Prologue: The Nightmare Comes Suddenly

I'm always plagued by nightmares, stabbed by a curved flaming sword and in agony, but the masked man laughs at me, and I can't tell if he's crying or laughing, as he sings.

"Good night, our Crow King."
"Welcome back, our great Crow King."
"My brother... what did you do?"

(...What a bad awakening. Ah, even when I was awake, this world was hell.)

My name is Crow Shudelheit. I grew up being hated by everyone because I have jet black hair and scarlet eyes.

It seems that the fragments he occasionally sees are memories of his past life.

Why is jet black hair so unpopular?
This is because the demons who once brought ruin to the earth were called the Crow Tribe, and they have jet black hair.

My birth mother was Rachelle Shudelheit, and although she wasn't a crow, she was also a woman who was hated and treated like a witch.
She died when I was a child, so I don't remember what my mother looked like. I was soon taken in by her brother, Ragil Sudelheit, and lived there with my cousins.

As for the story of my father... let's save it for another time.
To be honest, I don't know either.
If I ask Uncle Ragir, he'll just look at me with a puzzled expression, and the meal will just become awkward.
I somehow got the feeling that my father had a pretty bad habit of women, and that my mother gave birth to me out of wedlock.

I am in the middle age between my cousin Shanoa and her younger brother, Shatten.
At first, I wasn't used to calling Shanoa, who is one year older than me, my sister, so I started calling her by her first name, and she immediately started punching me and knocked me out in one hit.

I had very noticeable black hair, so naturally the people in town disliked me.
They were even bullying Schatten, who had nothing to do with the crows, so I tried to protect him, but Shanoa turned the bullies into 37564 (Massacre). They didn't actually die, though...

It was around that time that I started calling Shanoa "big sister."
She was a rough but caring older sister who would train me with a wooden sword.
Her mother, Cecilia, was a naturally elegant young lady, and I felt a bit distant from her.
Her father, Ragil, my uncle, is a gloomy and unsociable man, and Schatten, who looks very similar to me, is also a gloomy, impertinent and unsociable man.
I wonder who Shanoa's roughness is inspired by.

His childhood friend and best friend, Sharl, is also a Crow and is also a victim of bullying.
Sharl had been kept under house arrest by her mother, and it was I who brought her out.
Even now, she tends to stay at home, but occasionally sneaks out of the mansion and cries after being scolded by her mother.
Sharl's house is a mansion on the outskirts of town surrounded by a high wall, so it was actually safer for me to go and play there.
Maybe because he has a slightly feminine appearance and looks like a rich kid, he's narcissistic and always admiring the mirror...I'm jealous that he's a crow but can be so narcissistic.

My sister married and moved to a city across the sea, and I was once again subjected to hellish bullying in the village...
From now on, I want to be able to protect Sharl and Schatten on my own...that was my intention.

--Soldiers hunting crows have even reached the outskirts of town, and are currently in a state of despair...

"You're a Crow!"
"Kill the Crows who harass people!"

Soldiers surround me

"I didn't do anything special though?
Rather, they are harmless creatures who have been persecuted by so-called humans.」

"Brother, that's definitely a lie."

Schatten interrupts from behind me.
Are you stupid? You're human, so just hide wherever you can.

There is a saying that many are outnumbered, but was I really that weak?

"Is that purple kid your little brother?
There's a chance he's a crow, so kill him!"

One of the soldiers points his sword at Schatten.

"... Before you kill your brother, kill me or your crow."

"What! Me too?
Crow... I'm sorry, we were a burden until the very end..."

Don't give up, Sharl...
You act like you've accomplished something, but you guys just kept trying to chant and getting interrupted, so you didn't actually do anything.

"...Is it going to end here?"

(Am I going to die here? I haven't done anything yet, I've barely even left the city, why was I born...?)

As soon as they were cornered in the burned hut, the death cries of soldiers echoed from outside.

"What?! What's going on?!"

It seems the soldiers left us three damn weaklings and went back outside to provide reinforcements.
I also went outside, but in the midst of the raging flames and the corpses of soldiers, there was a girl with black hair like ours, covered in blood and standing there...

<To be continued...>

[Afterword]
Is this your first full-length novel? It's a medium-length novel. And it's a full-length story.
I like to write from the end of the story, so writing the prologue is the hardest for me...I was in the mood to write, so I wrote it with momentum.

It's intentional that Crow sometimes uses "I" as his first person pronoun.