Black Spire (4)
Najin remembered the day he first met Merlin.
To be honest, it had been the worst first impression imaginable. From Merlin's point of view, Najin had been an insolent little brat who insulted Arthur. From Najin's point of view, Merlin had been someone who made him wonder, That's the legendary great mage?
Merlin, openly hostile.
And himself, watching her.
The only real difference between then and now was that her eyes were no longer shining.
No. There's one more.
Back then he had been wary of her. Now he was not.
Because there's no need.
Najin simply dropped down and sat. He knew she hated looking up at people, so he lowered himself to meet her eye level, sparing her the trouble of lifting her head.
"……"
Merlin narrowed her eyes and glared at him. She had been about to snap at him not to look down on her, but he had already lowered his posture before she could get the words out, leaving her looking as if the line had been stolen from her mouth.
"I'd only ever heard stories that Merlin was the greatest mage. Never actually seen it for myself."
Najin spoke while gazing at the frozen ground.
"Looks like the title fits. Feels like more than a hundred fallen stars out there."
"Three hundred eighty-one."
"Oh. In constellations, that's roughly sixty?"
"About that."
Merlin exhaled. A pure white breath misted in the air.
"I told you to run. Why are you still here?"
"I was curious what kind of person the greatest mage really was."
"What an absurd kid. You risked your life coming all the way out here just for that?"
Merlin laughed in disbelief at his answer. The hollow laugh soon twisted into a sneer.
"So? How is it?"
"How is what?"
"Seeing the great mage in person. Not much, is it? I bet you're disappointed."
She scoffed.
"Greatness, stars, Mystery, the Tenth Circle… in the end it's all empty. When you can't even achieve a single thing you want, what's the point of any of it?"
"That doesn't sound like something someone who fought over a hundred constellations and buried sixty of them should be saying."
"This is just me taking it out on them. Meaningless emotional waste. Nothing changes because of it."
Merlin muttered as she looked over the ravaged, frozen land. Her eyes were still hollow—emptied out, finding value in nothing at all.
"……"
Najin had seen eyes like those before.
"You."
Many times.
"You're trying to die."
"……"
Merlin fell silent. Najin looked into her eyes. He had seen that gaze so many times. He knew exactly what people who looked at the world that way chose next.
He had grown sick of seeing it in the underground city.
Eyes that felt no value in living. Eyes emptied of any reason to keep going, any reason not to die, any lingering attachment at all.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Yes."
"Yeah. You're right."
Merlin did not deny it.
"If you know, then go. This isn't a look I want anyone else to see."
"……"
"I said go."
Najin did not move. He simply sat beside her, staring wordlessly at the frozen earth. Watching his profile, Merlin eventually let out a quiet laugh.
"What a ridiculous kid."
"You look like you've got a lot you want to say. If there's something you want to get out, go ahead."
"To you? Someone I just met?"
"Isn't it easier to talk freely precisely because we just met? No need to watch anyone's face."
That's true enough.
Muttering that to herself, Merlin let out a long breath.
"The truth is…"
"Yes."
"People call me a hero. A savior. But I'm not either of those things. I never once thought I wanted to save the world."
This was something she had never confessed even to the knights of the Round Table. The things she had never been able to say to those closest to her, precisely because they were close. She laid them bare now. She was going to die anyway—what did it matter?
"None of that ever really mattered to me. Honestly. Not at all."
"Then what did matter?"
"Reality."
Merlin added,
"A reality more beautiful than any dream."
She murmured,
"This is a secret, alright? But I'm going to die anyway, so what's the point of secrets? Half the blood in my body is fairy blood."
"…Fairy blood?"
"Yeah. Among fairies, the kind that live in the night. Put more simply, fairies that live inside dreams."
With hazy eyes, Merlin looked out at the world.
"In a dream you can create anything you want. Truly anything. So why leave a perfect dream behind and live in reality? That's how my kind thought."
And so they chose to live in dreams. They had no reason to abandon a dream where everything existed and step out into reality. Reality was filthy, sticky, chaotic, and full of pain, while dreams were endlessly beautiful.
So why live in reality at all?
Why endure the pain?
They never found an answer to that question. And so the dream-dreaming fairies became the fairies who lived inside dreams.
"But."
But, Merlin said.
"Half of me is fairy, but the other half is human. And that half refused to live in a dream. Humans are a race that lives in reality."
One of Merlin's eyes was hazy.
The other was clear and sharp.
"I wanted a reality more beautiful than any dream. I wanted to see the things I had never seen in dreams, the things I couldn't even imagine. And Arthur and the Round Table showed me those things."
A gentle smile touched Merlin's lips, as if she were recalling the past. But the smile did not last.
"It was joyous. But in the end, it ended."
Her eyes went hollow again.
"The Round Table fractured. The knights betrayed one another. People who had been comrades raised their swords to kill each other. And Arthur… Arthur wore such a sad expression. Then she left them behind and went alone. As if she had been alone from the very beginning."
Her voice trembled.
"'Don't follow me, Merlin. This is the end of my journey. You already knew, didn't you? That this was the ending I would choose. Use your Mystery to put a period at the end of my story.' That's what Arthur said. She said that and left. And then she ended the story however she wanted. However she damn well pleased!"
With a trembling hand, Merlin clawed at her own forearm.
"I want revenge, but I can't take it. I can't enter Kamran. Arthur sealed that place and decided it that way. Why? Why……"
As if she could not endure it without tearing at something.
"She promised me."
Merlin muttered weakly.
"She promised she would show me a utopia I could never paint even in my dreams. She broke that promise. Aren't knights supposed to keep their word no matter what? Why……"
Why, Merlin bit down hard on her lip.
"Why did you leave me behind and go alone?"
She opened her hand.
Twelve stars shone there. Merlin seized the twelfth, the brightest of them all.
"In the end, this is my final destination."
The Star of Termination.
"Everything points to the end of the story. So tell me—is there any reason left for me to keep living?"
The Star of Termination.
Her Mystery: the period.
"So I should just end it."
"……"
"Arthur told me to protect the world for her. But why should I? This world has no value to me anymore. It's gone. Whether it falls or not, what does it matter?"
Merlin sneered.
"Well? More horrible, selfish, and rotten than you imagined, right? Sorry? For shattering the illusion?"
At the sight of her laughing so spitefully, Najin simply shrugged and answered lightly.
"Sorry, but I never had much of an illusion about you to begin with."
"……What?"
"I've been in too rough a situation to afford illusions."
No matter how grandly history painted Merlin as a great hero, spending twenty-four hours a day stuck with her made it impossible to keep any such fantasy intact.
"So you're planning to kill yourself?"
"You going to stop me?"
"If I tried, would it work?"
"Probably not."
"Then I'll keep you company at least."
Najin rose to his feet.
"On the road to the end, having one companion isn't so bad, is it? If you want, I can even serve as a guide."
"A guide?"
"I happen to have a star like this."
The Star of the Funeral Procession glittered above Najin's palm.
Merlin looked at it and let out a hollow laugh.
"You're offering to show me the way to the underworld?"
"If you need it."
"This is ridiculous. I'm the guide here."
"Even a guide needs a guide sometimes."
Najin held out his hand to the Merlin still sitting on the ground. She looked up at him. Merlin hated looking up at anyone, yet somehow, right now, it did not feel unpleasant.
"Yeah. You're not wrong."
Merlin took his hand and stood.
The dream broke and resumed, over and over.
Whether he entered a layer that showed the most intense memories or the most agonizing ones, Najin kept dreaming the same dream.
Blink.
Every time he closed his eyes and opened them again, he was on frozen ground. When he looked to the side, Merlin was there. As they climbed the tower, the dream continued without end.
"You know,"
Walking toward somewhere, Merlin spoke.
"I always hated the Mystery I was born with. A period? Even the name is ominous, isn't it?"
"Is it?"
"Yeah. Ending a story. Wrapping things up. It almost feels like it foreshadows death. So I hated it. I tried not to draw on it at all if I could help it."
Those who have chosen death walk lightly, no longer feeling the weight of living. Merlin was the same. Her steps were far too light.
"When my entire people were slaughtered by the witches, I thought: Ah. Maybe my Mystery is a curse. Maybe I was the one who put a period at the end of their stories."
Her voice was light as well.
Walking lightly, speaking lightly, she even laid out her secrets lightly. Not because she trusted Najin or valued him, but because none of it mattered anymore.
"I truly hated it. Loathed it."
She smiled.
"But now it feels lovely."
"……"
"The moment I fully understood my Mystery, maybe I already foresaw an end like this."
Putting a period. Ending the story. Bringing it to a close. Arriving at the final destination. Murmuring such words, Merlin laughed lightly. Najin simply listened in silence.
Tap.
Merlin walked and walked. She toppled every false, filthy star in sight, pouring her Mystery into knocking them down without restraint, and she kept walking.
Tap.
Stars plummeted.
Tap.
Wherever her foot landed, shooting stars fell. One after another they streaked down, filling the night sky of the Outer Land. The witches trembled in fear, and even the constellations whose light was even slightly impure suppressed their starlight so they would not catch Merlin's eye.
Just as they had once feared the Witch of Kamran,
they now feared Merlin as well.
And so wherever Merlin stepped, only silence remained. Only the sound of her voice and the footsteps of Najin walking beside her echoed across the land.
"I told you. I'm just taking it out on them."
Merlin laughed.
"There's a whole list of people I want dead before I go. I don't think I can close my eyes in peace until I've drowned every last one of them. So I'll grind my stars down to dust if I have to, just to make sure."
She massacred witches, sank demons, and stripped dragons of every scale to mount them as trophies.
"The one I want dead most of all is inside Kamran, but unfortunately I can't go in there. What a shame."
She called it taking it out on them.
To Najin's eyes it was nothing of the sort. The more she unleashed her power, the more her insides festered. She spoke of dying, yet she almost seemed to be hoping someone would stop her.
Merlin was slowly going mad.
"Ah……"
Perhaps she already had. And still Merlin walked without end. Najin could not stop her. He had only ever volunteered to walk beside her.
"Ah."
Then, one day.
"Merlin."
Someone stepped into her path.
A one-armed knight, battered and ruined. He looked so exhausted he might collapse at any moment, so frail he seemed incapable of stopping even a child—
"……"
Yet that knight stopped Merlin.
He sank to one knee before her.
"I report to you, the next master of the Round Table, that I have fulfilled the final command His Majesty bestowed upon me. That I have completed my duty."
With his remaining arm he raised a single sword. The moment she saw it, Merlin's eyes flew wide. And so did Najin's.
"The return of the Holy Sword."
The Holy Sword—Excalibur.
Only then did Najin realize who the knight before them was. The knight who had guarded the Round Table to the very last. The oldest knight, and the first to follow Arthur.
The one-armed Bedivere.
The knight known for retrieving Excalibur from Kamran and returning it to the lake. He held the sword out to Merlin.
"I beg you—accept the return of the Holy Sword."