Kjerag is a mountainous nation blanketed in eternal snow. Its people live in devotion to Kjeragandr, this land's guardian deity, and in the three years since the SilverAsh family's young head founded Karlan Trade CO., LTD, railways and tourists have begun pouring into what was once a quiet country.

But now, with the unveiling ceremony for the Kjeragandr statue at Silverheart Lake just around the corner, two thousand Victorian soldiers are camped at the foot of the mountain, supposedly there to 'celebrate.' Everyone knows it's not really tourism, but no one's the first to say so.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Leto, a girl raised in Ursus, boards a train alone, clutching her mother's keepsake to her chest. She's come thousands of miles searching for her father—and of all times, she picks this one.

1. The Trio Disguised as Tourists

At the border checkpoint, a 'foreigner in a strange hat' is giving the kid in the next seat no end of trouble that isn't quite trouble. He's counting the passengers in the car, sneaking glances at a suspicious sack, and generally snooping around.

His true identity: a spy for the Duke of Victoria, nicknamed 'Gray Hat.' All he has to go on is a tip that something's aboard the train bound for Silverheart Lake.

Leto gets swept up in a commotion over an escaped burden beast at the station, and ends up entangled with the Victorian viscount Harold—while going by the alias Rosalind.

Harold is a self-proclaimed 'tourist' who's been holed up in Kjerag for a month, posing as a veterinarian who treats burden beasts. As Leto chats away about a friend who got drunk on honey, she notices Harold suddenly zone out the moment Gray Hat appears.

'Not an enemy, but not a friend either… more like a coworker I don't get along with?' Harold tries to brush it off, but his expression has already given him away.

Gray Hat opens the last compartment door and freezes on the spot. Standing there is a woman with blood on her hands—Degenbrecher, three-time champion of Kazimierz's knight sport.

As it turns out, Degenbrecher wasn't after Gray Hat at all—she was after Harold. She just needed someone to help with the burden beast Lily's difficult labor.

Lily is… not a person!

— Harold

Leto, who'd been teasing him for 'forgetting his girlfriend's name,' deflates on learning Lily is a burden beast. The whole train gets swept up in the chaos, and a chase breaks out that runs all the way to the dining car.

The first twist of this story: turns out nobody actually wanted to kill anybody.

2. The Legendary Heartthrob and the Suspicious Invitation

From the moment she steps off at Silverheart Lake Station, Leto sees all sorts of curious things—like a burden beast rental system that 'attacks on its own if you skip out on the bill,' and a herder calmly selling exactly that.

At the market, she hears an even juicier rumor: the most handsome man in all of Kjerag is none other than Ensiodes, president of Karlan Trade CO., LTD.

Leto's mother always used to say that 'Kjerag's famous heartthrob' was her father. Surely not, she thinks, brushing it off—but somehow it still nags at her.

In front of the statue, Siurus of the Browntail family strikes up a conversation. She boasts that the thirty-meter statue isn't made of 'ordinary stone'—then suddenly clams up the moment the topic of materials comes up.

Remarking that Leto has a sharp eye for a tourist, Siurus ends up impulsively inviting her to the official unveiling ceremony.

But privately, Siurus is thinking something else entirely. 'Ratatos did say to keep an eye on this girl…' As it turns out, all three families ahead of the ceremony have been watching Leto rather closely.

3. Three Generations, Drunk, and Still a Mystery

Leto decides to spend the night at the home of an old monk she meets at the foot of the mountain. As it turns out, that house belongs to none other than the Paillosh family.

And the master of that house is none other than the family's current head, Aktos—the man who'd been drowning himself in drink since noon under the pretense of 'choosing wine for the unveiling ceremony.'

Getting tipsy on the honey drink Leto brought, Aktos hauls out his entire cellar as a thank-you gift. He doesn't hesitate to crack open a twenty-year-old wedding celebration wine, gone sour with age, right in front of his own daughter.

Drunk as he is, Aktos doesn't recognize Leto's face. But the old monk knows it at a glance—the face of Tatiana, the woman his son fell in love with on this mountaintop twenty years ago.

The next morning, still not quite sober, Aktos hears the truth from the old monk: 'Rosalind is your daughter.' And by then, his daughter had already climbed up the mountain.

4. The Secret of Her Birth, Heard at the Cliff's Edge

At the mountain summit, Leto tries and fails to hide her mother's keepsake in the crook of a tree. Just then, she rescues a 'John Smith' caught in a hunting trap—only to realize he's none other than Gray Hat.

Just as she's about to corner him, Aktos comes bursting in, and all three go tumbling into the snow. And there, Aktos finally confesses the truth to his daughter.

Twenty years ago, one winter, he met an Ursus woman named Tatiana on this very mountain, fell in love, and married her against everyone's objections.

Kjerag back then was a closed, exclusionary country. Marrying an outsider alone was considered enough to shame an entire family.

But after the reform-minded SilverAsh couple died in an 'accident,' hostility toward his foreign wife grew beyond anything he could manage. The Paillosh family, too, had been on the side opposing those reforms.

Overcome by fear, Aktos sent his wife and daughter away from Kjerag—terrified that staying by his side would mean they, too, might one day suffer an 'accident.'

'Could you call me father again, just once more?' Aktos asks, laying his axe down before his daughter.

As if! Dream on!

— Leto

Leto points out that Tatiana is nowhere to be found in the excuses Aktos strings together. A passionate woman who loved unfamiliar places and delighted in meeting people—an excuse that captures not one bit of who she actually was.

And with that, she kicks him square in the back, sending him tumbling into the snow. A carefully calculated fall, of course, just short of actually hurting him.

5. The Child-Support Bill, and a Reconciliation That Isn't One

'Send over a decade's worth of back child support, straight to my account. Miss a payment and I'll add interest.' Leto heads down the mountain looking thoroughly satisfied.

But at the cliff, mid-conversation and just before the kick, Aktos mistakes the story about her mother for a 'keepsake' and assumes she's passed away, tangling the situation up all over again.

Tatiana is alive. She simply contracted Oripathy a few years back in a Catastrophe zone accident, and she's still by Leto's side to this day.

And the finishing blow: Leto's mother, she says, has never once resented Kjerag, or Aktos. She even taught her daughter how to pray.

Leto doesn't call that 'forgiveness.' She just states, flatly, that holding a grudge simply wasn't worth the trouble.

6. Rematch on the Ice

Gray Hat flees down the mountain, paying extra to rent the fastest burden beast around and making a run for it. But the rental operator recognizes Degenbrecher and, over the radio, brings that burden beast to a halt.

Having borrowed someone else's ice skates on the spur of the moment, Gray Hat wobbles along on skates for the very first time in his life. And yet, oddly enough, he picks up the knack almost immediately.

Their duel eventually carries them all the way up to the top of the statue. The Holy Maiden's head attendant watches, lost in her own thoughts: 'That sculpture really could use a slimmer jawline.'

Beaten black and blue and dunked in the lake, Gray Hat somehow survives. Fleeing into Silverheart Lake's back alleys, he stumbles onto a decisive piece of evidence.

What was supposedly a barrel of 'wine being carried' turned out to hold metal, not wine. So where exactly was the leftover material from the statue's construction actually being hauled off to?

7. The Karlan Trio's After-Party

Meanwhile, on the eve of the unveiling ceremony, another kind of family is gathered in the lobby of the emptied-out banquet hall—Gnosis, passed out drunk; Degenbrecher, kicking him; and Ensiodes, laughing beside them.

None of the three will ever actually say what they want to say to each other. And yet this lobby, heating shut off and all, seems to be the place where the three of them feel most at ease.

If the family Leto met at the cliff was bound by blood and resentment in equal measure, this one has held together for ten years without a drop of shared blood between them. Kjerag, it turns out, had another family just like that.

8. They Said They Came to Celebrate—So Why the Ballistae?

On the day of the unveiling ceremony, two thousand Victorian soldiers suddenly form ranks and march on Silverheart Lake, under the pretext that 'prohibited goods have been hidden beneath the statue.'

As it happens, it was true—Karlan Trade CO., LTD had used the statue's construction as cover to secretly ship something out. And Gray Hat had already gotten his hands on the proof.

Ensiodes's subordinates Weiss and Matterhorn had already been captured and bound the night before. There was no way left to get word out.

Rather than a head-on collision, Ensiodes decides to buy time. And without a moment's hesitation, Degenbrecher volunteers to be the one to buy it.

When Harold asks if she's serious, Degenbrecher answers plainly. Living nameless in the back alleys of Leithanien, she'd made herself a name with nothing but a bladeless weapon.

I am Degenbrecher.

— Degenbrecher

There's no conviction, no noble cause behind that name. Just violence—and, somehow or other, this cold country she's grown attached to over the past ten years.

Even so, Harold refuses to give up on negotiating. Right up to the end, he insists that even accepting just 30 percent of their demands would be enough to convince the Duke.

Degenbrecher cuts him off flatly. In this moment, she says, she is nothing more than 'an enemy of Victoria.'

9. The Real Trump Card Was Already on the Train

In the very last train car, Gray Hat prepares his decisive blow, convinced he's finally uncovered SilverAsh's true secret.

And what's more, Leto and her group are riding in that very car. Her earlier request to 'go just a little faster' turns out to have been for exactly this moment.

Only then does Gray Hat realize: the real card Ensiodes had hidden away wasn't a weapon at all—it was guests Victoria could never afford to touch.

The moment the Kazimierz knight and the Commercial Confederation's spokesperson arrive at the ceremony, the Victorian soldiers stop their advance cold. They can't afford to turn Kazimierz into an enemy too.

A war that ended without a single drop of blood spilled—leaving behind nothing but the smile of a man who'd stacked the deck like a card game from the very start.

Epilogue: When Spring Comes

The banquet resumes—Harold's soldiers carve flowers out of ice to propose with, and Degenbrecher signs autographs for her fans. It's hard to believe this was a battlefield only moments ago.

In her remarks at the unveiling ceremony, the Holy Maiden Enya says that someday outsiders will remember this country not just for Karlan Trade CO., LTD, but for something beyond its snow and mountains.

Rhine Lab proposes building a launch facility on the sacred mountain, while the Holy Maiden and her head attendant bicker over 'exactly how many cannons to fit on the statue.' Fairly laid-back, for a negotiation that decides the nation's future.

And the three-year-old truth comes to light. Hidden beneath the Kjeragandr statue at Silverheart Lake was, in fact, a single high-speed warship. Its name: 'Nuts'—the same silly name Siurus gave it.

Ensiodes believes this has earned Kjerag the right to sit across the table from greater nations like Kazimierz and Rhine Lab. Degenbrecher retorts that all it's really earned them is more enemies.

Leto tosses her father the account number for child support and calls her mother to check in. Tatiana, even with her injured leg, is already picking out her next destination.

You can go mountain climbing in Kjerag, and rock climbing too. Rosalind, have you ever tried it?

— Tatiana

Whether Kjeragandr truly watches over this land, no one knows. But this winter, no one died, a daughter kicked her father off a cliff, and spring comes again.