Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition - Chapter 12: Story : The Flock of Shadows

“Rishe Ilmgard Wertsner! I’m breaking off my engagement with you!” “Okay, I understand.” “Huh.” The Duke’s daughter, Rishe left the evening party without delay. In fact, for Rishe, this engagement has been terminated for the seventh time. That’s where her new life starts, after having enjoyed the way of life of a pharmacist and a dressed up knight, she lost her life at the age of 20 and has gone back to the scene where her engagement was broken off. Normally, this could have broken Rishe’s heart, but her mentality became strong. Her past six lives have been busy and fulfilling, she wants to live longer this time around. If possible, she wants to live a life of leisure and squander money… To commence her 7th life, Rishe has set up such a diagonal goal. However, in this life, she will be married to the Crown Prince of a militant nation, who killed her in her past life. …It’s probably better. It doesn’t matter if it’s a former rival country. In her seventh lifetime, she’ll enjoy loafing off at a castle!! Against all her determination, she inadvertently demonstrated the skills she had cultivated in her past lives and garnered attention as a brilliant Crown Princess.

Cairn is a prince who is already tired of ruling. Faced with an imminent coronation and an overbearing father, he wants nothing more than to drown his responsibilities in cheap liquor and poor decisions. With the help of his sister, he hatches a plan to escape the clutches of the throne once and for all. It all goes terribly wrong, and Cairn finds his priorities shifting in the face of unimaginable tragedy. The change of heart comes too late, however, and Cairn dies. He reawakens to find himself transported ten years in the past. He immediately begins to plan for the future, only to discover his killer has somehow followed him. To succeed, Cairn must unite the kingdom and discover the motivation of his killer, using as many tries as it takes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++I exhausted pretty much every time loop story ever written and decided to write my own. You'll see a few similarities here between this story and some existing stories, at least initially. There's a lot of inspiration drawn from both MoL and Re:Zero, though in terms of pathos and darkness, this story leans more towards the latter. Be warned, it is something of a slow burn. The main character will grow and become powerful, but a theme of this story is that power comes slowly and often at great cost.

200 years after the world has ended, the laws of society have long been forgotten.