Who Am I? (5)
The human mind is not infinite.
The world may have granted transcendence to the human body, but it never extended that same mercy to the spirit.
Countless philosophers call this a blessing. To agonize, to hesitate, to wander, and at the end of that wandering to seize enlightenment and grow — that, they cry, is a privilege unique to humankind. But not every human is destined to find enlightenment.
Some wander until they lose the path entirely.
Unable to believe in themselves, they lose themselves.
"Ah… aah… aaaaaah…"
Here stands a single transcendentalist.
A transcendentalist who never wanted to become one. Viola Oldina. Her flesh had touched transcendence, but her spirit never had — never would.
Because none of this was what she had ever wanted.
She had been a simple person who merely liked letting others hear her play, who would have been content so long as she could sit at a piano.
"You have talent, my dear."
"Your name is no longer ■■■■."
"From this day forward, you will live under the name of Oldina — as Viola."
"Viola Oldina. That is your name."
But she had talent. The kind of talent that, once a sword was placed in her hand and her body was trained, could reach transcendence with ease. So vast was that gift that she arrived at transcendence even though she never wished for it.
Her fingers clenched.
With the same hands that should have been striking keys, she gripped a sword. With the same ears that should have been listening for melody, she heard screams and dying breaths. And endlessly, she swung that blade.
"Aah…"
She fought Ladon, the dragon that had invaded the kingdom.
In a space of absolute isolation, untouched by any other gaze, she fought Ladon day after day. To keep him sealed there, she had to wound him and drain his strength.
But a dragon is an immortal being. No matter how many wounds she inflicted, by the next morning Ladon would finish healing and come thrashing against the glass again.
"Ah…"
And Viola?
She was no immortal. Her recovery was slow, and her injuries only piled higher. Slowly — but with absolute certainty — Ladon began to corrupt both her body and her mind.
One year. Ten years. Fifty years. Sixty-seven years.
On a day sixty-seven years into that endless war, Viola Oldina looked down at her own hands.
"…"
Her fingers, blackened and stained, no longer obeyed her will. She could no longer strike a single key. In that moment, Viola Oldina shattered.
A sound rang out — the sound of glass breaking.
Viola Oldina laughed. A strange, scraping laugh, like nails dragged across a pane of glass, rolled out across the whole of the Kassel Kingdom. Cracks spreading from her began to swallow the realm whole.
Shatter.
People, buildings, the earth, the sky itself began to split apart. Everything she had spent sixty-seven years protecting, she tore down without mercy. The Fallen Star severed herself from herself — and all that remained was an empty shell of a body.
What claimed that body was the dragon that had been slowly devouring her across those long years.
Ladon laughed.
"So this was it."
Someone was watching.
"So this is how it happened."
Najin looked out over the landscape of the Kassel Kingdom as it shattered into pieces. He and Merlin stood in the one place the cracks had not reached — beside the stele that had been raised there.
Standing there, Najin watched.
So this was what it meant to say the kingdom had fallen to Ladon. Confronted with the sight of Viola, consumed by the dragon, carving her own kingdom to pieces, Najin fell silent.
For the first time, he was witnessing it.
A constellation going mad. A transcendentalist falling and twisting into something else. It was different in nature from a Fallen Star. Viola Oldina's star still hung in the heavens — but the essence that composed it was changing.
A Reverse Star.
The name the Helmeted Knight had once given to a "corrupted star." Najin lifted his gaze. Viola Oldina's star turned over and stained itself black.
And then — shatter.
Everything but the area around the stele fractured into ruin. Atop those scattered ruins, Viola Oldina laughed. How long that laughter went on, Najin could not tell.
He only heard her.
"Again."
Before she could become a Reverse Star completely.
Before Ladon swallowed her whole, the last words she wrung from herself:
"Again. From the beginning."
Da capo, she murmured.
Da capo. A repeat mark — return to the start and play again. What waited for her at the end of her performance was not applause. Only the mark that ordered her back to the beginning, to play the same piece once more.
And then.
Time rewound.
Close your eyes, open them, and everything has returned to the way it was.
The sky is blue. Sunlight falls warm across the streets. People come and go, believing without a shadow of doubt that this ordinary day will last forever.
"Did you see the new fish that came into the market today?"
"Filthy huge — and filthy expensive. Who eats a fish that costly for a single meal? I couldn't even dream of it."
"Fresh bread! Warm bread, just out of the oven! One copper apiece!"
"Hey now, yesterday it was two for a copper."
"Flour prices went up. What can you do?"
"Hah — only your shop's flour doubled, I take it?"
Conversations he had heard before.
Standing in the middle of a street thronged with citizens, Najin wordlessly looked around. He was standing in exactly the same place he had been when he first entered the constellation's dream.
"We've come back. To the beginning."
"Seems so."
Najin's voice was tight.
The landscape he had just witnessed had been too much of a shock. He exhaled a long breath and pressed hard at the corner of his eye.
"A constellation's dream…"
"Yeah. Most of them are like this."
Merlin said.
"Some constellations repeat an endless single day. Some loop a particular stretch of time. Some even replay their entire lives. They're people who gave up on moving forward — so they just keep retelling the same story."
A place for those who had abandoned going on.
A place where everything repeated without end.
Najin lifted his head and looked toward the Grand Cathedral. There stood Viola Oldina, watching them with the same expression, the same eyes, as the first time he had seen her.
Then she turned her gaze away.
Najin did not. Staring at her profile, he murmured,
"It's hell."
"Depending on the case, yes."
Merlin had told him once that some constellations lock themselves inside their own dreams as a form of self-punishment. And Viola Oldina, she had said, was almost certainly one of them.
She was repeating her final month.
The last month in which she lost herself and was swallowed by Ladon — she had been looping that month for five hundred and sixty years. As if that were the punishment she had chosen for herself.
In the dream, she can turn everything back to the beginning.
But in reality, she would not have been able to.
If that was true, then guessing how the kingdom called Kassel had met its end was not difficult.
They entrusted everything to a single transcendentalist — and when that transcendentalist fell, the nation fell with her.
The Kassel Kingdom had been destroyed by Viola Oldina after Ladon consumed her. In the face of that despair, what choice had she made at the end? In a reality where she could not simply start over from the beginning, the choice she would have made was almost certainly…
"So that's why the Star's Grave was made."
She must have chosen to be buried in this land together with the Ladon that had taken her body. She must have chosen to torture herself inside an eternal dream. Which meant this was not Viola Oldina's tomb alone.
It was Viola's grave — and Ladon's as well.
"So?"
Merlin looked at Najin.
"So what are you going to do now?"
She was only asking.
"There's no real reason you have to break this dream. Breaking a dream isn't easy, and finding a way to do it won't be either. It might even put your life in danger."
"…"
"And if you're asking whether the rewards are worth it — not really. A Star Relic is nice, sure. But you can manage fine without one, can't you? What you gain isn't much compared to the trouble. If a Star Relic is what you want, you'd be better off raiding some other constellation's grave."
The stated purpose of experiencing a constellation's grave and dream had already been fulfilled. This much would have been experience enough. There was no longer any reason for Najin to remain inside this dream.
"And yet."
So Merlin asked.
"Are you going to try?"
A guide only points the way. The choice belongs entirely to Najin. Merlin's clear eyes fixed on him without blinking.
"…"
Before answering, Najin looked back. Behind him stood the stele that served as the dream's entrance. He read the words carved into the stone.
Who am I?
There was no answer written there. No one had ever answered Viola Oldina's question. Looking at the stele, Najin let out a short, dry laugh.
"You already know, and you're still asking."
He turned his back on the stele and walked. Walking in the opposite direction from the dream's exit, he said,
"Who am I?"
"Haa…"
Merlin heaved a long-suffering sigh. Her eyes asked if he really had to say it — but Najin put the question to her again. Who am I?
"Fine. Youngest Sword Seeker, youngest four-star, youngest Free Knight. Your ears must be bleeding by now. Why?"
"That's right. I am a Free Knight."
A Free Knight.
One who protects what he himself believes to be right.
A knight who protects other knights.
"It's written right there on that stele, isn't it?"
Hero of the Kassel Kingdom, Viola Oldina.
Who protected the nation from the Evil Dragon,
and fought with valor to the very end — a knight.
"She's a knight, isn't she? And as far as I can tell, this dream is… wrong. That look on the constellation Viola Oldina's face doesn't sit well with me either."
"So?"
"So I'm going to smash it."
"How?"
"That's what I need to figure out from here."
Walking the streets, Najin gathered information. New details stacked on top of everything he had collected before time rewound.
"Are you Mirentz?"
Najin sought out the old woman named Mirentz.
The old woman whose shoulders Viola had clutched and begged in those final moments. She was Viola Oldina's older sister by blood — and the only person alive who still remembered Viola as she had been before her adoption into the Oldina family.
He listened. He gathered information.
And he collected what he needed.
"Merlin?"
There was one last thing he required, and he didn't have to look far for it. Najin glanced at Merlin.
"Merlin is a great mage, isn't she? The first to uncover Mystery, the first to reach the realm of the Tenth Ring, a truly magnificent mage who holds no fewer than eleven stars."
The ears of Merlin, who had been chewing on a piece of bread, twitched. Her brows curved into a pleased arc.
"Go on. I like the sound of this."
"For a mage that great, making it rain should be as easy as breathing, right?"
"You — do you have any idea how hard it is to control the climate and force a natural phenomenon? That's practically taboo among mages. It's genuinely, truly difficult."
"So it's impossible?"
"It is. Ordinarily. But who do you think I am?"
Merlin's lips curled.
"The archmage who makes the impossible possible. Just like you said — a truly magnificent mage, wouldn't you say?"
Grinning, she rose from her seat. Looking thoroughly, thoroughly sure of herself.
Merlin stretched a hand toward the sky.
Just as a swordsman needs a blade, a mage ordinarily needs a staff or some other artifact as a medium — but not Merlin. She called anyone who depended on a medium "third-rate," and she had always considered herself first-class.
Her lips moved.
Her fingertips moved.
With every handspan her fingers advanced, a circle formed. With every syllable her lips released, a ring was born.
Charruk.
In an instant, six rings appeared at her fingertips. Six rings resonating and spinning together. But Merlin showed no sign of being satisfied with that. Reduced to a level comparable to Najin's, six circles were the absolute limit of what she could command — and yet she did not stop there.
"I'll be borrowing these for a moment."
She gestured. The four stars Najin carried shimmered, then seeped into Merlin's fingertips. With that starlight, she forged more circles. Two rings of platinum gold caught at her fingers.
Six rings of blue light, plus two of platinum — eight rings in all.
Eight Circles. The mark of an archmage.
With a body that had not only failed to reach transcendence but could not even approach it, Merlin casually imitated it. Had any mage been present to witness what she had just done, they would have screamed. Even if that mage had been a transcendentalist, the reaction would hardly have been different.
It violated the fundamentals, the rules, the very principles of magic.
Merlin did not bother explaining how absurd what she had done was, or how astonishing. She simply showed him.
Snap.
Merlin flicked her fingers. The eight circles resonated. Blue mana rippled, surged, and climbed toward the heavens. The instant the droplet she launched struck the sky—
Ripples spread across the clear blue firmament.
For a moment the heavens undulated, as if a stone had been cast into a still lake.
And then — the rain came down in a roar.
Merlin had skipped every step of the natural process — vapor gathering into storm clouds, storm clouds releasing rain — and produced only the result: it rains.
Rain fell with a force that seemed ready to swallow the kingdom whole.
The sound of it erased every other noise. The cathedral bells that should have been ringing by now were drowned out by the downpour Merlin had made, and never sounded at all.
"Well?"
Standing in the pouring rain, Merlin looked back at Najin. She swept her water-heavy hair back from her face and grinned.
"Do I look a little magnificent now?"