“Ugh...”
Following behind him, Levian caught Yuto’s hem, her lips trembling. The academy did not teach black magic, but it always warned of its evil and its dangers.
Now that she had witnessed the reality of what she had only heard about in theory, her face had gone deathly pale. Yuto firmly took her trembling hand.
“Ah...!”
The warmth of his unexpected grasp stilled her trembling. Her heart pounded, and color returned to her pale face. Though hesitant, she did not pull her hand away.
Yuto quickened his pace. As they passed the laboratories and crossed the corridor, he inspected the walls.
The lions and shields that symbolized Belkain’s royal family still silently held their places in this pitch-black darkness. He slowed, examining the emblems one by one.
Then he stopped. The eighth lion relief and shield emblem. This was where he had obtained the Precious Sword of Belkain before his regression.
In that world, Luke Belkain had judged young Yuto unready to wield the Precious Sword. He had built a secret chamber and hidden it there.
But Yuto had never existed in this world. Had his father hidden the sword nonetheless? It was time to learn the truth. Steeling himself against surprise or despair, no matter what he found, Yuto approached the wall.
“...!”
He stopped dead before reaching it. His wide eyes shook violently. He had steeled himself not to be shocked, not to despair, whatever he saw. Yet that resolve crumbled as easily as a sandcastle.
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP...
His heart hammered wildly. He could sense something beyond the wall. This presence... was different from the evil aether the Black Mages had used. If anything, it resembled the restless spirits he had seen in the ruined city, but it was not the same. The presence beyond the wall was more intense, more anguished than any spirit he had encountered.
“Ah...”
It was painfully familiar, and that familiarity made it hurt all the more. That dense, anguished presence stirred an instinctive longing in him.
Though stained and twisted by resentment and madness, this presence... was his father’s breath. Beyond that wall, his father—the last king of Belkain—existed as a wraith.
“Ah... Aaah...”
Clutching his chest, Yuto leaned against the wall.
The breath seeping through it was oppressively heavy and reeked of blood. His father had been torn apart by guilt over slaughtering his kingdom and its people with his own hands, until he no longer even remembered who he was. The presence of that father, reduced to a wraith by overwhelming despair, crushed Yuto’s chest.
“Aaah...”
Not clear tears but red blood flowed from Yuto’s eyes. The sentences he had read in the diary before losing consciousness became sharp thorns piercing his soul.
His father had been lonely.
Because his beloved wife had died before him.
Because their union had borne no fruit.
At the end of that loneliness, his father had cast aside his duty as king. He had succumbed to the temptation of the constellation, the Shattered Star. Had he retained a king’s clear judgment, he would never have wavered before such temptation. He would never have accepted that insane proposal to kill all his people and lead them to heaven.
He had not yielded to that temptation and slaughtered his people out of a king’s determination to make them happy. What had ultimately driven him was the desire to reunite with his dead wife in heaven. The desire to have the child they had never been able to conceive, even if it had to be in heaven.
His father.
Luke Belkain had placed his own loneliness and unfulfilled needs above the welfare of his people.
“...”
Yuto wiped away his bloody tears with a trembling hand.
He pitied his father. He felt such deep compassion for that life, which had fallen apart because his son did not exist.
And yet, at the same time, a cold anger rose in his chest.
This was not the resentment of a son.
The one who felt this anger now was not Luke Belkain’s son.
It was Yuto Belkain. Belkain’s rightful heir, who had ruled as its king before his regression. Belkain’s last king.
In that world, Yuto had given his life for Belkain. He had conquered battlefields to save the people of Belkain—no, everyone in Callisto—from the constellations that tormented them.
That Yuto Belkain raged at the broken, maddened, benighted king who had slaughtered his people to fill his own loneliness and emptiness.
“... I’m going in alone.”
Yuto spat out the words. Already bewildered by his sudden surge of emotion and bloody tears, Levian and Flokiro turned to him in alarm.
“Y-Yuto? What’s gotten into you?”
“You’re going in alone...?”
Flokiro looked in confusion at the wall engraved with the royal crest. It seemed he could not hear the sobbing of the wraith within.
“Wait here.”
Yuto’s voice sank, bitterly cold.
“No matter what you hear inside, do not come in.”
Flokiro opened his mouth to speak, but closed it upon seeing the fierce resolve in Yuto’s eyes. That determination was too firm for even him to intrude upon.
Yuto placed his hand over the lion’s mouth at the center of the wall.
Was the password the same as before his regression? Had his father in this world chosen a different word? There was no way to know without trying. Biting his lip, Yuto spoke the secret word.
“... Lia.”
It was the name of both Yuto’s daughter and his grandmother.
RRRUMBLE!
The instant the word left his lips, the solid wall began to split with a shriek. Fortunately, the password was the same as before his regression. A biting chill poured through the gap like a storm, along with the madness of a wraith—a benighted king who had slaughtered tens of thousands of his people and left them bound to the earth as restless spirits, unable even to pass on.
Without looking back, Yuto stepped into the darkness.
RRRUMBLE!
The wall closed again the moment he entered.
The chamber was pitch-black, but Yuto’s eyes pierced the darkness. An altar stood at its very center. Upon it lay the Precious Sword of Belkain.
And before that altar...
Something crouched. Royal robes hung in tatters. Hair stained by rancor had burned black.
“Ah...”
Yuto let out a long sigh at the sight.
Luke Belkain, the benighted king who had destroyed Belkain.
His presence was incomparably denser and more distinct than the restless spirits drifting through the ruins, and his form retained as little humanity as his shattered mind. Dozens of arms entwined like coils around the crouching Luke Belkain—the wraith.
“Who... are you...?”
A grotesquely altered voice, like metal scraping, echoed in the darkness.
“Who dares... enter... this... place...?”
The wraith raised his head. His eyes, filled with purple madness, made no real attempt to discern who stood before him. His reason had collapsed on the night of the catastrophe five years ago. Even if any trace of it remained, there was no way he could recognize Yuto.
In this world, he had been lonely. He had never had a son.
“This place... is my tomb...”
The wraith staggered to his feet.
“I cannot give... the Precious Sword of Belkain... to anyone...”
As his sobbing voice continued, the dozens of arms wrapped around his body unraveled with grotesque noises.
“Get... out... you filthy... rat...!”
The wraith grasped at empty air, and black aether condensed into a long sword. Yuto drew an obsidian dagger from Void Storage and gripped it.
“Luke Belkain.”
Suppressing his swelling grief, Yuto focused on his cold anger.
“You terribly... foolish king.”
He spoke the words scrawled across the diary’s first page.
“You benighted king, beyond forgiveness, deserving only hatred.”
Void Touch surged from his back.
“I have come to pass judgment upon you.”
The moment he spoke, the wraith charged with a beastlike howl.
CRAAASH!
The wraith’s flailing purple arms clashed in midair with Yuto’s pitch-black Void Touch.
Those purple arms were masses of guilt formed from rancor and madness. They sought to bind Yuto’s limbs, but his Void Touch intercepted the restraints the wraith cast upon him.
SWISH!
The wraith’s blade closed in swiftly, driving toward Yuto’s neck.
CLANG!
Sparks flew as the obsidian dagger met the wraith’s sword.
Their exchange continued. Dagger and sword clashed without pause. Gritting his teeth, Yuto held off the wraith’s assault.
“Graaaah!”
The wraith’s roar tore through the darkness. The despair and anger accumulated within him, and the rancor of Belkain’s sacrificed people, thundered through him like trumpets heralding calamity.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOOM!
The purple arms blocked by Void Touch burst outward in every direction. The marble floor tore like paper, and stone dust rained from the ceiling. Yuto instinctively wrapped Void Touch around himself as a shield, but the onslaught was overwhelmingly brutal.
“Ghh...!”
A groan escaped Yuto. Seizing the opening as he was driven back, the wraith bounded closer and thrust his sword with swift precision.
SKREEECH!
Yuto hurriedly swung his obsidian dagger to intercept, but he reacted a fraction too late to deflect the sword completely.
SPLURT!
Blood spattered from his shoulder where the blade grazed him. The wraith pressed his attack, his sword tracing bizarre arcs as it bore down on Yuto from every direction.
The wraith was strong. The prowess that had earned him the title of the Kingdom of Belkain’s greatest swordsman in life had not faded, even now that he was dead and reduced to a wraith.
No—with madness and rancor added to it, it felt all the more savage.
SWISH!
The wraith’s form blurred, and in an instant he slipped into Yuto’s blind spot. A purple sword flashed in the darkness, driving toward his neck.
CLANG!
Yuto raised his obsidian dagger just in time to block it. Blocking was all he managed. The tremendous impact transmitted through the blade made the bones in his arm scream, and his small, fourteen-year-old body flew into the air.
“D-Die! You rat!”
Bellowing, the wraith drew his sword to the side.
ROOOAR!
Purple aether churned like a whirlwind. Yuto’s face twisted at the sight. Bereft of reason though he was, the wraith was executing the Belkain royal family’s secret swordsmanship to perfection.
CRAAASH!
The aether whirling around the blade split the darkness and swept toward Yuto. The attack was far too powerful for him to meet head-on. He had no choice but to abandon defense and focus entirely on evasion.
Void Step carried him out of mortal danger.
BOOOOM!
A deafening crash and tremors shook the darkness. Emerging from Void Step behind the wraith, Yuto tried to thrust his dagger into him.
CLAAANG!
The surprise attack failed. Without turning his head, the wraith moved only his sword to intercept the dagger.
“You... rat!”
The wraith’s head twisted unnaturally to look back at Yuto. Purple light flashed in his eyes, and purple aether coiled around his sword once more.
BOOOM!
With sword and dagger still locked together, the aether erupted.
“Guaaagh!”
Yuto hurriedly wrapped Void Touch around himself, but his defense was incomplete. As he rolled across the ground coughing blood, purple hands swooped down on him.
“Ghhh...!”
Yuto sprang up like a spring and lashed out with Void Touch.
BOOOM!
Hands tangled with hands, and Yuto concentrated his aether into the dagger.
HUMMMM!
The dagger vibrated.
Just as the wraith’s sword had done, Yuto’s dagger gathered his aether into a whirlwind.
