Self-Awareness
Ice-cold eyes. A barren expression. Hair braided into a bizarre, rough plait.
Half his face was hidden behind a plate of iron, making him hard to recognize at a glance — but Lucia knew at once who the giant bursting through the door was.
Atmos of the Great Mountain.
So this bastard was still alive, too.
Five hundred years ago.
There had been no shortage of demons who made their names under the banner of that foul god, but Atmos, together with Yuma, had been a living terror — a force that ground the allied armies into dust.
Just when they had paid a mountain of lives to seize the upper hand, just when victory finally seemed within reach —
the earth began to shake.
Humans stared toward the horizon with despair written across their faces. There, a legion of giants marched with massive axes slung across their shoulders.
Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. As Lucia remembered it, that was not merely the ground trembling — it was a colossal dread that seemed ready to shake the sky itself.
The closer the giant host drew, the more catastrophically the humans' morale collapsed. Atmos, who led them, understood the human heart all too well. He stamped the earth with internal force, deliberately summoning terror with every step.
The victory that had been right before their eyes slipped further and further away.
No matter how thickly they clad their blades in sword-ki, no matter how fiercely they unleashed sword-aura, they could not cut through giant hide reinforced by mana.
No matter how tightly they wrapped themselves in protective aura, they could not withstand the crushing weight of those enormous axes.
And so the lives of men who had been someone's father, someone's lover, vanished without meaning.
Even so, Kylie never blamed him for it. She never cursed him as cruel, never spat that a giant had no business being so cunning. War was war — kill or be killed.
Instead, she settled it her own way.
Let's go, you fucking bastard.
Kwahahaha.
Back then, few people even knew the name Kylie, so Atmos could only laugh at the sheer insolence of this human.
...You're laughing?
When Atmos sneered, Kylie kicked off the ground. And then — like a cannonball — her fist smashed into the giant's jaw and shattered it.
You piece of shit. Worthless fuck. You can't even take one punch and you're still running your mouth.
Urgh... urgh-aaaaah...
Even with his jaw destroyed he still glared at her, and for a moment she considered finishing him off. But Yura had said that leaving an indelible wound would do more damage to enemy morale, so she let him live.
Just what... did I do to deserve this?
In the giant who stood before her five hundred years later, Lucia could find none of that defiant spirit — the man who had glared daggers even with a broken jaw.
On his knees, hands planted against the ground, Atmos looked for all the world like a defeated soldier surrendering to the enemy.
Have I committed some offense? Yuma. Say something, damn it!
Lucia regarded him with a sour expression. Offense? Of course there was offense. Standing right here was someone who still remembered, crystal clear, the sin of chewing through humans to break the allied army's will.
"Why are you wailing so pitifully?"
Yuma spoke, one hand still clamped around Dolby.
"Because no matter how hard we knocked, no one came out."
What nonsense is that? I came out the moment I heard the knocking.
At Atmos's protest, Shiron snorted.
"Bullshit. I knocked dozens of times."
"...That's why I said I'd go get him myself."
Dolby, apparently used to being held in Yuma's grip by now, voiced her opinion without the slightest hesitation.
"Atmos has bad hearing. Even normally, I was the one who had to open the door."
"Dolby, that is absurd. What kind of fool releases a hostage?"
"..."
"Ahem. Enough of the nonsense."
Shiron cleared his throat and chose his words carefully.
"I came to negotiate. Atmos."
Negotiate? Not threaten? You take a hostage and call it a negotiation?
"......Give me two swords and I'll let the hostage go."
His conscience twinged for a second, but Shiron stated his demand as if it were nothing.
I've forged plenty of swords. Take them and leave. And never come back.
With those cold words, Atmos dumped a heap of blades in front of Shiron. Shiron rummaged through the mountain of steel and pulled out a few.
"Tch."
Shiron flung the swords he'd drawn onto the floor. Atmos's eyes went wide at the sight.
...What do you think you're doing?
"Hey. Do you have any idea who dragged himself all the way out here for this garbage?"
What?
"Gar...bage?"
Lucia's eyes went just as wide at Shiron's outburst. She lowered her gaze to the milky-white blade in her own hand.
A sword this fine is garbage?
"Looks like you still don't grasp the situation. Don't worry. I'll make you understand real quick. Lucia."
"H-huh?"
Lucia flinched and turned her head. At some point, a white sword had appeared in Shiron's hand. An ominous feeling crept over her.
Shiron gripped the Holy Sword tightly and held it out toward her.
"Cut this."
"...Got it."
Lucia understood at once. The milky-white blade — bare of aura, bare of anything — came crashing down toward the Holy Sword.
Kang—
A clear, ringing note, and the Fairy's Longsword snapped clean in two.
"See? Defective product. Is this how you do business?"
"..."
The giant stared at the broken blade on the floor and could not speak. Defective? Impossible. He had forged well over a thousand weapons in his lifetime, and Atmos had never once made a blade halfheartedly.
He fixed his gaze on the white sword in Shiron's hand. Even after the Fairy's Longsword had struck it, not a single nick marred its edge.
"Stop handing over this junk and bring out a real weapon already."
Atmos finally understood what he wanted.
So it's a Star-forged weapon you're after.
"Yeah. The fancy one."
And do you have the qualifications? I haven't heard that Glenn Prien is dead.
A Star Sword was granted only to the head of the family.
They took so much effort to forge that Atmos bestowed them solely upon those who had proven their worth.
"I've had the qualifications for a long time. I've already killed two."
He'd expected the giant to dig in his heels and refuse. The conversation moving this fast was a pleasant surprise. Shiron reached into his coat and produced two black orbs.
They would have to wait for the swords to be forged, so the tents went back up near the smithy.
That night.
Lucia could not sleep at all.
It wasn't the noise leaking from the forge. It was everything that had happened in a single day.
An Apostle, was it?
The fight with the crimson knight had been the first real battle Lucia had faced in a long time.
Most of what she'd fought until now had been third-rate swordsmen who couldn't last a single exchange, or mindless magic beasts. Once again, she was forced to recognize just how extraordinary she was.
The Academy had been no different. What did it matter that the continent's finest talents were gathered in one place? No matter how brilliant a genius claimed to be, experience was something they simply lacked — and Lucia, standing on the foundation of her past life's memories, looked down on their shortcomings from a great height.
A flawless body. Bottomless mana. The memories of countless battlefields survived. Lucia Prien was more special than anyone else in the world.
More special than Siriel.
As long as Lucia was at her side, Siriel would never become special.
Siriel knew it too. How could she not know that her own ability fell short of Lucia's?
She had known it since childhood, carved into her bones.
Across hundreds, thousands of spars, the number of times Siriel had beaten Lucia could be counted on one hand.
And even those had not been pure victories of skill. For all that they sparred every day, there had been days when Lucia was clearly not at her best. How could a win taken on a day like that be called a true measure of superiority?
Lucia always said it was her own fault for not taking care of her body — but Siriel never saw it that way.
Instead, she only felt her own inadequacy more keenly, and found an ugly emotion rising in her chest.
...What is this?
Siriel felt a strange sensation.
A drifting, floating feeling, as if she were being carried somewhere. Everything she saw, heard, and felt lacked clarity.
A dream?
No. This was different from a dream.
Unlike the dreams she usually had, a sharp sense of wrongness cut through it.
It wasn't a lucid dream either.
In a space flooded with radiant light from every direction, all Siriel could do was look straight ahead.
In front of her, she saw the back of the special one — Lucia.
And beyond her stood Shiron, who to Siriel was more special than anyone else in the world.
Lucia stood at the center, but Siriel's awareness locked onto Shiron. Her brother's face wore a vacant expression, as if he had already given up.
And then Lucia leveled a blade at him. Siriel couldn't see her face, but she could see the hands — trembling violently. Shaking, Lucia drove the sword into her brother.
"...No."
"...Siriel. Are you with us?"
Glenn looked down at his niece with a worried face. After returning to Dawn Castle, she had fallen into a deep sleep — and at last, her eyes were open.
Siriel saw Glenn's face through a thread-thin haze of vision.
"...Uncle?"
"Yes. It's your uncle."
Glenn supported her back as she tried to sit up. Whether she had been trapped in a nightmare while she slept, her back was damp with cold sweat.
"Where..."
Siriel turned her head with vacant eyes. An old-fashioned room. Cool air. This was Dawn Castle — the place where her brother and Lucia had spent their childhood.
Then, suddenly, her eyes went wide.
"Uncle. Where is everyone else?"
"Do you not remember? They said they had somewhere to stop, so we came here ahead of them."
Glenn held out a small bell to her.
"The servants haven't returned yet either, so there's no one to attend you. If you need anything, ring the bell."
With that, Glenn quietly rose. Freshly returned to the castle after so long, he had no shortage of things to do — and being alone with a girl at such a sensitive age left him more than a little awkward. He wanted out of the room as soon as possible.
Click.
And so the room — far too large for one person — sank into silence. The only sounds left were Siriel's breathing and the beat of her own heart.
Perhaps because of that ominous nightmare, she could not shake the feeling that she had been left behind, alone.