Even as he turned seventeen, Elias remained ensnared in a melancholy that no physician could cure. He spoke little, his voice a murmur lost in the drafty halls. Socializing repelled him, he avoided his siblings' boisterous games, his parents' concerned inquiries, the maids' curtsies, the butlers' bows, and the soldiers' salutes. He retreated instead to his private chambers, where candlelight flickered over dusty tomes of philosophy and forbidden alchemical texts, seeking answers that never came. Yet a flicker of survival instinct lingered from past lives. At dawn he practiced martial forms alone in the castle yard, his lean body honing to wiry muscle beneath the clash of practice swords, sweat mingling with silent tears that froze on his cheeks in the morning chill. He studied strategy obsessively, poring over scrolls of Caesar's campaigns and the Crusades, mapping battles on parchment with ink-stained fingers until his hands cramped, memorizing tactics of feints, flanks, and desperate last stands. "If strength is ever needed again," he would think in the cold solitude of his room, "I must be ready… even if my heart is already dead."
Life felt hollow, a monotonous march toward oblivion. His family worried in hushed tones; courtiers gossiped of a cursed soul. Prince-Regent Friedrich, watching his son wither like a flower denied sunlight, finally summoned him to the throne room one gray afternoon. Tapestries of heroic battles fluttered in the draft as the regent's voice rumbled with heavy concern; "Elias, you wither like a flower in perpetual shadow. The crown's weight is crushing you. Go, live among the commoners. Shed the title, the velvet, the expectations. Find purpose in simple lives. Perhaps freedom will ignite the spark that has gone out in you."
Elias nodded numbly, no argument left in his shattered soul. He was sent to a quiet village under their rule; a quaint hamlet of thatched cottages clustered around a central well where women gossiped over wooden buckets, fields of golden wheat swaying under the sun like a sea of forgotten prayers, and a modest stone church whose bells tolled for vespers like a dirge for the damned. Given a plain house of wattle and daub, with a straw pallet, simple hearth, and rough-hewn table, he lived as a commoner. He chopped wood until his palms blistered and bled, drew water from icy streams until his back screamed, and ate coarse black bread and thin stew that tasted of ash. Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months. No change stirred within him. The villagers eyed the quiet stranger with curiosity, calling him "the gloomy scholar," yet he ignored their invitations to harvest feasts or Maypole dances. His heart remained a frozen wasteland.
One crisp morning, frost glazing the ground like the steppe snow that had claimed Borte, Elias walked to the post house, letter in hand. He had penned it the night before in careful script; "I remain unchanged. Send for me when you will." He sealed it with plain wax, ready to end this futile exile.
Then fate twisted like a dagger in the ribs.
A luxurious carriage, wheeled and gilded, drawn by sleek black horses, rumbled past on the muddy lane. A sudden gust of wind snatched the occupant's wide-brimmed hat, sending it tumbling into the dirt. For one heartbeat, time froze. The lady inside leaned out, her veil slipping, revealing hair of a striking reddish hue, like autumn flames caught in sunlight, exactly as Borte's braids had gleamed beneath the Mongolian moon. The same sharp falcon eyes, the same resilient grace in the set of her high cheekbones, the same ethereal beauty amplified by porcelain skin and lips like rose petals. She was Isolde, Lady Isolde of a distant principality, visiting with a small retinue of guards for respite from court intrigues. Her reddish hair, often hidden under modest veils as custom demanded, caught the light like living fire.
Elias froze mid-step. The world narrowed to her face. For the first time in this life, joy cracked through the permafrost of his gloom. A genuine smile, trembling, disbelieving, bloomed across his lips. Tears streamed unchecked down his cheeks as he rushed forward, scooping the hat from the mud and offering it through the carriage window with shaking hands. "My lady," he whispered, voice raw and trembling like a man reborn. Her armored guards barked, "Stay back, peasant!" but she glanced at him curiously, accepting the hat with a gracious nod. Their eyes met, green flecked with gold, and something ancient and sacred pierced his soul. The carriage rolled onward, but Elias stood rooted, heart thundering. The letter crumpled forgotten in his fist. He tore it to pieces right there in the road, letting the wind scatter the fragments like dead leaves.
Purpose ignited. For the first time since Borte's frozen death, he had reason to wake at dawn.