The Forgotten One (1)
Constellations can sense the wishes of humans.
Merlin had explained that they could feel intense winds of desire and resentment as a kind of current.
It’s not a clear-cut phenomenon, and it’s not absolute either. It just happens often enough. There are already two of them right here, for one.
Najin looked around.
It was wasteland. Within a radius of at least several hundred meters, the only sentient beings were Merlin and himself. Watching him scan the empty horizon, Merlin laughed as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Someone once said Arthur was the storm of her age.
Najin flinched, a short tremor running through him.
Merlin shot him a sulky glare.
That’s what you shouted at the sky yourself.
“Well, I mean, that was…”
I know. You didn’t really mean it. Still, you could call that a kind of ‘hearing a wish,’ couldn’t you? When you yelled those words, you wanted to leave the underground city and head outside. You wanted to become a hero.
“I did.”
So of course that wish reached my ears—someone who holds a star tied to heroes, roads, the outside, and journeys. Your outstanding potential probably played a part too.
The concept a star carried, the rank of the constellation that owned it, the talent and circumstances of the one who made the wish… Because so many factors were involved, Merlin added, you could never define it with clean rules like “under this situation, this process produces that result.”
In your case, you can see the wishes of people who want a funeral—or, in your words, a satisfying end.
That was the current now flowing before Najin’s eyes.
Starlight running like thin streams of water. Using that current as a landmark, Najin walked. Following it had already led him to Jowel.
It’ll help you too. It’s the kind of work that can strengthen the concept of a star and grow its size.
“I’m not doing this because I want something in return.”
Still nice to get something out of it, though, right? Anyway, I don’t think this is a bad thing at all.
Grinning, Merlin pointed. “Ah, this way.” Because Najin was still clumsy at reading the flow of starlight, she guided him instead.
Hmm, hum-hum.
Merlin even hummed under her breath as she bounced along at his side, looking thoroughly pleased to anyone watching. The reason was obvious enough. Ever since they had come to the Outer Land, her role as guide had been snatched away again and again, hadn’t it?
She had even lost her place as advisor to the Helmeted Knight and been reduced to a useless spectator. Merlin had not forgotten those days—days that had dealt a vicious blow to her pride, days that had truly been agony.
But things were different now.
From this moment on she intended to prove her usefulness aggressively. So thoroughly that he couldn’t live without her. Her eyes narrowed as she shot a sidelong glance at Najin.
Heh.
While Merlin smiled with that sly look, Najin simply thought, There she goes again, and kept walking.
His goals right now were twofold.
One was to grow strong enough to face the Revelry Emperor. The other was to find the place called La Mancha. In the larger sense, it was about killing the Revelry Emperor; in the smaller sense, about opening a path that led to her.
And for that…
He had to become stronger than he was now. Far stronger.
With a clear objective, his pace naturally quickened. Walking the current of stars, Najin met the dead, and sometimes he met knights, and he asked them questions.
“Do you know anything about La Mancha?”
Questions for gathering information.
“Who are you?”
Questions to give them their final rites.
He collected the answers.
“Yurik, hunter of Aklem.”
“I’m Orem the Ascetic. Remember me that way.”
“Bolam, knight of Lucanov! The valiant Bolam!”
“Setes. Setes the Piercer.”
Each of them spoke their name. Calling out the self they wished to be remembered as—or the self they wished to become—they met their ends. Bestowing death upon those who could not die, Najin traveled the Outer Land.
Then, on one of those days of walking the Outer Land—
“…”
Najin’s steps halted. He had no choice. An intense, violent current had entered his field of vision.
A current so fierce he could not possibly ignore it.
He walked toward the place where that current gathered. Walking on, he arrived at a desert spreading wide in every direction. A yellow wind thick with sand blew against him. It was not a natural wind; someone was creating it artificially.
From far away came a whoosh—the sound of something cutting the air—and that seemed to be the source of the wind.
The Star of Funeral pointed the same way the sound was coming from.
If he walked toward it, if he climbed a small rise and followed the wind that came pouring over it… there stood a young man. In the middle of the desert, he was swinging a spear.
Whoosh.
The young man who had just swept his spear through a wide arc locked eyes with Najin. Najin spoke first.
“Who are you?”
Who are you, that you stand in a desert like this swinging a spear? The young man answered with an embarrassed smile.
“I forgot. A long time ago.”
2.
The young man who said he had forgotten his own name left Najin alone and finished what he had been doing. In other words, he kept swinging his spear. Standing in the heart of the desert, he swung and swung.
“…”
Watching the posture of those swings, watching the flow the spear created, Najin thought to himself:
That man is a Transcendent.
The grounds for the thought were simple. Even after watching him up close several times, Najin was certain he could never imitate those movements. And the only movements he could not imitate were those of Transcendents—therefore the man before him was a Transcendent.
What kind of standard is that…?
Merlin let out a disbelieving sigh, but she did not contradict him either.
More precisely…
Najin narrowed his eyes.
He was a Transcendent once, but he fell.
Technically perfect, yet something vital was missing. In other words, a feeling similar to the Helmeted Knight’s. An atmosphere shared by those who had once been Transcendents but had lost their stars and fallen.
Whoosh.
The spear shaft split the wind. The blade cut the air. Every time he swung, traces were carved into the sand—yet the wind mixed sand through them and left no mark behind.
“Hoo.”
After swinging for a long while, the man finally set the shaft down and looked at Najin.
“Forgive me. Even if a guest arrives, I cannot skip my daily regimen.”
“Your daily regimen being…”
“Ah. Swinging the spear is my regimen. A regimen I must keep without fail.”
He ran a hand over the worn shaft and let his gaze drift. He seemed to be measuring time—though counting time meant nothing in the Outer Land, he was still gauging it.
“The sun will set soon.”
There was nowhere in the Outer Land for a sun to rise. The sky was broken open to eternal night; there was no place for a sun to be. Yet he looked up at the sky as if he could see one.
“The desert at night is dangerous. Why not rest a while before you go?”
The moment he spoke those words—
The colors around them changed all at once. Najin lifted his head. What he saw was not the cracked, fractured night sky, but a sky dyed the colors of sunset.
…How?
As the desert filled with evening light, Najin’s eyes narrowed. He had experienced something like this not long ago. He murmured inwardly.
A tomb.
The Graveyard of Stars. Something similar had happened inside Violet’s dream as well. Had he entered a constellation’s grave without even realizing it?
Probably not.
Merlin shook her head.
The fact that I don’t have a physical body is proof of that. But it does feel similar to a constellation’s grave.
She pointed at the desert.
This desert itself is a single Forbidden Territory.
Aren’t Forbidden Territories the kind of land that rejects anyone who enters?
Most of them are. But this one is the opposite.
The opposite.
It’s a Forbidden Territory made so the person inside can’t leave. And the target is only one person.
Who that one person was needed no guessing.
Najin looked at the young man in front of him. The man was smiling a good-natured smile as he lit a campfire on the sand.
So this entire vast desert…
Is a Forbidden Territory created to imprison that one man.
By whom?
That I don’t know.
A Forbidden Territory for imprisonment.
Merlin was saying this enormous desert was a prison built to cage that man. Did that mean he was that dangerous? Keeping a hand resting naturally near his waist so he could draw at any moment, Najin spoke.
“All right. May I rest a while?”
“Ah, of course! Please, sit.”
3.
The sun sank and night came to the desert.
In the cool wind, the man had built a small shelter. He brought out a diary from inside it, held it in his hand, and faced Najin.
“Might I ask the guest’s name?”
“Najin. Free Knight Najin.”
“Na… jin… Is this how it’s written?”
He showed Najin the diary. Najin could not read the characters written there. They were not the common imperial script he knew.
That’s right. He wrote it correctly.
Merlin could read them. When Najin glanced at her, she shrugged as if to say she simply knew a lot of things.
“It seems correct.”
“Good. Na-jin. Najin. And Free Knight is… please wait a moment.”
The man flipped quickly through the diary. He stopped on a page and read the entry aloud.
“Free Knight. A knight who serves no master. A knight who does what he believes is right. A knight among knights… My, you must be a splendid person.”
He spoke with genuine admiration.
“I’m envious. Being able to introduce yourself with pride is a truly wonderful thing. I would like to introduce myself as well, but unfortunately even I don’t know much about myself.”
“Have you lost your memories?”
“Mm. I am losing them.”
“Pardon?”
He scratched the back of his neck and gave an awkward smile.
“I would love to talk with you for a long time, but the sun has set, so that won’t be possible. What a pity. I’ll have to leave the pleasure of conversing with you to tomorrow’s me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It will be faster if you ask tomorrow’s me. Hmm, just a moment. The time remaining… yes, this should be enough.”
Even while talking with Najin, the man kept glancing at the hourglass set beside him. The grains of sand inside were falling at a rapid rate.
“I do not know my own name. What I do know is that I was a knight. It’s written here, after all.”
He tapped the diary.
“And on the first page it says that when others ask about me, I should answer like this.”
Fingering the pages, he spoke.
“A knight of Rondinel. Yes. I was a knight of Rondinel. Whether I still am, I no longer know.”
Rondinel. It was a name Najin knew as well.
The forgotten kingdom of Rondinel.
The homeland of Sword Master Kirchhoff—a nation erased from history by a star that held the power of oblivion.
“If you intend to spend the night here, and if you intend to speak again with ‘me’ in the morning…”
Writing in the diary as he spoke, the man said,
“Would you please tell me to open page seven hundred eighty-one?”