Let me tell you a story about a boy.
A boy who longed for justice more than anyone else, and because of that, became more cruel than anyone else.
His dream was simple.
He wished to build an ideal kingdom without conflict, and he held onto that hope deep in his heart.
At first, it wasn't even truly his own dream.
He had borrowed it from someone else.
At the age of seven, he drifted into a distant and unfamiliar otherworld.
Discovered, deceived, captured… in the end, he was reduced to a human slave of the native fairies.
For years after that, the boy suffered endless humiliation and abuse.
At the very depths of despair, when all seemed lost, a girl known as the Witch saved him.
The boy was taken in by the Witch of the Land of Rain, becoming her very first companion.
When did he start wanting to make her dream come true?
Perhaps it was to repay her for saving his life.
Perhaps he was captivated by her beauty.
Or perhaps his reason was the same as the Witch's all along.
He simply wanted a place to belong.
A boy with nowhere to belong.
A witch with nowhere to belong.
Together, they set out to create a paradise that belonged only to them.
On this land, wars between their own kind and unknown calamities had raged for six thousand years.
They drove back disasters. They mediated conflicts.
And yet, every time they achieved something, they were treated as a nuisance and pushed aside.
At first, the two of them could only lick each other's wounds.
Later, they found companions they could trust, and even the stubborn Witch gradually learned how to navigate the world more tactfully.
As the years passed, they endured countless victories and defeats, setbacks and betrayals, arguments and reconciliations.
Through it all, they came to understand something.
Their enemies were not only the calamities, but also the fairies they wished to protect.
The boy and the Witch both grew cold and merciless, and their methods became ever more extreme.
They defeated every calamity, crushed all opposition, and conquered every clan.
At long last, their dream became reality.
But just as they unified the islands and clans, established a capital and order, and stood on the brink of their ideal world, the boy realized his life was reaching its end.
Unlike the Witch or the fairies, he was human, a short-lived being.
He had prolonged his life through Magecraft, relying on hibernation and physical modification to survive for three thousand years.
Yet he had forgotten that, in the end, his soul was still human.
He had forgotten that this world would never have a place for him.
In the first year of the Queen's reign, on the eve of the coronation, the boy's life came to an end.
On his tombstone were these words:
"The Magus from a foreign land, Son of Orkney, Fairy Knight Arthur, First King of Britannia, Husband of Queen Morgan,
The Nameless King rests here.
He was once a king, and when he returns, he shall be a king."
...
...
...
"Haa… haa… haa… haa…!"
Shirou Amamiya jolted upright from the wooden bed, gasping for breath.
What greeted him was a bright, spotless white room.
This is Prydwen, the coffin Morgan built specifically for me. It's huge… Wait, no! Wasn't I supposed to be dead!?
Shirou looked around in confusion, his mind spinning.
Where the hell am I? Is this still the Fairy Kingdom?
Something about this place feels familiar.
This is the children's home where I used to live!
Did I come back?
Did I return to Fuyuki from Britannia!?
He lowered his gaze to look at his body.
Skinny, short, slight, frail.
He raised his head and looked at his reflection in the glass.
The baby face people always teased him about had now truly become a child's face.
Could it be that not only had he returned to Fuyuki, but his body had also reverted to that of a seven-year-old?
How could that be…
Could everything that just happened have been nothing more than a dream?
The girl named "Morgan," the otherworld called "Britannia"… did none of it exist?
Wild guesses were meaningless.
During his long pilgrimage, Shirou had come to understand one thing: only through action could he arrive at an answer.
He closed his eyes, focused his mind, and sensed the location of the Circuits buried within his body.
Shirou softly chanted an incantation.
"..."
In an instant, a fluorescent green light filled the entire room.
When the glow faded, a golden short blade with an ornate design appeared in Shirou's palm.
"…So it wasn't a dream."
The boy stared blankly at the magic sword Cruaidín in his hand.
It was the weapon of Grímr, the Sage, one of his companions in the Fairy Kingdom.
The fact that he could successfully project this magic sword proved that everything he had experienced there was real, not a dream or a delusion.
At that thought, his eyes began to sting.
"Now that I think about it… the children's home…"
Shirou Amamiya was an orphan.
He had lost both his parents at a very young age and was now living in an orphanage, waiting to be adopted by some kind adult.
Though his appearance was that of a seven-year-old boy, the soul within him was already old and worn.
"I'm basically an old man already. It doesn't feel right to keep freeloading here… time to go."
With that thought, Shirou quietly slipped out of the room.
As expected of a child's body, it felt incredibly light.
His Strength and Mana were less than a tenth of what they had been at their peak, but his agility hadn't diminished. If anything, it felt even better.
"Security like this is nothing compared to the 'Garden' I used to be in."
The red-haired boy concealed himself as he moved, slipping silently through the corridor.
Just then, a caregiver appeared ahead.
If he got caught, he would probably be sent back to his room… but it wasn't a big issue.
Instead of hiding, Shirou quickened his pace and followed behind her.
Sticking close to the caregiver's back.
The distance between them was less than ten centimeters, yet Shirou trailed her step for step with careful precision.
There was a time when, in order to quickly suppress a war in a certain territory, Shirou had mastered countless techniques that struck fear into his enemies.
Disguise, infiltration, lockpicking, torture, ambush, assassination, sniping, poisoning, explosives…
Despite being a knight, he had no regard for knightly honor, using any means necessary. Because of that, he was scornfully called the "Fairy Slayer," becoming a crimson nightmare that loomed over Britannia.
"Hmm…?"
Even though Shirou hadn't made a single sound, perhaps out of instinct, the caregiver suddenly turned around.
Of course, she saw nothing.
If this had been the Shirou of before, he would have pulled off an acrobatic dodge and then proudly said, "Easy."
But the current Shirou was only seven years old, and with how close they were, he just happened to fall right into her blind spot.
"Must've been my imagination…"
Muttering to herself, the caregiver saw nothing and continued forward.
It didn't take much effort for Shirou to slip out of the children's home.
"The blue sky…"
The boy stood there, staring blankly upward.
After growing used to the twilight skies of the Fairy Kingdom, only now did he remember that he had once lived beneath a blue sky.
Since his return, this was what surprised Shirou Amamiya the most.