutal realism over rote drills—a method suited to battlefield veterans like the Igfrid of his past life, but needlessly harsh for a five-year-old.
"Why not just surrender, brother? You're not meant for the sword!" Sigurd taunted, swinging his wooden blade toward Igfrid's shoulder. Drawing on his past-life reflexes, Igfrid barely deflected the blow, his body sluggish and strength laughable—half due to his lingering fever, half from adjusting to this frail form.
Igfrid ignored the provocation, focusing solely on surviving the session unscathed. He knew Sigurd's arrogance would eventually be his undoing.
Yet, thanks to his hard-earned combat experience, Igfrid managed to unbalance Sigurd and land a few strikes of his own. He knew his blows would pale against those of the adult knights Sigurd sparred with, but for now, even minor victories mattered.
It didn't take long before he collapsed to the ground, unable to continue his futile resistance. In his weakened state, merely holding his own against Sigurd—who was accustomed to a docile Igfrid—was a feat. His brother withdrew with a troubled gaze.
"You're improving…" Sigurd muttered hesitantly as a parting remark.
After the beating and receiving Sir Rafreid's approval for his swordsmanship progress, Igfrid left the training grounds with his retinue in tow: two nursemaids—one being Hilderange—and a royal guard he recalled had been replaced in his past life after the poisoning.
The palace's medical greenhouse was one of the few areas not off-limits to him, located near the royal physicians' quarters—a place he'd frequented in the past due to Sigurd's habit of injuring him during sparring. Igfrid had never complained, not even before rewinding time, though it gnawed at him. In his tender years, he'd wept more than once during treatments, earning only scoldings from his mother.
In his past life, he'd swallowed his grievances to appease the woman who abandoned him once he'd outlived his usefulness. Now, he let it slide, knowing Sigurd's comeuppance loomed. Letting his brother bask in fleeting triumph was a mercy he'd grant… for now. Using magic prematurely to humiliate Sigurd would draw unwanted attention—reckless and impractical.
If his father or the court fixated on him now, seizing Rosemarie and her machinations would become impossible. He'd be watched relentlessly, his staff replaced, and his freedom stripped until even his chambers offered no peace.
The Emperor, upon glimpsing any exceptional potential, would indisputably crown him a heir—even if it meant sidelining the son of the woman he loved most.
This cold pragmatism, prioritizing the empire over family, was admirable in a way… though it had led Canaria's father to his death.
"The Kral always placed the kingdom's welfare above his heart. Isn't that the ideal emperor?"
Indeed, his progenitor was the perfect ruler—but the worst kind of father, brother, and husband.
The Emperor seemed immune to his family's feelings, or his own. Ironic, then, that he'd succumbed to Silvine's seductive magic and her cheap, trickster talents.
This time, the medic attending him was a young apprentice with dark hair and gray eyes—unfamiliar, likely a student of the royal physicians.
"How long have you had this fever?" she asked gently.
"I'm not sure…" he replied calmly. "I just feel a bit tired."
The young medic glared at the nursemaids as if wanting to strike them.
"If you're unwell, Your Highness, you must say so. Even a mild fever is dangerous for someone so young. I'll instruct the royal nursemaids to monitor you closely. At your age, potions are too risky, so vigilance is essential. Understood?"
"Yes!" Igfrid plastered an innocent, practiced smile across his face.
"We're finished here, Your Highness. Please wait in the gardens while I brief your attendants."
The young prince slid off the seat with Hilderange's aid and limped toward the door, where his assigned guard stood silent and shadowlike.
As a regular visitor to the medical wing, Igfrid knew nearly everyone. Typically, after Sigurd's thrashings, he'd linger in the medicinal gardens under his retinue's distant watch, lost in self-pity with the aethriles as his only companions. Seated on a bench, awaiting the effects of non-magical treatments (too risky for a child), he'd drown in childish hopes for parental love. Today, he followed routine, soon gazing at the medical wing's herb beds.
Rarely did the herbalist tending these flowers—prized for beauty and healing—approach him. Yet here he was, old Claude, sharing silent camaraderie. Igfrid cherished it.
The prince remembered Claude, a highborn noble, and his patience. During Igfrid's years feigning disability, the old man had explained things as many times as stars in the sky, never irritated, never dismissive. The day Igfrid fled the palace, leaving his doppelgänger behind, he'd taken one of those crystalline blue flowers. Claude had simply smiled, as if he'd always known the prince's ruse.
"They're so beautiful…" Igfrid sighed, hoping to spark conversation as in his lost memories.
"In more ways than one might think, Your Highness." Claude's voice was soft, rhythmic, reminiscent of ancient prayers. "The aethriles are a divine gift—no plant so beneficial and fair exists in all the world!"
"Truly?" Igfrid widened his eyes in feigned wonder. He'd mastered exploiting his cherubic face, though he loathed it—a mirror of his mother's, the woman he despised. Growing up with her likeness had warped his self-image, banishing mirrors from his presence. Yet Canaria had loved that cursed visage.
"Of course, Prince Igfrid! Their beauty is but the surface. When powdered by experts, their unique properties save lives."
Igfrid sprang up, bruises nearly faded though muscle pain screamed with every step. He approached the flowers, their crystal-like petals glowing in sunlight. Delicate yet unyielding —he knew from experience that grinding them required days of a mid-rank noble's mana.
"May I take one?"
"All here are yours, Your Majesty. But if I may ask—what for?"
"A whim, perhaps. This flower… quiets my heart."
Old Claude smiled. To him, the nobility—especially the imperial circle—were too harsh on young souls. He snipped an aethrile with tiny mana-flow shears, his constant companions. Bathed in daylight, it wouldn't wilt. He hoped it might stay immortal in the prince's chambers, a fragile defiance of fate.
Back in his chambers, Igfrid placed the aethril inside a preservationbox —a magical tool he'd requested from his retinue —and locked it in a drawer. He knew the flower wouldn't wilt within the enchanted container, yet he still felt urgency gnawing at him. Processing it into powder would require night-time secrecy, but without the gods' blessing, he couldn't solidify his mana as he had in his past life. He needed a mana stone to craft a mortar durable enough for the task.
"My lord, wouldn't it be better to display it in a precious vase?" asked the head nursemaid, a high-ranking noblewoman well into her twilight years. Her hands bore the tell-tale blue stains of mana-forging. This was Demether, his blood-related great-aunt and the closest he'd had to a true mother.
"It's a treasure… and treasures should be guarded," he replied in his childish voice, layering it with feigned naivety. "Didn't Grandmother say the same when she stored my infant toys away?"
The old woman smiled, melancholy and faintly startled.
"Your Excellency was too young to remember that day, surely?"
"Memories are treasures too, so I keep them safe in my mind," he countered. Even before his regression, he'd always possessed a sharp memory.
"I see…" she murmured, her eyes softening with a hint of maternal warmth.
******
A few days later, Igfrid requested an audience with his mother, the Second Queen —styled as Vassel Kralice —Rosemarie Von Eastrit D'Tyr. Her beauty was legendary: agelessly striking, with a doll-like face of rosy lips and golden, luminous eyes. Golden like the gaudy gold plating her chambers and her life of hollow opulence, woven through with absurd schemes to claim a love forever out of reach.
In the timeline the prince had abandoned, Rosemarie had exploited Igfrid until deeming him useless —a child incapable of furthering her ambitions to seize the Emperor's gaze. She'd discarded him like worthless trash once his utility expired.
He still remembered those golden eyes brimming with contempt as she banished him to the East Tower like a broken toy. That moment… it haunted him.
She'd left him under Demether's care in that tower, built by his great-great-grandfather to imprison his own Kralice out of jealousy. The surrounding area was laced with beacons that neutralized mana, ensuring that any magical outburst from Igfrid's fractured mind would destroy only the tower and its occupants.
He'd lived there since the poisoning-induced fevers shattered his sanity, enduring the searing pain as his magic circuits overloaded, teetering perpetually on death's edge. At times, he'd felt his mana organ pumping thick, scalding mana into his brain, flooding his nervous system until hallucinations consumed him.
Demether had died as he began to recover… He hadn't even gotten to say goodbye.
Had Rosemarie embraced him then, he might have abandoned his façade of madness. But she forgot him entirely, until her own despair —born of the Kral's utter abandonment —drove her to suicide.
Today, he'd confront her anew in this second chance, all for Canaria's sake. The meeting would take place in a room he'd seen only a handful of times: a space draped in gold and red —her favourite colours back when he'd dared call her mother.
More than nervous, Igfrid seethed with disgust. The thought of borrowing power from someone like Rosemarie and her family revolted him.
As always, she received him in her office adjoining the Pleasure Palace, where Rosemarie oversaw the harem's management and other duties befitting her dual roles as a Von Eastrit noble and royal wife.
Just as on the day Igfrid had been discarded, midday sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains of towering windows, gilding every golden furnishing —warm in hue yet cold and hollow, much like the room's inhabitant.
There she stood, at the heart of this sanctuary tailored to her vanity, smiling her perpetual counterfeit smile. Her slate-blue hair cascaded around a face so flawlessly sculpted it made Igfrid loathe his own mirrored features.
Rosemarie rose, gliding toward him with faux-maternal concern. The brush of her scarlet silk gown against him sparked revulsion. He didn't want her touch —any woman's touch, save Canaria's. Unconsciously, he stiffened, a doll frozen under her performative affection.
Her pantomimes held no power now. Once, they might have swayed a child's heart, but Igfrid had returned with lifetimes of betrayal etched into his soul —hers above all. He would not forget.
"Oh, Igfrid… Is something wrong, darling?" Her voice dripped exaggerated worry, bile to his ears.
"Could we speak alone, Rosemarie? Seriously." His whisper carried none of a five-year-old's timbre. Her face shifted, as though she clutched a viper, not her son.
She straightened, nobility eclipsing maternity, and ordered her handmaidens to prepare the private tea chamber with regal detachment.
Rosemarie's handmaidens were efficient yet eerie. In his abandoned timeline, they'd been more than servants —soldiers veiled in thick cloth embroidered with mana-disrupting glyphs, their bodies swathed head-to-toe, anonymity their armor.
Soon, Igfrid was led to her hidden parlor, a space behind her office that mirrored her: opulent, elegant, frigid.
As they sat, the shrouded women performed their silent tea ritual —cups and saucers arranged like battlefield pieces —while mother and son measured each other.
When they were finally alone, Rosemarie's voice honeyed the air: "What did you wish to discuss so urgently, darling?" A masterclass in political seduction, yet to Igfrid, it reeked of sickness.
He met her golden gaze, those lying eyes that once feigned tenderness. Every part of her was artifice.
Igfrid laced his hands on the table. His crimson eyes glowed with a fire unnoticed —or ignored —until now.
"Enough masks, Rosemarie. I want a deal." The five-year-old prince smiled softly, words a blade meant for her ears alone. Even here, he trusted nothing.
Igfrid's words were met with a smile as deceptively serene as a spring brook —a smile Rosemarie had never worn before, as if she'd shed her false gestures, revealing in the fruition of her schemes.
"Ah… My son finally proves his true bloodline!" Rosemarie's delight dripped with possessiveness. To Igfrid, she was merely thrilled her tool of a son had become functional. No doubt she was already plotting how to wield him as her trump card in her twisted obsession with the Kral.
"So… What deal interests you, Igfrid?" Her slender fingers danced along the silver rim of her teacup, her posture relaxed, almost girlish. The shift to faux-maternal warmth unsettled him, but lifetimes of practice let him mirror her facade —innocent, joyful.
"I'll become crown prince, as you desire. In exchange, I want freedom of movement and action." Their masks held: hers, adoring mother; his, devoted son. To an outsider, they were harmony incarnate —not a boy of five bargaining to overthrow his brother.
Igfrid's resolve had been forged in a future now erased.
"Ah…" Her laugh was delicate, songbird-sweet. "Dear Igfrid… Your crown was decided long before your birth." She cradled his face, a mother's tender caress. "My divinetreasure… You think I'd let you roam freely? Impossible."
Igfrid seized her hand, her skin cold beneath his. Who did she think she was? Rosemarie clung to power only by the Kral's fleeting tolerance, her faction weak, her love unrequited. Did she truly believe motherhood alone would bind him?
"But Rosemarie, I know your plans. And if I know… others might too." His voice softened, lethal. "As your loyal son, I'd hate for rumors to reach the Kral… What would become of me —a powerless second prince? Or you, his scorned vassel Kralice?"
Rosemarie's face contorted —shock, fury. Igfrid savored it. She feared not his nascent mind-reading gift, but his cunning.
"You can't risk it, can you? Not since Father relegated you to the shadows —a mere hound…" He brushed a kiss over her gloved hand, then rose, victory sweet.
Before leaving, he delivered his final blow:
"I'll await one of your specialroses, Mother."
The first time he'd called her that in this life —and likely the last.