Black Spire (7)
He woke from a deep dream.
Najin blinked to clear his blurry vision. After several blinks, his sight finally returned. What filled his eyes was a cold, chill floor—the interior of the Black Spire.
He pressed a finger hard against his forehead. He had clearly dreamed, yet he had no wish to dismiss everything that had just happened as a mere phantom.
Merlin said she lost her memories.
After Arthur died and she gained the twelfth star, she experienced some incident and cut her memories away. Merlin had once told him as much.
Half right.
And half wrong, huh?
Merlin had never said such a thing, yet somehow he thought he heard that voice. Najin found himself smiling without meaning to.
She didn’t cut out her memories—she separated her existence.
Into the fairy who lived in dreams,
and the human who lived in reality.
All to bury the Star of Termination.
Najin did not know exactly what the Star of Termination was. Merlin had called it “close to a curse,” a star that would hinder the journey ahead, one that had to be buried no matter the cost.
He still did not understand it, but it was something he would have to learn. Najin steadied his breath and turned his gaze.
…
There stood Merlin, restless and fidgeting. She stole anxious glances at him, chewing her lip as if she had a thousand questions yet dreaded asking any of them.
"Merlin."
"…Y-yeah?"
Najin did not speak at length.
"You don’t have to be so afraid. It wasn’t the kind of story you were worried about."
"How would you know what I’m worried about?"
"I mean it wasn’t some bloody, horrific, messy tale. It was the opposite, actually."
Najin clenched and unclenched his fist.
"You used to be a prophet, right? The first thing that made your name wasn’t as a mage, but as a prophet."
"It was so long ago… but yeah? Before I met Arthur, I made my name as a prophet."
Merlin looked reluctant as she said it. She had never much liked the eyes that peered into the future, and after meeting Arthur she had all but sealed them away—which was only natural. Looking ahead had brought her grief more times than she could count.
"Can you still use that?"
"No? I can’t."
"Why not?"
"Because I lost the ability. I think it went when I dropped the twelfth star… Come to think of it, that’s weird, isn’t it? Why would dropping a star make me lose foresight?"
Merlin tilted her head. At the sight, Najin smiled without meaning to. Because he knew. He knew exactly why she had lost that power.
"W-what? Why are you laughing?"
"Just… I think I know."
"Know what?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
"Hey, is that how you’re going to play this? You promised we wouldn’t keep secrets from each other!"
"What are you talking about? I haven’t made any secrets."
Najin drawled slyly.
"It was a conversation I already shared with the Merlin from a thousand years ago."
"Whaaat?"
What the hell did you see?
As Merlin seized Najin’s sleeve and shook him, he let out a long breath.
As expected, it had not been a dream.
Or rather, even if it was a dream, it no longer mattered.
To the past Merlin who had chosen to live in dreams, dreams were reality. And so, to him—her companion—everything that had passed was as good as real.
"I said our first meeting was the worst."
Najin murmured.
"I need to correct that."
It had not been the worst.
It had been the opposite.
"Just what did you see? What the hell did you talk about with me in the past? Hey, heeey…!"
"I made a promise."
"What promise?"
"That we’d meet again."
See you again.
The words were short, yet Najin had packed a great deal into them. When he spoke, he had been looking not at the Merlin of now, but the Merlin of the past.
Let’s meet again.
Not now— in the future.
Because she had understood the meaning in that gaze, the weight in those few short words, Merlin had answered with a smile at the end. That she would be waiting a thousand years from now. Recalling the face of Merlin who had laughed while crying, Najin murmured,
"I have to keep that promise."
The Eternal City.
He now had a reason he absolutely had to go there.
"Who the hell are you even talking to?"
Of course, from Merlin’s perspective—unable to follow any of it—the situation was enough to drive her up the wall. She thumped her chest in frustration.
"If it’s a promise, haven’t you already kept it?"
Merlin stomped her feet and jabbed a finger at herself.
"Right now! In front of you! I’m! Standing right here!"
As Merlin screeched, Najin let it go in one ear and out the other. As always.
2.
"You need to show me some respect."
It took a little time to soothe the sulking Merlin, but the situation was eventually settled. Najin looked up the stairs that led to the top of the tower.
Climb those stairs and you reached the uppermost floor of the Black Spire.
The destination Anton Quijano had sought for four hundred years, where his beloved waited. Yet Anton had stopped short with his goal right before his eyes.
…
Najin watched him.
Kneeling, head bowed, Anton was still lost in the dream. There was no sign he would wake. Najin’s expression grew heavy as he looked at the man.
The higher they climbed, the more Anton had worn down.
With each new floor, the time it took him to surface from the dream lengthened, and even after waking he would stare blankly into empty air for a long while.
"Ah? Ah. Aaaah. Right."
"Have to climb."
"Have to climb the tower.
"Lapis will be waiting…"
The eyes that murmured those words never shone. They were opaque, hazy, dream-drunk. Like a man lost in drink, Anton was drowning in the dream.
"There’s nothing you can do to help him."
Merlin said.
"The Trial of Recollection can’t be interfered with from outside. He has to overcome it alone. That’s what makes it so vicious."
Hours later, Anton finally clawed his way free of the dream. But that did not mean he had broken the trial.
"Aaaah."
The waking Anton groaned.
"So it was a dream after all."
He clenched his teeth and rose. The moment he took a single step, he sank back into the dream. Only after more hours did he open his eyes again—and the instant he stepped forward, the dream reclaimed him.
…
Watching it, Najin spoke.
"The trial isn’t only once?"
"Only once."
Merlin looked at Anton with something like pity.
"It simply continues without end until he overcomes it."
"Without end?"
"In the end, the Trial of Recollection hanging over this Black Spire demands only one thing: choose reality over the dream."
Merlin pointed at Anton.
"He’s trying to wake, but he can’t fully let the dream go. Especially on this floor, which shows the happiest memories of all."
He wants to wake from the dream.
But he cannot abandon it either.
"If he can’t cut one side away, he can’t move forward."
That was why, Merlin explained, even when Anton woke he fell straight back into the dream the moment he took a step. Najin watched him in silence.
"Lapis! Lapis!"
Anton came awake with a scream, gasping as he looked around. When his eyes met Najin’s, he seemed to realize it had been a dream, and he smiled bitterly.
"…How many times is this?"
"Seven."
Anton looked back the way he had come, measuring how far he had walked. Then he turned his gaze forward, gauging how much distance still remained.
"Far."
Weariness settled in his eyes. Still he forced the corner of his mouth upward, putting on a show of bravado.
"But not so far I cannot walk it."
One step. Hours of dream.
"For four hundred years I walked without knowing where to go, without knowing where she might be."
One step. Hours again.
"Compared to that, the destination is right in front of me. I can feel her above. Truly not much farther now."
Thud.
"So a trial of this level—"
Thud.
"—is nowhere near enough to stop my love."
A single forward step cost him hours; finishing a sentence took days. The time Anton needed to surface from the dream only lengthened with every step he took.
At first it had been two or three hours. By the tenth step it exceeded ten. Past the twentieth, he wandered the dream for an entire day.
And time in dream and reality was not the same.
Najin himself had spent dozens of days with Merlin inside a dream while only a few hours passed outside. He suspected the same was true for the hours Anton lost.
…
Halfway through the final floor,
"Aaaah."
Anton finally stopped.
He sank down where he stood.
"Just a little."
He covered his face and groaned.
"Just a little… let me rest a little."
3.
The skin around Anton’s eyes was sunken and dark.
He pressed a finger hard against the corner of one eye and exhaled a long, heavy breath that seemed to sink straight into the floor.
"It’s hard."
The Anton who murmured that was nothing like the man Najin had known. The ever-confident figure who never once voiced complaint was gone.
"It’s hard. I’m starting to have trouble telling which is reality and which is dream. I’m even wondering whether there’s any need to live in reality at all."
What remained was a wretched human being—
a man who had wandered four hundred years chasing a single dream.
"I know. I know I shouldn’t. But listen, oarsman—imagine it."
"Imagine what?"
"The moment I close my eyes, they unfold. The happy memories. The days I spent courting her. From the day I first confessed my love to the day she finally took my hand. No—perhaps even beyond that."
Anton groaned.
"In the dream she is smiling. Smiling so happily. Lapis, who spent her whole life hating her own existence, hating the world, hating everything so thoroughly she never even learned how to smile properly—she is smiling."
He gave a bitter laugh.
"When I look at that smile, I start to think…"
Did I disappoint her?
Thoughts like that.
His face had gone dark.
"Disappoint her? Why?"
"Because it took too long."
…
"Four hundred years. A full four hundred years. She vanished leaving only the words ‘Find me, Anton.’ She must have believed I would find her soon."
Four hundred years had passed since then.
"It is far too long. I kept looking away, but I can no longer."
"Are you afraid?"
"I hate to admit it, but yes. I am afraid. Afraid that after waiting so long she has been broken. That she hates me. That she resents me."
Anton lifted his head and looked ahead.
The road was still long. And it was not a road anyone else could walk for him. Even a reliable oarsman’s oar could not row the water in his place.
The moment Najin tried to push or pull him, the tower would judge it the wrong method.
In the end, Anton had to resolve it himself.
Yet he could not easily take the next step.
"More than anything, I am afraid of myself."
He stared at his own hands.
"Waking from the dream is getting harder. Taking longer. I fear that if I keep walking like this I will simply fall into the dream forever—that I will do something stupid and choose to live there."
Anton clenched his fist hard.
"To end up like this with the destination right in front of me. How pathetic. For the greatest lover of the age to collapse in a place like this."
He forced the bravado, but it was only half-hearted. He was still afraid to go forward. He hesitated as if the resolve would not settle.
"This Black Spire," Najin said.
"While climbing the tower, I never once saw the witch named Lapis you were searching for."
"…That’s true."
"Not on the floor that showed the most painful memories. Not on the floor of the most intense memories. Not among the horrific ones, the sorrowful ones, the fearful ones."
Najin listed the floors Anton had already crossed.
He was not trying to lecture. He was not offering advice about what Anton ought to do.
"And not even here—on the floor of the happiest memories. The only place left is the top."
"What are you trying to say?"
"It means the witch you seek has already climbed all the way to the summit. And that even after four hundred years, she has not come back down."
Only fact. Najin spoke objective truth—truth Anton already knew yet had forgotten while drunk on the dream. He simply reminded him.
"You understand what that means, don’t you?"
…
"She chose reality over the dream. And even after four hundred years, that choice has not changed. That is what it means."
Najin did not know the witch Lapis well.
But he could know this much: she had chosen to live in reality rather than a sweet dream. The fact that she still waited at the top of this tower after four hundred years could mean nothing else.
"What will you do?"
Najin asked.
A guide’s role was to pose the question. Answering it belonged to the one who had to walk the path.
…
And Anton Quijano fell silent.
Head bowed, he dragged a hand down his face. Then, still covering his face, he began to chuckle. At the end of the silence he answered Najin’s question.
"Harsh, oarsman."
"Isn’t the reward always sweeter the rougher the road?"
"True enough."
Anton raised his head.
"Yes. You’re right, oarsman."
He gripped his knees tight and slowly rose to his feet.
"My lady is waiting for me with her neck stretched long. I can hardly let myself be snared by a trial this trivial."
With a heavy thud,
Anton drove one strong step forward.