I am a knight.

The moment he uttered those words, the Helmeted Knight felt the shackles constricting his body fall away. He could not tell whether it was merely a sensation or whether something that had truly been weighing him down had vanished.

“Ah,” he laughed.

It was not only his body that felt lighter. The anguish filling his mind had vanished entirely the moment he said, “I am a knight.” His narrowed field of vision widened. He began to find the helmet on his head uncomfortable.

He raised a hand to it.

As his hand touched the helmet’s fastening, he felt the fog filling his mind begin to dissipate. The pale mist cleared, and forgotten memories began to return. The Helmeted Knight quietly closed his eyes at the change.

Why were his memories returning now? The curse the Emperor of Revelry had placed on him could not be so simple.

Was it because his life had run out? Was this a final struggle, like a fire blazing fiercely one last time before it went out?

Or had giving his answer and putting his lingering regrets to rest freed him from the curse? Perhaps it was because he had come to the land where he had won his glorious victory. Had the sword marks remaining on the ground stirred his memories?

Was it because, having given his answer, he could now believe in himself? Or was it because someone had remembered him? If so, that someone could only be Bernstein. Should he thank the man? Or the boy before him?

Countless questions arose. Countless theories came to mind. Yet the Helmeted Knight chose none of them. He made no effort to resolve his questions.

There was no need.

He was simply grateful for all of it. To Bernstein, to Najin, to everything that had brought him this far.

The Helmeted Knight remembers himself.

Reflecting on his life, he undid his helmet’s fastening.

2.

He traces the course of his life.

Searching the memories now freed of fog, he recalled who he was. His name still eluded him. Everything had its proper order. The first words that came to mind were the Empire’s hero, the Empire’s pillar.

The hero who had saved his nation from turmoil.

The First Pillar of the Empire.

Originally, the Empire’s pillars had borne titles using a word meaning “pillar.” But in recognition of the achievements of the commander of the Order of the Golden Horn, the Empire broke with eight hundred years of tradition. Because of him, its pillars came to bear titles using “horn” instead.

The Empire’s foremost warrior.

The first pillar supporting the Empire, and the first horn to pierce its enemies. If the Empire were a ship, he was its prow—the sharp horn that shattered everything in its path with Battering Ram.

The great feats he had accomplished as the Empire’s foremost warrior were truly endless. He had hunted fallen stars, slain devils crossing the Boundary from the Outer Lands, prevented civil war within the Empire, and saved it from crisis time and again.

「Hero.」

「It is as though King Arthur has returned to life.」

「That man is the true wielder of Excalibur.」

「A hero! Great, truly great!」

「The First Pillar of the Empire.」

Every citizen of the Empire knew his name. And not only the Empire. Everyone on the continent knew it. Whenever he inscribed another star in the sky, the entire continent cheered. The world, after all, always thrills to the existence of a hero.

He had lived amid praise that King Arthur had returned to life, that his deeds rivaled Arthur’s. He had striven to become someone worthy of that praise.

When he had truly come close to drawing Excalibur—on the day he pulled the sword halfway out of the stone—had even the ancient heroes in the night sky not been astonished? He could never forget those glorious days. They had been happy days indeed.

He had always triumphed. Always shone.

He had thought he could do so forever. Having grown up reading The Life of Arthur, he believed he could write the “next story” Arthur had never written. Like so many heroes, he dreamed.

'The Outer Lands, too, are full of the Empire’s enemies. Full of those who threaten humanity. And so, as a hero... as a knight, I shall cut them down, as I ought.'

That was the role he had been given.

'I shall triumph honorably, proudly, gloriously.'

That was the price of the praise he had received.

「You are a hero. You must be a hero. Between being the Empire’s hero and my lover, you chose to be a hero. Then you must pay the price.」

「I love you. I love you, ■■■.」

「Please, I hope you never regret this choice. I hope you die a hero to the very end. If that is your dream, I hope you achieve it.」

「Now my life will rest upon that dream. I am glad it is you who is trampling mine.」

He had sacrificed so much to be a hero, and he had been made to pay the dearest price for it.

'I... '

Defeated by the Emperor of Revelry, bereft of his comrades, forgotten and forgetting, he had lost everything. Yet he still wished to be a hero. To be a knight. He had to be. He had sworn it before so many people, before the lover he had killed.

'I must be a knight.'

That resolve made his life agonizing.

In his mind, he shone. In reality, he was shabby and wretched. His armor had rusted, the horn on his helmet had broken, and his soul and flesh were rotting away.

'I, I... '

He endures. Endures, and endures again.

Thinking himself a knight.

Yes, he was a knight. A knight who knew honor and pride. He had to act as one.

'What am I?'

But the part of him that was merely human asked questions. What value did any of that have? Could he truly accept such an end?

What end awaited him?

An end in which everyone forgot him, forgot even that he had existed, and he finally degenerated into a mere beast. Could he accept that end? Was his wish to be a knight worth more than avoiding it?

He could not answer that question.

It was, indeed, far too terrible.

His radiant days, his achievements—all of them had been forgotten. The moment he died, even the remaining records would vanish. Such was the curse laid upon him.

It meant his entire life would be denied.

If every great deed and story he had built up disappeared, was he a knight? Could he be remembered as one? Unable to answer his own questions, he wandered the Outer Lands.

'Ah... '

All his stars had crumbled. Unable to gain new ones, his soul and body wore away rapidly. The imperial crest engraved on his armor had worn out of existence. His flesh grew increasingly grotesque. He was becoming something other than human. Something like the beasts roaming the Outer Lands...

One of the Lost. A forgotten star. A fallen star.

'Ah.'

When he removed his helmet and looked at his face reflected in the water, a hideous monster stared back.

It was an appearance he could not possibly call human, or that of a knight. And it was not only his appearance that was changing. He felt his inner self twisting into something hideous as well.

Someone kept whispering in his ear.

Kill the young stars. Kill the new stars that have only just set foot in this land, and take their stars. Hunt the weak stars. Then you can postpone the terrible end awaiting you. Perhaps you might even regain your glory.

'Yes, don’t I have a worthy cause?'

His comrades’ honor rested on his shoulders. If he died, they would become jesters. Surely he could not allow that. Abandoning his own honor and pride for their sake... was that not something deserving of praise instead?

'Isn’t Schlein, the Guardian of the Starfire, doing the same? If I, too, did that... '

Persuading himself was easy. Rationalizing it was all too easy. Doing it would be easy as well. He was still powerful.

'Besides, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.'

Then why should he not do it? Simple. It was not a knightly thing to do. There was neither honor nor pride in it.

His younger self could have declared firmly that he must never act that way. But old and exhausted as he was, he could no longer say so with certainty.

'Honor, pride... what do I gain by keeping them?'

There was nothing to gain by preserving them.

There was much to gain by betraying them.

'Then why cling foolishly to useless things like honor and pride?'

If he killed a young star and stole its stars, he could live longer.

Could he not prolong his life just a little?

When his thoughts reached that point, his eyes flew wide. What had he just been thinking? The thought that had flashed through his mind filled him with self-loathing.

Now he was becoming a monster not only on the outside, but within. He truly was about to abandon honor and pride, to become a monster rather than a knight.

CLICK.

From that moment on, he pulled his helmet firmly onto his head.

He secured its fastening tightly. Never again did he remove it. Unless he clung at least to outward things—his helmet, his armor, a knight’s bearing—he felt he would no longer be able to call himself a knight.

And so he became the “Helmeted Knight.”

Concealing the ugliness within, he wanders.

For ten years, fifty years, a hundred years, a hundred and fifty.

He simply wanders without end.

And at the end of that wandering, when even his armor and helmet could no longer conceal the rot inside...

「I am Najin, squire to Ivan, knight of Atanga. I accept your challenge. This is a duel, isn’t it?」

The Helmeted Knight met a boy.

The boy was a young star. Young still, but possessed of a star brighter than anything else. A star so dazzling it hurt his eyes to look at it.

The boy’s star illuminated the Helmeted Knight’s.

「Did you say honor and pride were strong liquor?」

It illuminates a star that can no longer shine on its own.

「Have a drink. I can at least be your drinking companion.」

He became drunk. Drunk on honor and pride. While he was with the boy, the Helmeted Knight could be a knight. Holding the dream he had forgotten and the things he had lost, he sets out with the boy on his final journey.

They gave a knight groaning beneath his duty a knightly end. They held a funeral for a fallen star who had lost himself, a funeral for him alone, so that he might shine one last time. Sometimes they were pursued by the Lost; sometimes they hunted them. At other times, they exchanged idle stories before a campfire.

The Helmeted Knight dwells on a story the boy told him then.

The story of a knight who had shone in a place without stars.

He had become deeply absorbed in the life of the knight named Ivan, believing him similar to himself. And the words Najin had spoken at the story’s end had pierced deep into his heart.

「If someone wishes to be a knight, is he not already knight enough?」

Yes. Those words were true indeed.

Remembering them, the Helmeted Knight smiled.

“I wish to be a knight.”

Smiling, he opens his eyes.

“Then I must be a knight, mustn’t I?”

Najin answers that question.

Of course. He is already knight enough. At those words, the Helmeted Knight laughed with boundless delight.

CLICK.

The helmet’s fastening came undone. The fastening, locked for so many years, falls away. With his helmet still on, he looks at Najin. Meeting his pupil’s gaze, the Helmeted Knight spoke.

“My third demand, Najin.”

The last wish he had saved.

A wish for himself, or for the boy before him.

“Duel me.”

The Helmeted Knight makes a wish upon a star.

“Give me an honorable end.”

Najin willingly grants that wish. Leaving the fiercely burning campfire behind them, they prepare to duel. The one who issues the challenge must give his name first. The Helmeted Knight had not forgotten that rule.

'Now I can reveal my name.'

The fog had cleared. Every memory had returned.

Having remembered himself, he believes in himself.

“I am...”

He grasped his helmet.

Holding it, he recalls his name.

“I am Alderan Basaglia.”

He recalled every name by which he had been known. Remembering the words with which he could introduce himself, he smiles.

“The Empire’s foremost warrior, Sword Master of Britain, commander of the Order of the Golden Horn...”

Now he remembers.

Even the name of the swordsmanship he had wielded.

“And founder of the Triumphant Sword.”

With everything remembered, he pulled off his helmet and cast it aside. He could now consider himself a knight even without it.

By removing his helmet, the Helmeted Knight becomes a knight.

Casting aside the helmet revealed a monster’s face. The hideously distorted face could not be called human even as an empty kindness. It had eight eyes and several mouths, and his head blazed like black fire.

What the helmet had concealed was a monster’s face.

Yet Najin does not consider him a monster.

Najin raised his sword and cried out.

“I am Najin.”

Once an opponent had declared his name and affiliation, declaring one’s own was both a courtesy and a rule of the duel. Najin knew that rule well.

“Squire to Ivan, knight of Atanga, pupil of Alderan Basaglia, the Empire’s foremost warrior...”

Najin unstrapped the spear from his back and planted it in the ground.

“And apprentice knight of the Order of the Golden Horn.”

Alderan smiles in satisfaction at that answer. To his pupil, his junior, his rising star, he cries out.

“An honorable duel.”

Please, grant me an honorable death.

With those final words, death caught up with Alderan. The reason he had barely held on to grows dim. Flames engulf his head, numbing his mind.

Yet he does not become a beast like the Knight of Silence. He wished to be a knight to the very end. A knight could not disgrace himself by crawling on all fours and howling like an animal.

Though half of him has become one of the Lost, Alderan is still a knight.

He took his stance.

Standing on the line between the Lost and humanity, between unconsciousness and consciousness, between beast and man.

He grasped the sword secured at his waist. The sword that was his very symbol. The blade that had symbolized the Empire’s hero. Unable to regard himself as a knight, he had been unable to draw it. Now Alderan Basaglia draws that sword.

The Triumphant Sword.

The swordsmanship with which he had returned victorious from countless battlefields, making him a symbol of victory. The sword that was his very emblem, that had led an entire age. The moment he drew his blade, stars fell from the sky.

The stars Alderan Basaglia had possessed.

Eight stars fall.

All those already crumbled stars fell, scattering radiant light one last time.

At that moment, Najin’s eyes widened. The information he had been unable to connect, the puzzle pieces something had kept apart, all fell into place.

Najin knows instinctively.

The figure standing before him now is no wandering knight of the Outer Lands. Nor is he one of the Lost, degraded into a beast. The figure before him is a Sword Master of the Empire. A hero who led an age.

Najin gripped his sword tightly.

“Come.”

Perhaps this would be the final lesson.

To give that lesson, Alderan Basaglia raises his sword. To receive it, Najin grips his own.

A fallen star and a star yet to rise—two stars shone.