Chapter 2
Time flowed swiftly from then on, like a raging blizzard.
Time in the snow mountains was straightforward.
You grew in proportion to how much you ate, and grew stronger in proportion to how much you fought.
But human growth was sometimes unfair.
“Get up, mutt. Tired already?”
Kara's mocking voice rained down over the crown of my head, which was planted in the snow.
Ten years old.
At this age, girls were downright thugs.
Kara was a head taller than me, and overwhelmed me in both strength and skill.
She toyed with me like a younger brother—or rather, like a punching bag.
“Ngh... I haven't lost...!”
I staggered to my feet, using my ax as a cane.
But Kara casually clasped her hands behind her back and lightly poked my forehead with one finger.
“Call me Sis and I'll let you off.”
“Don't make me laugh!”
“Then I guess you'll just have to take more hits.”
Wham!
That day, too, I buried my face in the snow.
Until then, there had been no rosy feelings between us.
There had only been Kara's cheerful playfulness, especially her delight in trampling me as we tried to beat each other.
But barbarian genes were late bloomers.
The year I turned fourteen, a storm raged through my body.
Every morning, my bones ached, and my clothes kept becoming too small and tearing.
It was during a sparring match one day.
“Haa!”
As usual, Kara swung her wooden sword at the top of my head.
An attack I normally would have had to roll away from.
Tap.
But instead of dodging, I caught Kara's wooden sword in one hand.
“......Huh?”
Kara's eyes went round.
Her gaze turned upward.
Before I knew it, I was looking down at Kara.
I had grown so huge that my shadow covered her entire body.
“That doesn't work anymore.”
Just as I grinned and tried to overpower her with sheer strength—
Whoosh.
“Idiot.”
Like a ghost, Kara's body slipped into my embrace.
“Huh?”
Kara used my off-balance center of gravity to send my huge body soaring into the air.
Thump-!
“If you get cocky just because you're big, you'll die, little brother.”
I slammed into the snow even more miserably.
Once our physical advantages reversed, Kara became even more ruthless.
Since she couldn't win in a contest of strength, she honed her technique to the extreme.
Her movements grew more intricate, and her swordsmanship became too sharp for the eye to follow.
In the end, even after I grew another head taller than her, I never once managed to beat Kara.
To me, she was an insurmountable wall.
And then came sixteen.
The season of storm and stress, when hormones ruled the brain, had arrived.
“Haa... haa...!”
Our ragged breathing scattered across the snowfield.
Two shadows tangled and rolled across the snow.
Combat?
No, this was sparring.
But to anyone watching, our entangled position was suggestive enough to be mistaken for beasts courting.
“C-can't you let go?”
Kara, pinned beneath me, growled.
Her silver hair was spread across the snow, and her cheeks were flushed from our intense movements.
I clicked my tongue awkwardly.
We'd tripped over each other's feet when I tried to forcefully block Kara's flashy technique with my strength.
Somehow, I had ended up in the top position.
My hard, massive thighs were pressing down on her pelvis, while both my hands pinned her slender wrists.
A restraining technique we'd used casually as children.
But now...
‘......Soft.’
The resilient curves beneath me, and the scent of skin mixed with sweat, numbed my reason.
We were siblings with not a drop of blood between us.
On paper, we were adoptive siblings.
Even knowing it was wrong, a strange sense of forbidden guilt ran down my spine whenever my heart began pounding of its own accord.
It seemed Kara felt the same.
The girl who had honed her skills to beat me ever since she was fourteen now gazed up at me with strangely trembling eyes, having stopped resisting.
A brief silence.
We were close enough to hear each other's heartbeats.
Kara worried her lip, then whispered in a trembling voice.
“...Get off. You're heavy.”
Those words jolted me back to my senses.
I sprang up in surprise.
“S-sorry.”
“......Hmph.”
Kara brushed the dirt from her clothes and turned sharply away.
The tips of her ears were bright red.
This fresh, ambiguous tension.
But there were clueless interlopers on the snowfield.
In the distance, behind a thick fir tree.
“Yes! That's it! Pounce! Awaken your instincts right there!”
Gorgon, my adoptive father and the chieftain, was clenching his fists and cheering lecherously.
“Will I get to see my grandchild this year? Hang in there, Varg!”
“Shh, keep it down. You'll ruin the kids' mood.”
Beside him, Granny Baba was crouched down, gnawing on dried jerky as though it were popcorn.
“Honestly, shameless. When you're young, you save your strength for the night. Who wastes it all during the day?”
“No, Granny. Beasts don't distinguish between day and night. That's my educational philosophy.”
As the shameless adults leered on, our rosy feelings were growing in a distinctly unpleasant direction.
A little while later.
The resumed sparring match ended in my defeat.
Thud!
“Ugh...!”
This time, it was the other way around.
I was sprawled on my back in the snow, while Kara straddled my chest and pointed her wooden sword at my throat.
The winner was clear.
But Kara's expression wasn't that of a victor.
She pressed the ax against my throat harder and asked in a subdued voice.
“You held back again, didn't you?”
“......”
“Why don't you ever fight me seriously?”
I smiled as though I were the aggrieved one.
“That's unfair. I always fight seriously. You're just too fast.”
“Liar.”
Kara's eyes narrowed.
“You don't open those eyes unless it's a ‘real crisis.’ Those creepy red eyes of yours.”
“......”
“Are you saying you would never harbor murderous intent toward me? That I'm... no longer even enough of a threat to draw out your true strength?”
Bitterness laced Kara's voice.
Kara withdrew the ax and climbed off my chest.
Relief and hurt.
A complicated look, balancing her belief that I would never hurt her against the indignity of my refusing to fight at full strength.
But her gaze soon turned toward her own body.
No matter how much she swung a sword and trained her body, she could never resist the inevitable changes dictated by nature.
The ‘inconvenient lump’ that was unbearably cumbersome for a warrior, having just been pressed against my firm chest, irritated Kara.
Frustration at her breasts as she became a woman, and at the physical gap between us that was only widening.
“This is no fun.”
Kara spun around and strode away.
I scratched my head while lying in the snow.
“But I mean it....”
You'd get hurt if I fought seriously.
I swallowed the words, unable to say them aloud.
Watching from afar, Gorgon's expression changed strangely.
The corners of his mouth, which had been smiling contentedly, drooped, and the chieftain's heavy sense of responsibility seemed to settle over his face.
“Hmm.... Did I make Varg too human? He actually held back.”
He muttered something nonsensical with a serious expression.
Then he soon added with a smile,
“Back in my day, if the mood was like that, I would have just pounced.”
Gorgon paused and fell into deep thought.
“......Ah, wait. Wasn't I the one who got pounced on?”
“......”
“Right, Kara's mother couldn't hold herself back and pounced on me. Hahaha!”
At the chieftain's shameless lament, Granny Baba, who was beside him, clicked her tongue in exasperation.
“But, Gorgon.”
Granny Baba asked quietly.
Her playfulness vanished, leaving only the prophet's deep voice.
“Are you really going to accept the title of Grand Duke? That means we'll have to leave our homeland.”
Baba added as she tore roughly at the jerky she had been chewing.
“And I hear the 「surname」 that bastard of a grand duke plans to bestow is 「Wintersword」? Wintersword... Tsk. He plans to use us as tools of the Empire, doesn't he?”
Gorgon silently gazed across the snowfield.
“Granny. It's been 100 years since the sealing.”
The chieftain's bear-hide cloak fluttered in the cutting wind.
“You know that too, Granny. Before the Croatina Empire came into being, humans had fought among themselves, grabbing one another by the collars.”
Gorgon recited quietly as he gazed at the sky.
“That is, until 「Gates」 opened across the continent one day and monsters poured out.”
“......I know. My father died then, after all.”
“The Empire was created to stop them and eventually sealed every Gate. The Empire has stood for over 100 years now, but...”
Gorgon's gaze turned southward, beyond the Empire's borders.
“But nothing lasts forever. Just as the seals weaken, the Empire will one day fracture. Before that chaos comes...”
He then clenched his fist.
“If we don't get inside the fence first, the tribe won't survive.”
The chieftain's eyes were resolute.
A declaration that he would bend the pride of barbarism and enter the Empire's order for the tribe's survival.
Granny Baba spat out the jerky she had been chewing and grumbled.
“Tsk. That immature little Gorgon is acting all grown-up in front of an old woman.”
Then she snapped as she rose from her seat.
“If you're leaving, wait until after I die. I can't stomach living off the Empire bastards' food.”
* * *
Rustle.
The silent snowfield.
My father, Gorgon, and I had gone hunting alone.
A peaceful afternoon.
Winter sunlight shattered across the snow, and we hid behind a bush, lying in wait for a massive elk.
“Varg.”
Drawing the bowstring, Gorgon asked casually,
“So, have you and Kara made any progress lately?”
“Huh?”
The string slipped from my startled hand.
Twang!
The arrow shot uselessly into the sky, and the startled elk scampered away.
“Ah....”
We're screwed.
I looked at my father, flustered.
He wore a mischievous smile, as though the fleeing elk were beneath his notice.
“W-what are you talking about... We're siblings, and...”
“Hahaha! Siblings? I saw the two of you sneaking off to Moonlight Lake at dawn! Or was that my reflection in the mirror?”
He guffawed, stroking his beard.
“Well, you two do look alike. You're not related by blood, but you're my son. I suppose that makes you more cautious.”
“......”
I had nothing to say.
My face turned as red as a ripe radish.
He knows.
I hung my head in embarrassment, and Gorgon chuckled as he gave my shoulder a light pat.
“Don't be shy. Look at you getting all bashful—what a cute kid.”
Deep affection lay hidden behind the playfulness in Gorgon's eyes.
The chieftain's—no, my father's—warm gaze toward his prospective son-in-law.
“So, how far have you gone? Don't keep me waiting, boy. As your elder in life, let me give you a piece of advice...”
He lowered his voice and whispered conspiratorially.
“Kara's other half is her mother, you know? Though you wouldn't have seen her, Varg.”
“Huh?”
“Anyway, since she's that other half, if you keep hesitating, Kara won't be able to hold herself back and...”
Swish-
A chilling whistle tore through the peaceful air.
Thwack!
“......Ghk?”
Gorgon's laughter abruptly cut off.
A black-feathered arrow was lodged in his right shoulder.
“Father!”
I reflexively supported Gorgon.
But Gorgon's massive body crumpled helplessly.
Dark red blood flowed from the wound.
Poison.
And not just any poison—the deadly neurotoxin made from frost-viper venom.
At that moment, a horrific vision flashed through my mind.
A nightmare as vivid as though I had seen the future.
Gorgon's corpse, its head severed, lay abandoned in the cold snow, riddled with hundreds of arrows like a porcupine.
And Kara stood before it, pulling the arrows from her father's body one by one and wailing as if vomiting blood.
‘Dad... Dad...!’
Her sky-like eyes no longer shone.
Her grief soon turned to madness, and she was leading the tribe into war to reclaim her father's head.
A future of ruin, where everyone died and everything burned.
“Ngh... It's an ambush...!”
Gorgon's groan shattered the vision.
At the same time, the snow-covered bushes all around us began to heave.
Men with inverted red wolf skulls over their heads.
They were the Bloodfang Tribe.
They aimed their bows, their mouths twisted in bloodthirsty grins.
“Traitor Gorgon, you abandoned Lady Sandra!”
In an instant, the horrific vision was swallowed by crimson rage.
My vision turned red.
I heard the sound of reason snapping.