プロローグ
空が震える前に
Long before the Siege descended… long before the Thirty‑Three Domains were carved into fear and ruin… there was an age the historians would later call The Last Peace.
It was not unity.
It was not harmony.
It was simply the longest stretch without their feuds erupting into full-scale war.
The Last Peace
During the Last Peace, the Thirty‑Three lived under shared skies, but never united. Old grudges smoldered beneath every courteous bow. Border skirmishes flared and faded like sparks in dry grass. Treaties were signed with one hand and undermined with the other.
And yet, for a time, the world held.
Trade flowed. Armadas patrolled. Royal courts glittered with ceremony and pride. Each Domain believed itself the heart of civilization.
But none shone brighter than Unzen.
Capital of the High Order
Forged in mountain storms and tempered by centuries of conquest, Unzen was the jewel of the east — a Domain whose armadas were feared, whose scholars were revered, and whose royal bloodline was said to descend from the first kings of the Founding.
A Capital of the High Order, its Sentinel, Jason Storm‑Bound, was a living legend.
Where Unzen walked, the others watched. Where Unzen faltered, the world would tremble.
The Elemental Sentinels
In those days, the Sentinels were not relics or memories — they were the living embodiment of royal authority. Chosen young and squired for decades, each apprentice served a Sentinel Master whose armor they might one day inherit — if they survived long enough. Some Masters took as many as ten squires in a lifetime; most lost more than they raised. Only the strongest, the most attuned, ever rose to Sentinelhood and claimed their Master’s armor. A single Sentinel could break a battalion. To behold one was to witness divine authority — a living shield. Their armors were relics of the Founding, forged when mana was raw and the elements still bound to the land. But the armor alone was not enough. Only those with the right discipline, spirit, and resonance could survive the bond. To wear a Sentinel’s armor was to carry the weight of a kingdom. And in the Last Peace, the Sentinels stood at full strength — a sight the world would never see again.
The First Omen
It began as a tremor in the deep mana — so faint that only the most attuned felt it. A ripple beneath the world. A shiver in the ley currents. A momentary dimming of the constellations. Scholars debated. Priests whispered. Sentinels stood watch in uneasy silence. In time, the Domains ignored it.
Peace, even fractured, had made them complacent.
The Second Omen
A pulse of energy — unnatural, directionless, wrong. Animals fled their dens. Storms formed without wind. The night sky flickered like a dying lantern. This time, all the Domains felt it. None understood it. And so they turned on one another. Whispers spread that it was a power play from the Obsidian Reach… or a veiled warning from the Sanctified Realm… or, Founders be damn, some forbidden experiment of the Arcane Academia. Whatever the truth, the tremor had become impossible to ignore.
Uneasiness Spreads
Even in the high citadel of Unzen, the tremors stirred unrest. King Edrich withdrew into the royal archives, poring over ancient scrolls and half‑forgotten histories in search of answers no scholar could give. His advisors spoke of sleepless nights, of candles burning to their stubs, of the King tracing symbols older than the Domains themselves. And if a King as mighty as Edrich was troubled, the rest of the Domains had reason to fear — for the very mana of the land had begun to shift.
The Last Peace Ends
The omens passed like shadows across the world — subtle at first, then unsettling, then impossible to dismiss. And still the Domains clung to their rivalries. Their posturing. Their pride. Their blindness.
Until the night the sky finally trembled.
Until the moment the heavens tore open. Until the world learned that peace — fractured or not — had never prepared them for what was coming.
The fall did not begin with monsters. It began with warnings no one heeded.
第2章 ― 評議会
国王と女王
長らく評議会は招集されていなかった。建国以来、すべての領地の支配者が一堂に会したことはなかった。しかし今、世界が炎に包まれ、包囲戦が行く手を阻むものすべてを貪り尽くす中、招集の声が上がり、支配者たちはそれに応えた。
彼らは信頼から来たのではない。団結から来たのでもない。必要に迫られて来たのだ。
世界は滅びつつあり、アリック王子の声だけが、希望を繋ぎ止める唯一の糸となっていた。
支配者たちの到来
評議会の壮麗な大理石の広間は、遥か昔の時代を偲ばせる記念碑だった。そびえ立つ柱には初代三十三の紋章が刻まれ、アーチ型の天井にはかつての輝きを失った星座が描かれていた。六つの玉座は空席のまま、滅びた領地への静かな追悼の意を表していた。
第1巻を予約注文する
第4章
孤児たち
抑圧のベールの下で
命は助かったものの、アリック王の娘にとって、その後の歳月は過酷なものだった。
8度目の冬を迎える頃には、宮殿の厨房はアリカにとって世界のすべてになっていた。煙と熱気、ガチャガチャと音を立てる鍋、鞭のように鋭い声が響き渡る世界。夜明けに目が覚めることは決してなかった。彼女はいつも夜明け前に起き、すでに仕事に取りかかり、その日に待ち受けるどんな残酷な出来事にも備えていた。
鋭い眼光と砕けた石のような声を持つ女主人――アリカに自分の立場を思い知らせることを楽しんでいるようだった。カップを落としたり、歩みが遅くなったり、ほんの少し躊躇しただけでも、鞭打ちや突き飛ばしを受け、石畳の上をよろめきながら転ぶことになった。幼い頃、アリカはなぜ女主人が自分をこれほどまでに憎み、これほど頻繁に殴るのか不思議に思っていた。
第5章
闇の中の真実
名前の日と秘密
その後、アリカは宮殿内を影のように移動する術を身につけた。激しい怒りをかわし、唇のわずかな歪みや足音の変化から危険を察知する方法を学んだのだ。イーサンはできる限り彼女を守ろうとしたが、彼でさえどこにでもいるわけにはいかなかった。
彼女が全く予想していなかった唯一の不変のものは、彼女が最も恐れていた場所からやってきた。
ダンジョン。
最初は、彼女は黙って、目を伏せ、息を潜めてトレイを運んでいた。しかし、一番奥の独房にいる老人――優しく疲れた目をした老人――は、いつもまるで彼女が会う価値のある人物であるかのように挨拶してくれた。
「階段では気をつけなさい、坊や」と彼はつぶやいた。「今日はちょっと無理しすぎたかな？」「君はどんどん強くなっているね、私にはわかるよ」と彼はよく言った。
宮殿内で彼女にそんな風に話しかける人は他に誰もいなかった。