Chosen by the Northern Grand Duke

Prologue

There was talent in the man called Harad.

If not, how could he have survived this far?

Fortune and coincidence, fate and comrades.

There were many things he had gained, and many times he survived precisely because he had lost. But in the end, what had sustained him was talent.

Thanks to talent, Harad survived.

He regretted having grabbed the thread of talent too late.

If only he had accepted it earlier, he wouldn't have ended up like this.

...It was a useless lament.

“Is this deception?”

Said the one who had caused that lament.

Though in truth, he wasn't someone to be called a “guy.”

“You’re the one who told me to speak.”

“It was not you I told, but your master.”

“My superior. I’m no slave.”

The man was the Grand Duke who ruled the North.

Harad was his escort knight.

“Go on.”

“You told me to stop.”

“When did I?”

Meeting you? Harad only thought about it.

At that, the Grand Duke’s brow furrowed sharply.

“Well, I think that’s all. Anything you’d like to say?”

“There are a few things.”

The Grand Duke opened his mouth as if he'd been waiting.

“We should’ve driven out Enverque. That bloodline was incompetent. Incompetent to the point that it made one suspect they were threatened with death if they weren’t. Viciously so.”

“Enverque is the Imperial family.”

“I know.”

A chilling regret surfaced.

It was more chilling because it hadn't been impossible.

“The Church was trash too. For all their bluster, who knew they were fools who’d lose the sacred relic.”

Magic belonged to the Otherworld.

A mage was a heretic with the blood of the Otherworld.

If the Church spotted a mage, they killed them first.

They despised magic and treated mages as demons and idiots.

Demon was accurate, but idiot was not.

The Empire and the Church were defeated by the Otherworld.

“We should’ve shunned only the Otherworld, not magic. There were certainly good and helpful mages on the continent. We shouldn’t have blindly trusted a Church that couldn’t even tell the difference.”

While Harad’s regrets were personal, the Grand Duke’s were on a macro scale. Thoroughly political and strategic.

It must have been the difference in status.

The Grand Duke of the North. The second greatest power after the Emperor. For someone like that, personal life barely existed.

“Is that all?”

Harad turned his head to look at the world.

Glaciers floated on the sea that had split the continent in two. Trees the size of castles had risen, and typhoons raged. From the south, iron fell like rain.

The scenery changed with every turn of his head.

Yet the one constant was the heaps of corpses.

It was a battlefield.

Just two days ago, this had been the Empire’s capital. Now it was ruined.

The Church of Sun and Moon, who had so despised mages, collapsed pathetically.

The calamities that had struck the battlefield were not natural—they were the work of the Otherworld.

“That’s the North rising.”

It was the sight of destruction.

Upon seeing it, the Grand Duke thought of his homeland.

The North.

The Empire’s frontline against the Otherworld.

The Wall had crumbled, unable to withstand the Otherworld’s forces.

“I knew. That it wouldn’t be strange if the Otherworld invaded at any moment.”

The invasion was like a predetermined future.

Just as the continent hated the Otherworld, the Otherworld hated the continent.

They had long set their sights on the North’s wall, and the North knew this better than anyone.

So it could have been stopped. Ordinarily.

“...I loved it, but I did not devote myself. I regret not realizing the Otherworld had infiltrated the North.”

The wall should have only been attacked from outside, yet enemies existed within too.

The war began five years ago, but the Otherworld had been hiding in the North long before that.

The Grand Duke hadn’t known.

“There were certainly chances to make up for it. But I failed to grasp them. I wasn’t enough. I should’ve lived more fiercely.”

I should’ve tried harder.

The Grand Duke’s regret was clichéd.

But the Grand Duke himself was not.

He was an extraordinary person.

“If I could return to the past, I wouldn’t make the same mistake.”

The past. As he repeated that word, the Grand Duke’s eyes softened—unlike him.

“You go.”

“Go where?”

“To the past.”

“Are you crazy?”

Harad looked at the Grand Duke with irreverent eyes.

“I’m not crazy.”

Breathing heavily with his back against the wall, the Grand Duke took something out.

To Harad, it looked like a round stone.

Whoever crafted it had carved it beautifully.

“This is a relic passed down in the North. A relic that can return one to the past.”

“...”

“I told you, I’m not crazy.”

Was he really not crazy?

He was a man about to die. So was Harad.

Both had been struck by the magic of the Otherworld.

A curse that made blood pour from every hole in the body—a curse that guaranteed death.

“Let’s say it’s real. There’s nothing left but death anyway.”

Harad chose to believe.

Dying believing or dying not believing—it made no difference.

“But why should I be the one to use it?”

It wasn’t loyalty or flattery.

It was sincerity.

“If that thing’s real, then go fix your laziness yourself.”

If the Grand Duke hadn’t been lazy, the wall called the North wouldn’t have fallen so pitifully.

“You said you regretted it.”

“So do you.”

If Harad’s regret was accepting his talent too late, then the Grand Duke’s regret was squandering his talent with laziness. And yet, the Grand Duke’s name was known across the vast North.

He had been the first to face the Otherworld, had killed the most mages, and had survived the longest.

His name could have been known even earlier.

The lazy Grand Duke became a hero far too late.

So if that stone was real, its rightful owner should be the Grand Duke.

“If both of us have talent, then the one with more should take it.”

All Harad had was talent. But the Grand Duke also had the background of the North.

“Still, it won’t do. Harad, you go.”

“Why?”

Harad frowned. The Grand Duke he remembered was always a rational man.

But the man before him was whining.

“If I go, you’ll forget everything.”

“If I go, then you’ll forget.”

“Maybe not.”

The Grand Duke pointed to the blood oozing from all over his body.

“Whether it’s holy power or magic, it doesn’t last long. It needs a medium. The medium for this power is the blood of the ducal house.”

That stone the Grand Duke treasured had drunk enough of his blood to be sick of it.

“If you use this power, the effects will reach me as well. The one it has consumed the most is my blood.”

So it became, through this war.

No—through today’s defeat.

“I’ll probably dream. I’ll see this fading future again in my dreams. Whenever you, the one who claimed the relic, stimulates me. That’s how it feels.”

The Grand Duke’s response was vague.

Harad realized the origin of that stone was magic.

After all, vagueness was a hallmark of magic.

“That’s why you should go. I have a way to regain the memories.”

It made sense.

Two were better than one.

Even if one of them didn’t retain all their memories.

“What if you write it all off as just a dream?”

“Then you tell me my secret.”

Secret? Harad tilted his head.

He was the Grand Duke’s escort knight. Having protected him for ten years, there was hardly anything between them that could be called a secret.

At that moment, the Grand Duke moved his hand. Just moments ago, he couldn’t even hold a stone properly—and now he suddenly threw off his shirt.

...Two large mounds popped out. Below them, a slim yet firm abdomen curved sensually down to the hips.

“I am a woman.”

Even the voice had changed.

Just moments ago, he was the manliest of men, but now a woman was speaking.

“...?”

Was I hallucinating? The Grand Duke Harad had known until now was the manliest of men. He rubbed his eyes with the last bit of strength he had left.

That was the problem. He failed to see the Grand Duke’s eyes flash. Her hand grabbed Harad’s head and slammed it to the ground.

“...What are you doing?”

His face was crushed into the earth.

His mouth tasted of blood and dirt.

“I said, what are you doing.”

It wasn’t an attack.

Next to Harad’s mouth was the stone.

The one that returned one to the past.

The Grand Duke was trying to feed it to him.

“I’m curious. What kind of mess the current you will make if you go back to the past.”

“Let go.”

He wanted to resist, but had no strength.

That was the nature of the curse they had.

It was strange that the Grand Duke had overpowered Harad.

“It’s all fine. Do whatever you want. The North will not punish you. Didn’t we always revere strength?”

“Let go, I said.”

“Abuse is only possible when one has strength. Just like this.”

The Grand Duke’s hand gripped the back of Harad’s head and moved. His face dragged across the ground. And then something touched it. The stone.

“You ignorant bastard.”

“Yes. You’ll need that kind of nerve. The you of the past, I mean.”

A chuckling sound followed. When he looked up with just his eyes, the Grand Duke was smiling like a woman. Even though she had acted as a man for so long, it didn’t seem strange at all.

“This time too, make me fall for you.”

“...”

“While you’re at it, fall for me too.”

Something entered his mouth. It was the size of the stone. The Grand Duke used the same hand that had pressed his head to cover his nose and mouth.

...Gulp.

***

...His throat convulsed.

It was hard to describe, but it reminded him of the monster meat dumpling he ate when first captured by the North.

“Here, eat it.”

Yeah, that thing.

Raw meat dumpling.

He saw the same one he ate at twenty in front of him.

“Eat.”

The person handing him the raw meat dumpling repeated. Looking at his face, worm-like scars squirmed across it. That face felt familiar somehow. Was this a life-flashing-before-his-eyes moment?

“I said eat it.”

Slap! The sound of a hit rang out.

His cheek stung.

The pain snapped him out of his delusion.

It wasn’t a memory.

This wasn’t the afterlife—it was the North. And that hulking bastard wasn’t a flashback but a real person. That raw meat dumpling was something Harad actually ate.

“Do you still think you’re some noble young master?”

In the past. Twenty years ago.

“You are a hostage. A hostage spared by the mercy of the great ruler of the North, Grand Duke Serzila.”

At twenty, Harad was dragged to the North as a hostage.