Two Stars (3)
Najin pointed to an epithet with the tip of his finger.
Dawn Star.
The word for the faint light of approaching morning—dawn—joined to the character for star. The Grey Tower Master had annotated it with a dismissive note that it was “too plain, nothing special,” but Najin found that very plainness appealing.
Far better than something like “The Death Slayer.”
That wasn’t the only reason, of course.
Najin rather liked the epithet “Dawn Star.” What he liked most was the qualifier written out beside it.
Dawn Star—the star that announces the end of the night.
Dawn does not only mean daybreak. It can mean that a long night has ended, that the east has brightened; depending on the moment, it can mean hope itself, or the starting point of a new age.
Sounds a lot like Arthur’s epithet.
Merlin’s whisper brushed his ear.
These days she’s better known as the Sword of Selection, the King of Knights, the Great Hero—but it wasn’t always like that. Arthur’s first epithet was something more like a beacon, like hope.
It was a story that never made it into the fairy tales.
The age when Arthur and I were traveling was the dark age of human history, you know? The so-called Age of Chaos… Arthur was the one who drove the first star into that night sky. So from humanity’s point of view, Arthur was a symbol of hope—and the beacon of the counterattack.
A light to drive out the long dark.
A signal fire announcing the start of the fight back. Considering the times, it was an epithet that suited Arthur perfectly.
Dawn Star has a similar meaning. Though I can’t figure out why they gave you a name like that. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the deeds that became the material for your stars, does it?
Good question.
Najin looked up at the Grey Tower Master.
Nayuta, the Grey Tower Master, was staring at the epithet he had pointed to with a thoroughly dissatisfied expression—as if asking whether he really had to pick that one.
“Lady Nayuta?”
“Hm? Uh-huh. What is it? Something you want to ask?”
“Would it be possible to hear how the epithet Dawn Star came about?”
“I can tell you, but compared to the others it’s such a slapdash name that explaining it feels a little embarrassing. Do you really like that one? Aren’t the others better? For instance, The Death—”
“I like this one.”
Nayuta smacked her lips for no particular reason.
With a look of open displeasure, she began to explain.
“You know that the Calamity Star appeared the day you slew the Red Dragon, right?”
Najin nodded.
The Calamity Star—the constellation of the Abyss.
He remembered the black-and-red star of the Witch of Camlann rising in the night sky that day.
“It was the first Calamity Star to rise in a full thousand years, and the night sky reeled at the appearance of that terrible star. The stars extinguished their own light and hid their bodies in the dark.”
The Witch of Camlann hunts stars.
She swallows them, knocks them down, and brings them to ruin. Until her own constellation was sealed in the Abyss, the Witch had cast down countless stars from the heavens.
As if recalling an old nightmare, the moment the Calamity Star rose, the many constellations put out their light and fell silent—so Nayuta told him.
“A night sky with its starlight snuffed out is a dark place. A cold, dark night sky. And then, out of nowhere, two stars rose.”
Nayuta flung both hands open wide, as if to mime stars flaring to life.
“They were yours. While even those vast constellations were snuffing out their light for fear of the Witch, two little stars that hadn’t even formed a constellation yet… just shone.”
Stars shining brightly in the dark.
Stars still too young to be called a constellation at all.
“When even such small stars burned pure white as if defying the Calamity Star—maybe the greater ones were ashamed of their silence. Only then did the other constellations start giving light again.”
Focused on the battle with the Red Dragon that day, Najin had not seen it—but starting from his stars, countless others began to burn once more. As if drawn by the light of Najin’s stars, or spurred on by it.
“The stars that lit up again drove out the darkness the Calamity Star had cast. It was a true spectacle.”
“Is that so?”
“Mm. To my eyes, it looked exactly like the east brightening and morning coming on. Watching that, the word ‘dawn’ just came to me, and I named it on reflex, but…”
She trailed off mid-explanation and fidgeted with her fingers, a little bashful.
“Honestly, isn’t it a bit underwhelming? Star names are supposed to be grand and flashy, and this one’s just too plain. It’s like you can’t feel any philosophy in the epithet, you know?”
Up until she finished explaining the origin of Dawn Star, Najin had been privately impressed that the seat of Grey Tower Master was not handed out for nothing. At her next words, his face settled into a look of polite regret.
Hmm… it’s not that she has no talent for naming, but her sense of taste is a little off. Why is she so obsessed with flashiness?
Najin thoroughly agreed with Merlin.
“I’ll take this one. Dawn Star. I like it.”
In the end, despite the Grey Tower Master’s protests, Najin did not reverse his decision.
He understood that there was a philosophy and conviction of its own in the way the Grey Tower Master named things—but agreeing with it was another matter. This was his epithet, after all. If someone were to call out to him as “The Death-Slayer, He Who Cleaves Death!” Najin was not confident he could walk with his head held high.
“If that’s what you want…”
Still smacking her lips with lingering regret, Nayuta finally drew a circle around the epithet Dawn Star.
“Well then, Najin?”
Before packing up and leaving, she turned back to him, as if there was still something she had to say.
“This may not be something to say to someone who has only just gained his stars—but do you know that countless stars fall?”
“The fall of stars, you mean?”
“Mm. As many stars as shine in that night sky—maybe even more—have fallen. Some people point to stars as symbols of eternity and constancy, but is there anything eternal in this world?”
A mage whose trade was the counting of stars.
Nayuta, master of the Grey Tower, spoke on.
“Countless stars fall without ever forming a constellation. Sometimes they corrupt, sometimes they warp, sometimes they simply break. That’s what a battlefield of stars is.”
She smiled bitterly.
“Even your stars, shining now, may someday lose their light and fall. The odds are high. I’ve watched so many new stars that burned pure white fade away.”
Nayuta let out a short breath.
As she exhaled, she closed her eyes and opened them again. Nothing about her had changed from when they first met. The same gloomy impression, the same mussed hair—
“But I hope you won’t.”
—except for her eyes.
Nayuta had spent most of her life observing the stars. Reading their movements was her life and her profession. In the eyes of a mage who had counted so very many stars, stars had come to dwell.
Whether they were the stars she herself possessed, or the stars she had spent her life watching, he could not tell. But Najin thought those eyes, at least, were beautiful.
“I hope you gain more stars. I hope you don’t lose your light. I hope you join star to star and become a constellation.”
And at the end of that, she said—
“I hope you become a constellation and come find me.”
Nayuta smiled.
It was the kind of smile a mother might give a child.
“When that day comes, I’ll name your constellation again.”
“Something flashy and grand, I take it?”
“Of course. You can look forward to it. I’ll be thinking, now and then, about what name to give your stars.”
Najin smiled wryly.
I’ll pass on that, truly.
A fair amount of time had passed since Najin’s epithet was decided.
That also meant the news had spread through the entire Empire—and as a result, the Empire was plunged into yet another upheaval, though no one could say how many that made this year. Great events that might happen once in decades, or centuries, were erupting one after another.
Someone had drawn Excalibur.
King Arthur’s constellation had stirred.
The youngest Sword Seeker in history had appeared.
The Witch of Camlann had moved.
And someone had gained two stars at once.
Those were only the incidents that had broken out on the Continent, not even counting the Outer Land. With major events erupting almost daily, the newspapers were screaming as they ran off new editions—but there were others screaming for entirely the opposite reason.
“What kind of curse is on this year?”
“How many revisions is this already? From where to where do we have to tear out and rewrite the histories? Who am I, and where is this?”
“Youngest! Youngest! Youngest! That damn word—youngest!”
“Is the world a joke? Does Heaven not know the meaning of ‘once in an age’? Once in an age! It means so exceptional that such a person hardly ever appears in the world!”
Those were the Empire’s chroniclers.
For people who had to compile the histories whenever a historic event occurred—and sometimes revise them—it was enough to drive them out of their minds. Clutching their own hair, they howled.
At a mere eighteen years of age, a Sword Seeker.
Even a novel written like that would clearly end up as kindling under reviews like, “I say, good sir author—do you truly believe this makes sense?” Reality, however, has always outstripped fiction.
Eighteen years old—the youngest Sword Seeker.
At eighteen, he obtains two stars at once.
The chroniclers let out hollow laughs.
One of them joked, “I suppose next they’ll say he drew Excalibur too,” and then shut his mouth, because it did not seem entirely impossible. If that turned out to be true, the workload currently crushing them would double overnight.
“Is that brat who’s rewriting the records also planning to rewrite the chroniclers’ baldness records? What was the record for youngest total baldness among the chroniclers?”
“Twenty-six. And that record looks set to fall soon. Our department junior’s hairline has retreated a full ten paces in just a few months…”
“How old is that junior?”
“Twenty-one.”
“……”
“……”
The chroniclers observed a moment of silence.
Of course, that was purely the chroniclers’ problem. Most of the Empire’s people cheered at the news of Najin.
Dawn Star—the star that announces the end of the night.
Gazing up at the newly risen star in the night sky, the people of the Empire went wild. In every age, the birth of a hero draws the cheers of the common folk. Najin had not yet achieved feats worthy of being called a hero, but the path he had already shown was more than enough to make people look forward to what came next.
Public interest in Najin only climbed higher by the day.
And at about this point, one question naturally rose to the surface.
The chain of incidents that had struck this year, and the boy who seemed to stand at the center of them—Najin.
Didn’t that boy draw Excalibur?
It would not be strange for someone to suspect as much.
The timing overlapped in a subtle way. Not long after Excalibur was drawn, Najin had begun to stand out. For mere coincidence, the timing lined up a little too neatly, did it not?
Some suspected that Najin had drawn Excalibur; others argued that it made no sense. For now the voices of rebuttal were louder—but not so loud as to completely drown out the contrary view. It was not without its points.
No one could easily answer that question.
Months had passed since Excalibur was drawn—now the anniversary was drawing near—and still not a single eyewitness account had surfaced.
Just who was the master of Excalibur?
As the three Sword Masters long named as candidates came under discussion once more, unlike a year ago their three names were no longer the only ones being spoken.
Sword Master of the Empire—First Horn of the Empire, Gerd.
Master of the Sword Church—Sword Saint Caron.
Executioner of the Holy Blood Church—the killer Yuel.
And… Dawn Star, Najin.
Najin’s name, too, was raised alongside the three Sword Masters. Of course the boy fell short of them in many ways—but he was not so insignificant that he could simply be ignored.
A boy born in an underground city.
A boy who had been nothing had carved his name, for all to see, into the heart of the Empire. Najin was no longer a nobody. The two stars he had driven into the night sky stood as proof of his existence.
One year since the boy left the underground city.
All of it had happened in less than a year.
While Najin’s stock was setting new highs by the day, two people in particular were reaping the benefits. One was the lord of Trevache Territory, Marquis Edelmar…
“Bravo, bravo! Khoff—khack!”
“M-My lord!”
“Breathe!”
He had cheered so hard he forgot to breathe and nearly passed out, and even as the knights carried him off, the marquis’s mouth was still stretched in a smile that reached his ears.
There was good reason for it.
About a month earlier, Marquis Edelmar had launched a tourism venture built around a play based on the anecdote of Najin and Dieta. Thanks to Najin’s fame as the youngest Sword Seeker, the tourism business had already been turning a tidy profit—and now a fresh hot plate called the Twin Stars had been set beneath it.
Famous nobles and countless enthusiasts alike were making the trip to Trevache, asking, “So this is where that youngest Sword Seeker, the Twin Star himself, filmed a grand romance?” And their footsteps, of course, brought gold with them.
As a result, Trevache was enjoying an unprecedented boom. As the lord of the territory, he was so busy grinning that he could barely breathe.
“I must write a letter to that fine fellow Najin. Tell him Trevache is his eternal ally and unmatched friend, and that he may visit whenever he likes. We shall receive him with a feast!”
And someone else was, if anything, even more deliriously happy than Marquis Edelmar.
“You know, Pasion.”
“Yes, my lady. What is it?”
The gold-swallowing snake—Dieta.
“Th-the trading company’s stock price is… strange.”
With hands trembling so hard they shook, she pointed at the newspaper.
There, a chart traced a curve of surpassing beauty—none other than the stock price of Dieta’s trading company. Gazing at that line climbing toward the heavens, the corner of Dieta’s mouth quivered.
“Isn’t it beautiful? Honestly, where else will you find a work of art like this? That scrap of a painting on the wall is nothing compared to this curve—this is dozens of times more beautiful…”
Not even a masterpiece of the century could move her this much. With a look of pure rapture, Dieta stroked the newspaper, then shifted her gaze to the lines of print.
Dieta, the genius of investment.
Unlike the old days, when that phrase had filled her with nothing but joy, looking at it now pricked her conscience a little. Of course she had believed Najin would rise high—but she had never imagined he would soar this fast, or this brilliantly.
The trading company’s stock price, climbing so steeply it seemed ready to punch through the ceiling.
Even Dieta herself was starting to feel a little afraid.