Philip opened his eyes.

  Light slipped through the window at a rather gentle angle—not harsh, just enough to reveal the tiny specks of dust drifting in the air. If one looked closely, they could be seen floating slowly, like fragments of the morning itself. Birds chirped somewhere in the courtyard outside, their sounds scattered and occasionally interrupted by the footsteps of someone passing along the corridor.

  The scene, to be precise, looked completely ordinary.

  And perhaps because it was too ordinary, Philip found it hard to believe.

  In his most recent memory—or rather, the memory he had not yet fully dared to confirm—light rarely appeared in such a gentle way. In that place, light usually came with observation, notes… and more than once, pain. To put it plainly, light had never been a good sign.

  He remained still.

  Not moving.

  Perhaps a few seconds passed. Perhaps longer. To be honest, Philip no longer trusted his sense of time very much.

  A rather strange thought crossed his mind: perhaps this was just a hallucination. The brain sometimes did very strange things at the moment of collapse—that was what people said. Vivid dreams before death, for example.

  Yet his body provided a few rather… convincing pieces of evidence.

  Like the coldness of the wooden floor.

  Philip slowly raised his hand.

  A small hand.

  So small that it took him a few seconds to accept it.

  There were no scars. No twisted joints. No traces of the times his body had been distorted and then restored in ways that, when he thought about them carefully, still made him shiver a little.

  He stared at that hand for quite a while.

  Philip’s reaction, to be fair, did not resemble that of someone who had just come back to life. There was no scream, no panic.

  It resembled a process of observation.

  As if he were testing a hypothesis.

  A hypothesis that even he found… somewhat absurd.

  Philip sat up.

  His body felt light.

  Suspiciously light.

  There was no familiar pain in his back. No sensation of his joints protesting whenever he moved. Everything functioned so smoothly that he had to pause for a moment simply to confirm that he was indeed moving.

  Analyzed coldly, this could suggest that he was in another body.

  Or a second possibility—perhaps even harder to believe—he was in his own body, but at a much earlier point in time.

  He stepped down from the bed.

  His feet touched the floor.

  The cold sensation spread clearly upward.

  There was no sound of iron chains.

  No smell of rusted metal.

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  Only a small noble’s room, the kind one might find in any third-rate territory within the Kingdom.

  A dark wooden wardrobe. A writing desk with a few old scratches. A stack of books leaning slightly to one side—most of them unopened. And in the corner of the room lay a wooden sword, the kind children used during formal training sessions.

  Philip looked around.

  His gaze eventually stopped at the bronze mirror hanging on the wall.

  He walked toward it.

  The child in the mirror looked back at him.

  About eight years old. Perhaps nine. It was difficult to say exactly.

  A face not yet worn down by wine and ambition. Hair still neat. Eyes—at least before he had awakened—likely once rather carefree.

  Philip tilted his head.

  The child in the mirror did the same.

  A silence stretched between them.

  “…Seriously.”

  He murmured quietly, almost to himself.

  The voice sounded… much younger than the one he remembered.

  If he had to find a reasonable explanation, Philip could think of several possibilities. Magic, perhaps. Or the result of some past experiment. This world did not lack such strange things, not after what he had experienced there. Even so, he did not dare to conclude anything yet.

  To be honest, at this moment he knew only one thing.

  He had returned.

  . . .

  A knock sounded at the door.

  Philip flinched.

  The reaction came faster than he expected. Perhaps the memories of doors opening—and what followed afterward… things not easy to recall—were still too vivid.

  “Young master?”

  The voice of an older man.

  “Are you awake?”

  Philip inhaled slowly.

  That voice was familiar.

  The butler of the Montserrat family.

  In his memories, the man would die of illness a few years later. When it happened, Philip had barely paid attention. Thinking about it now perhaps said quite a lot about the kind of person he used to be.

  “…Come in.”

  The door opened.

  The butler bowed with customary politeness. His eyes quickly swept over Philip, likely checking whether the fever had passed.

  “It is fortunate that you have awakened. Baron Montserrat was quite worried.”

  Philip nodded.

  He did not respond immediately.

  Partly because he was still slightly dizzy. Partly because his memories were gradually rearranging themselves inside his mind.

  The Montserrat family.

  A small baronial territory.

  Subordinate to a count.

  Within the Kingdom of Re-Estize.

  A kingdom which—if what he remembered was correct, and he rather hoped his memory was wrong—would not exist much longer.

  Philip blinked.

  His reaction to that thought was rather… complicated.

  Fear, perhaps.

  Confusion, certainly.

  But the most prominent feeling was a kind of empty calm. After everything he had experienced, the idea of a nation collapsing no longer felt as dramatic as it once had.

  Still, that did not mean he wanted to be nearby when it happened.

  Philip looked toward the window.

  The sunlight remained gentle.

  A servant was sweeping the courtyard.

  If someone were to look at this scene without knowing anything about the future, they would probably think it was just a very ordinary morning.

  And perhaps that was precisely what made it unsettling.

  Within the Montserrat family, he was the third son. Not the heir, nor a child who received much attention.

  His position was… rather insignificant.

  “Where is my father?” Philip asked.

  The butler answered immediately.

  “Baron Montserrat is having breakfast.”

  He paused briefly, as though considering whether he should add more.

  “He has already been informed that the young master has recovered from the fever.”

  That was all.

  Philip nodded.

  The reaction matched his memories. Baron Montserrat did not exactly hate him, but there was no particular reason for him to care either.

  In a family with too many sons, such things were quite common.

  The butler continued:

  “You should rest a little longer. After all, you have just recovered from a severe fever.”

  Philip did not object.

  In truth, he had no immediate plans anyway.

  His mind was still somewhat hazy. Part of his memories was still trying to catch up with reality.

  Philip turned to look out the window.

  Sunlight stretched across the courtyard.

  A servant carried two buckets of water from the well, walking slowly. A little farther away, someone could be heard chopping firewood.

  If one only looked at this scene, it would be difficult to imagine that the world could change so quickly.

  At this time, the kingdom was still peaceful.

  The annual war with the Baharuth Empire had not yet begun.

  The terrifying Demon King Jaldabaoth had not appeared.

  And certainly no one had yet mentioned the name that would later nearly bring the entire kingdom to ruin.

  Philip closed his eyes for a moment.

  He did not need to think that far ahead.

  At least not now.

  After everything that had happened—or everything he believed had happened—simply lying in a bright room like this, hearing birds outside the courtyard, already felt like a rare luxury.

  Seeing his silence, the butler bowed.

  “I shall have someone bring you some food.”

  Philip gave a slight nod.

  The door closed.

  The room became quiet again.

  Philip looked at his small hand one more time, then slowly exhaled.

  If this truly was a second chance—though he still did not fully believe it—then perhaps this time he should begin more simply.

  First, he only needed to understand where he was.

  As for everything else… it would not be too late to think about it later.