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It was the discovery of the century, no, the millennium.
To think that something like this was hiding in an unassuming little cave. Moments like this were what archeologists spent their entire lives working for. Professor Annette Dominic was no exception.
She’d long been fascinated by Fódlan’s history, especially the Unification War that took place over eight hundred years ago. The weapons, the artifacts, the culture… So much of it was lost when Emperor Edelgard von Hresvelg abolished the nobility and the Crest system. Any relics dating from before Imperial Year 1190 were exceedingly valuable, no matter how small they were. And the most valuable relics of all were the Heroes’ Relics, the mystical weapons of old that could only be wielded by those with Crest blood flowing through their veins.
Emperor Edelgard saw the Relics as tools of inequality and so ordered them all destroyed after unifying Fódlan under the Adrestian Empire’s banner. She was successful in that endeavor—apart from the Sword of the Creator, which was kept intact due to her strong affection toward its last known wielder and the fact that no one else could use it, all that remained of the Heroes' Relics in this day and age were tiny fragments barely distinguishable from garbage.
That's what made this particular find so extraordinary. No one had ever found an intact Heroes' Relic before. If Annette brought this back, it would be the highlight of her career. She'd forever be known as the one who'd recovered the long-lost Aegis Shield, who no one else had managed to find a trace of.
There was just one problem: it was currently still attached to its last wielder, who was frozen in an enormous block of ice.
The land that had been called The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus before the Unification War had always been a cold, unforgiving place. Crops only thrived in certain areas, and winters were long and brutal. The people, as a result, were a hardy bunch that endured the worst hardships with steadfast courage. This, however, was well beyond anything nature or nurture was capable of. That meant there was only one explanation for the extraordinary sight in front of her: magic.
Magic was, sadly, a dying art in modern day Fódlan. The slew of innovations that occurred in the last several hundred years had rendered it mostly obsolete, especially when few had the potential for it and even fewer had the drive and patience to learn it. Why spend years of your life learning to cast Fire when anyone could go to their local convenience store and buy a lighter or a pack of matches? Nowadays, almost everyone who could use magic was a researcher, a hired healer for the rich and elite, or the manager of a seedy hole-in-the-wall private sorcery clinic. Annette, naturally, belonged to the first group.
There was no better time than now than to make use of her unique skills. She approached the ice in order to examine it more closely. In the process, she was able to see the man trapped inside it more clearly. He was perfectly preserved in the ice, appearing as if he were merely sleeping. He was also strikingly handsome. Why, he looked like a soldier that had leapt straight out of the pages of a history book! His fur-lined coat and cape and leather gloves and boots matched the descriptions of the favored clothing of Faerghan swordmasters. They purposely refused to wear armor in order to maintain maximum speed and agility in battle. It made the fact that he bore the Aegis Shield all the more curious—a shield was directly counterintuitive to that style of fighting.
But that puzzle did not intrigue Annette as much as the ice itself. From a quick analysis, she determined it was the product of ancient magic. Dating from long before the Empire had originally been established over two millennia ago, this sort of magic was exceedingly rare and not well understood. It was theorized that it had been created by a race of beings that inhabited Fódlan before humans lived there—a race that was long extinct, for Emperor Edelgard's Black Eagle Strike Force killed its last known living individuals during the Unification War.
This was the exact sort of situation Annette had spent years of her life studying for. Many of her colleagues had dismissed her research as a waste of time, but she'd pressed on nonetheless. She had been fascinated with the ancients and their magic, and she hypothesized that they had been responsible for creating the Heroes' Relics. Even with modern technology, no one had managed to successfully replicate a Heroes' Relic, so Annette was convinced that the secret lay in the ancient lost magic. Now, having finally come across some of the magic herself, it was time to put all her studies to the rest.
She focused and studied every rune woven into the spell. While some were new to her, she was delighted to recognize many of them from her studies and others that were used in more contemporary magic. Using these, she was able to get the gist of how the spell was structured and what it was for.
She was surprised to discover that the ice was meant to protect something. How unfortunate, then, that this poor young man got caught up in it. It would have been a quick but horrific death. The least she could do for him once her work was done was give him a proper burial. She took a deep breath, focused, and began to dispel the runes holding the spell together one by one. It was a slow, painstaking process, and it was also extremely dangerous. Just one wrong move could result in the spell reacting violently, which could easily end her life, or worse. Even so, Annette was willing to take the risk for the sake of her research—nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all.
At last, the ice visibly trembled, and then, without warning, shattered into countless pieces. Annette had to erect a hasty barrier of wind to avoid being showered in razor-sharp shards. The young man’s body toppled forward like a puppet with broken strings and lay still. Once the carnage ended, Annette lowered her hands and cautiously approached him. She thought it strange that the body was so limp after being frozen for so long. It wasn’t normal ice, but it was still cold—surely the temperature alone should have kept the body stiff.
She shook her head, deciding to worry about that later. The important thing was that the Aegis Shield was finally free. She brushed away the ice shards surrounding the man’s body and knelt beside him so she could examine the shield more closely. It was as beautiful as she'd always imagined an intact Heroes' Relic would be. And it even had its Crest Stone intact! Even the Sword of the Creator didn't have its Crest Stone! Annette could scarcely wait to unlock its secrets. As she reached for the shield, though, she suddenly found herself having second thoughts. Now that she was faced with removing the Aegis Shield from a dead body, she realized that she was essentially grave robbing. Was her research really worth stealing from someone, even if they were dead? Before she could think on that further, she heard something that she shouldn't have
A groan from very close by.
Annette immediately leapt back, her heart pounding in her chest. She frantically whipped her head around, searching for who could have made the groan, but she saw no one. No one, that is, except the dead body in front of her.
The dead body that, horrifyingly, was starting to move.
Annette felt like her feet were glued to the ground as the man in front of her shifted and pushed himself to his knees. No, no, no. This was impossible. No one could survive being frozen solid for a moment, let alone centuries. This had to be some sort of trick—an unforeseen side effect of messing with the magic. Before she could begin to think about how to dispel the illusion, though, the man lifted his head.
Their eyes met.
For a heartbeat, the world came to a stop. Only one thought stood out in Annette's mind: that she had never found a treasure or artifact she had found that was as beautiful as this. Then the moment was gone, and Annette found herself held at swordpoint by a very angry swordsman.
“Who are you?! What do you want?!”
The only thing that kept her from completely losing her mind to fear was his distinctive accent. It was unlike anything that was spoken in modern day Fódlan or even in other countries, and it proved beyond a doubt that this was a man who’d been lost to time. In spite of everything, Annette was fascinated.
“I am a humble professor of archeology,” she said carefully, knowing full well each word could be her last. “I came to this place in search of knowledge, and I found you in the ice. I’m the one who set you free.”
The man looked skeptical for a moment, but then realization dawned on his face. He lowered his sword and looked around, looking increasingly alarmed.
“Are you alright?” Annette asked.
"That's right…" he murmured. "I was attacked by Imperial troops while sheltering in this cave, and…"
"You were attacked?" Annette interrupted.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Have you been living under a rock? The emperor publicly announced a huge reward for anyone who brought her any information regarding the whereabouts of the Heroes' Relics—and an even bigger one to anyone who delivered her one personally. The war may be over, but the fighting sure as hell isn't."
Annette stared at him, feeling a sudden rush of pity and concern as the reality of the situation crashed over her. The man was talking as if Emperor Edelgard was still alive. From his perspective, hardly any time at all had passed. How in the world was she going to tell him that he'd been frozen for centuries?
"So, you were targeted because of your Relic," she said instead.
He nodded but fixed her with a steely glare. "Don't even think about trying anything."
"I won't," she promised, knowing full well she was hopelessly outmatched. "But that just makes me wonder why you kept the Relic in the first place. You could have avoided any trouble in the first place by turning it over to the emperor yourself."
"That was never an option," he replied.
"Why?"
The man looked away, placing his right hand on the shield still strapped to his arm. "This is all I have left of my home."
Annette's mouth fell open. That was the last thing she expected to hear. In the back of her mind, she was aware of how the Heroes' Relics had been passed down through Fódlan's former noble families, but only now did she fully comprehend the implications that brought.
The Aegis Shield was the Relic of House Fraldarius, one of the houses most loyal to the former Kingdom of Faerghus's royal family. The last head of that family before the Unification War, Duke Rodrigue Fraldarius, put up a valiant fight at the Battle of Arianrhod, but was slain. On top of that, his only living son had been a part of the invading Imperial army, having defected around the time the Black Eagle Strike Force captured Garreg Mach Monastery. As a result, House Fraldarius’s main branch was essentially wiped out, and its remaining members lost virtually all their power and influence following the dissolution of the nobility. Even if this man wasn’t hundreds of years removed from his time period, the home he knew no longer existed.
“I’m so sorry,” Annette whispered, not just for what he’d been through, but for her own callous actions. She couldn’t believe that just moments ago, she was about to run off with his family heirloom without a second thought. There was no way she could bring herself to take the Aegis Shield now, even after all she’d sacrificed to get to this point.
"Don't be sorry," the man said sternly. "I chose this path for myself."
Annette chewed her lip, not liking the implications of that statement. He left Fraldarius behind willingly, taking the Aegis Shield with him? Such a thing surely would have caused a big enough uproar in the house to have been recorded in the pages of history. But that meant… No, she couldn’t allow herself to jump to conclusions. Not before she had all the facts.
“What is your name?” she asked, sounding braver than she felt.
“You’d be wise to watch your tongue,” the man said instead of answering. “Asking questions like that to the wrong person will get you killed.”
She wasn’t surprised by his response. He came from a defunct noble household and his life had been targeted solely because of his Relic; of course he wouldn’t be forthcoming about his identity to a complete stranger. On the other hand, his refusal to answer was itself a clue.
"There's no point trying to be coy," said Annette. "I know you're a Fraldarius. You wouldn't be using that shield if you weren't."
Her cheek earned her another blade pointed at her throat. "I warned you once already. Don't make me silence you permanently."
She swallowed. "I'm just saying," she said carefully, "that there are some things you can't hide."
He snorted at her. "You've got some nerve for someone an inch away from death. If I wanted to, I could remove your head from your shoulders before you had a chance to blink."
"But you haven't," she countered. "So clearly you don't want to do it."
The man's expression darkened. "Don't. Push. Me."
Annette wasn't sure why she kept talking. All the evidence told her that she was playing with fire, and yet she had the strangest feeling that this man wasn't as ruthless as he seemed. That despite his murderous expression, he wouldn't lay a finger on her unless he perceived her as a real threat. If he hadn’t killed her by now, then chances were high that she would have to do something really awful to push him over the line.
"Listen," she said. "I understand you're wary after what happened to you, but I promise I mean you no harm. You have to have realized that on some level, or I'd be a corpse right now."
"What do you want with me?" he asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
"I want to help you," she answered.
The man looked incredulous. "I don't need or want your help."
"I'm not sure how to tell you this, but the world is a very different place now."
"You think I don't know that? The world's been different ever since the Empire conquered all of Fódlan."
Annette gave him a serious look. "How long do you think you've been trapped in that ice?"
"What kind of question is that?"
"Just humor me for a moment."
"Fine. If I had to guess, a few moons. It's clear no one's been here for a long time."
Annette took a deep breath and steeled herself for the worst. There would be no going back after this. "It's actually been over eight hundred years."
"What?"
That single word was as sharp and deadly as the blade pointed at her throat. The man's eyes narrowed dangerously, both demanding an explanation and assessing her for any falsehood. Annette's heart was in her throat, but she forced herself to continue.
"It's currently Imperial Year 2020. I can't prove it right now in any way you'll understand, but if we get out of this cave and head to the nearest town, you'll see just how much has changed."
For several long, tense seconds, the man stared at her like she had lost all her wits. She stared right back at him, determined not to show how terrified she was. At last, the man sheathed his blade, but his scowl did not fade.
“Show me.”
Annette could have collapsed where she stood out of sheer relief, but she forced her legs to remain steady. This was just the first of many challenges ahead of her. Somehow, she would have to integrate a man centuries removed from his own time when he didn't trust her enough to tell her something as simple as his name. And she'd thought searching for a long-lost Relic had been difficult.
She sighed, running her fingers through her hair as she led the man out of the cave. What in the world had she gotten herself into?