Prologue: Come Take My Neck
The 10th of April, Imperial Year 408. The Remarte Disputed Territory.
WAAAAAAAH—!
With a roar that surged up to the heavens, the armies of both sides crashed together like a storm front, sweeping and tangling into a single chaotic mass. And today, as without fail, I drew my sword against Grand Duke Ballot of the Cadea Empire.
Grand Duke Kadrian Ballot.
The sole Grand Duke of the Cadea Empire, and the supreme commander charged with the war in the Remarte Disputed Territory. It was already the fifth year since I had first crossed blades with him here.
He stood at the very head of his army, drawing his sword before anyone else — and finding me before anyone else.
Just like now.
"He's coming!"
"Everyone, fall back! You'll be swept away!"
"Move!"
CLAAANG—!
The Grand Duke, who had at some point soared up into the open air, brought down a blade as massive and heavy as the man himself, driving it straight for the crown of my head.
'Ghk...!' My hands whined in protest as they held back the enormous longsword.
'This man is a lunatic.'
He'd grown even stronger in the few months since I'd last seen him. The instant I parried his blade, the Grand Duke sprang swiftly backward.
And then, again.
This time the point of his sword came flying at me with blinding speed, aimed for my throat. Fast. Absurdly fast, for a man built like a battering ram.
'God really is unfair, isn't He?'
I turned the force of his thrust against him, letting it slide harmlessly past, and returned the favor — sending my own blade flashing back toward his throat.
CLANG—!
The Grand Duke batted my blade aside just as easily. And even in the middle of it all, sharp violet eyes tracked my every movement through the narrow slit of his helm — the gaze of a beast locked onto the back of its prey's neck.
Impressive, in its own way. The look in those narrow slits alone was enough to tell me, at a glance, just how arrogant the man behind the helm was.
"Focus, Sir Sia."
"..."
His tone was that of a master chiding a careless student, and my brow creased.
'There he goes again.'
My relationship with the Grand Duke was a strange one. We had met, after all, as enemies — two people swinging their blades with every intention of killing the other.
'So there was never any question that we were enemies.' And yet not once had our duels produced a victor. They always ended in a draw. Part of it was that neither of us held an overwhelming edge in skill — but more often than not, the peculiar circumstances of war intervened, and our contests fizzled out before a winner could be decided.
Had some begrudging fondness crept in somewhere along the way? At some point, the Grand Duke had taken to striking up conversation with me.
"You seem full of stray thoughts today, Sir Sia. Do you truly have the presence of mind to spare for that, standing before me?"
"..."
"That sort of leisure is for after you've taken my neck."
If talking to me was his way of provoking me, then it worked beautifully.
'Arrogant bastard.'
Stubborn spite welled up inside me. Or perhaps it was obsession — the spite to beat the Grand Duke fair and square on skill alone, and the obsession to strip that helmet from his head once I'd won, and see for myself the face beneath it.
When Crown Prince Serhin heard these thoughts of mine, his face went grave.
"You're insane, Sia."
"Is there something wrong with thinking that way?"
"It isn't. The Grand Duke is an enemy of our empire. The moment you show him even the smallest opening, he is more than strong enough to take your life. Go at him prepared to kill. ...Don't think about it. Don't second-guess it."
I told Serhin I would do as he said.
But sure enough.
'I have to see it.'
Not that dull expression I'd seen in the copy of his portrait.
'The frown he'd wear when the war refused to bend to his will. The look of a man rattled by an attack from me he never saw coming.'
I had once seen a copy of the Grand Duke's portrait among papers the Crown Prince handed me. Jet-black hair, immaculately kept. Deep, searching violet eyes. Every strand of hair, every line of his brows, rendered with painstaking precision. The violet gaze set in his long, sweeping eyes seemed sharp enough to see straight through to a person's soul, while his mouth — closed in a flat line — was drawn so ambiguously I couldn't tell whether he was smiling or simply blank.
Just as God must have sculpted that man with devoted care before sending him into the world, the painter, too, appeared to have poured desperate longing and supreme effort into the Grand Duke's face. It was nothing more than a painting, and yet something prickling stirred against my chest — the same feeling as when we faced each other on the battlefield.
'He was handsome, I'll give him that.'
In all my life, I had never once seen a man who looked like that.
'I'd wager the painter was threatened into it. Paint me far better-looking than I really am.' Judging by the savage rumors about the Grand Duke written in those papers, he was villain enough to have deserved it — and then some.
Just then, my gaze met the eyes inside the Grand Duke's helm. They matched the portrait's perfectly. Apparently the painting had not been a lie after all.
'So that means the man from that picture is under that helm right now, doesn't it?' Hah. I scoffed. 'It's still just a picture.' It would be heaven and earth apart from seeing that face in the flesh, freshly bared as the helm came flying off.
Yes... What I wanted was to see the expression of a Grand Duke whose composure had abandoned him.
Right at that moment, a blade pressed in head-on along an utterly obvious trajectory.
KRAANG—! I knocked it aside, leapt high into the air, and retreated behind my parry.
"Letting your mind wander with me right in front of you. Are you trying to die, Sir Sia?"
Sir Sia here, Sir Sia there — every sentence ended with it.
"I never gave you leave to use my name, Grand Duke."
At my clipped reply, the narrow eyes behind the helm curved slightly, unmistakably amused.
'Insufferable.'
I drew up the aura coursing through my body and coiled it around my blade — and the Grand Duke, as though he'd only been waiting for that, raised his own in answer. Where aura met aura, the air around us was whipped into a savage wind.
'As expected — he's strong.' Swinging at him felt like slashing a blade against a sheer cliff face, cuts that meant nothing. And yet I never felt badly outmatched. He held the advantage in raw physique, but in aura, the higher ground was mine.
Every time our swords met, the steel rang out as if in resonance. The vibration began at my fingertips, traveled through wrist and elbow, into my shoulder, and out across my whole body. A sword tip grazing my throat by a hair's breadth. Steel crashing against steel. The shriek of iron after each impact. His breath, heavy with aura, punched through the helm and tangled with mine at arm's length, and every crisp whine of a blade skating across armor made the fine hairs on my skin stand on end.
All of it burned my reason away. My heart thundered. We truly were doing our utmost to kill one another.
'Has anyone else ever set my blood on fire like this?' Since my swordsmanship and aura had climbed to a certain height, no one had ever driven me this hard. The Grand Duke was different. He was the only rival alive who could push me to my very limit.
'If I were to break that man... if I were to watch his head fall to the ground... would I rejoice? Or would I feel hollow, knowing my greatest rival had vanished from the world?'
At the thought, my mind settled into an icy, perfect stillness.
That was when it happened.
RRRUMMMBLE... KRA-BOOM—! KRAKANG!
Thunder cracked across the sky with no warning. Whether they sensed the strange power in it or not, everyone — enemy and ally alike — froze mid-battle and looked up. The Grand Duke and I likewise put a wide stretch of ground between us and swept our surroundings.
In that instant.
FLASH—! SSSSHAAAA—.
An uncountable number of black lightning bolts came pouring down to earth along with the rain.
"AAAAAAGH!"
"Everyone, get clear! Do not step on the blackened ground!"
Wherever the black lightning struck, the earth stained pitch-black — and then, writhing as though alive, it began to swallow the people standing on it.
'That's... no. Could it be — black magic?'
Just then, the Grand Duke murmured the very same words, barely above a breath.
"It's black magic."
The Grand Duke and I exchanged a look. Before this new power called black magic, the outcome of our duel meant nothing at all. Another draw, then.
"R-Run! Get away!"
"Guhk—!"
"S-Save m—!"
The power of black magic was truly staggering. I realized then that everything I had read on the page and heard by word of mouth had been only the tip of the iceberg. 'Now I understand why the people of the past risked their lives to wipe black magic from the world. If hell exists, surely this is what it looks like.'
The Grand Duke called his warhorse and swung up into the saddle. Then, looking down at me, he spoke.
"Sir Sia."
"..."
I stared at him without a word. Twisting the reins around his hand, he went on.
"We'll put today's duel off until next time. ...So see to it that you survive."
"..."
"My neck."
The Grand Duke tapped, twice, the spot beneath his helm where his throat lay.
"You'll have to come and take it."
"..."
And then, without waiting for any answer, he wheeled his horse around and galloped for his own lines.
"Soldiers of Cadea, hear me! We fall back — all of us! It is black magic! Do not stand against it! Withdraw to the Remarte border, then reform your ranks!"
At his cry, the soldiers of the Cadea Empire began pulling back with flawless discipline. For a moment, I watched the Grand Duke's back as he fled, weaving between black lightning and the gaping pits. Then I turned and ran straight for the camp of the Tenasis Empire.
'Honestly, that man...' Telling an enemy commander to survive, in the middle of a battlefield. 'And then telling me to come take his neck — the man isn't right in the head.'
'Don't go deciding I'm the only mad one here, Serhin.'
Somehow, a laugh spilled out of me. So it was begrudging fondness after all, it seemed — even I was hoping he would make it out alive.
Then — KRAKANG—!
My path to the barracks where Crown Prince Serhin waited was cut off. Lightning had struck directly ahead of me, and the instant it blackened the ground, I was sucked into that black pit before I could even think to dodge.
CRUNCH—!
"Ughk!"
Agony beyond description seized the lower half of my body, already swallowed by the pit. I learned, then, exactly what it felt like to be chewed and devoured alive. The more I thrashed, the faster I was dragged down, until even my vision began to flicker, dimming in and out.
"Sir Sia!"
I turned toward the voice — and there was the Grand Duke, charging straight for me. He had reversed his horse mid-retreat, abandoning his own lines.
'Have you lost your mind, Grand Duke?'
Don't come here! Turn back!
Everything had gone blurry — and yet, for some reason, the violet eyes inside that helm stayed perfectly, painfully clear. Eyes blown wide, pupils shaking wildly. Like a man witnessing the death of his dearest friend, his gaze trembled as though screaming.
Why...
'Why are you looking at me like that...?'
'Damn it...'
"Go back... Go... back...!"
With that final, squeezed-out cry, my sight went dark. I never learned whether the Grand Duke reached me, or whether the black magic claimed him too — because my breath gave out before either could happen.
And that was how I met my death.