The paint-stained sky tore open.

The torn sky screamed and bled like a living creature. Its screams sounded like shattering glass.

Blood streamed from the sky. It was red, yet not merely red. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple—blood of every color flowed. The paint that had stained the sky ran down through the tear.

PATTER, PATTER-PATTER...

The paint falling like rain gathered into shapes. The shapes of stars. Ten stars made of paint hung below the sky. Floating so close that an outstretched hand seemed able to reach them, the stars flashed.

And then.

CLICK.

Footsteps echoed across the wasteland.

CLICK.

The sound of a shoe heel striking the ground rang out. With every click of a footstep, the laughter grew louder. That laughter was no longer a hallucination. Shadows rose from the ground in time with those clicking footsteps.

CLICK.

The shadows rising from the ground wore masks. They were dressed in ridiculous clothes. Each held an instrument in its hands. They were jesters.

CLICK.

The jesters danced in time with the footsteps. They played their instruments absurdly, bursting into laughter as they began performing however they pleased. There were dozens of them. Dozens of jesters played, yet their music never came together.

Instead of harmonious chords formed by notes fitting together, every sound ran wild in a bewildering cacophony. Noise that made listeners frown and cover their ears filled the wasteland.

CLICK.

Yet even amid all that noise, the clicking footsteps were never drowned out.

"..."

The woman walked with dozens of jesters in her retinue. Her steps were slow, but speed was inherently relative. From the moment she appeared, Najin could not even breathe.

She walked toward him as he stood frozen.

RUSTLE.

Black hair spilled down. Long skirts trailed behind her. The devil wore the shape of a beautiful woman. At last, she bent at the waist and reached down to pick up an object lying on the ground.

It was a helmet.

She picked up the helmet Alderan had cast aside.

Holding the helmet, she walked toward Najin. Every one of his senses screamed. Tearing free of the restraints that gripped his body, he leaped backward. He seized the sword he had dropped and immediately took his stance.

His sword hand trembled. He could not tell whether it was an aftereffect of his battle with Alderan or the instinctive terror he felt toward the being before him.

Overwhelming. More than overwhelming—something on an entirely different level.

Najin knew instinctively.

The being before him was the Emperor of Revelry. A devil with ten stars, a Constellation known as the ruler of the Outer Lands. The one who had defeated Alderan stood there.

"..."

Merlin, standing beside Najin, was also wide-eyed, her air utterly unlike her usual self. Eleven blue stars shone vividly in her hand, as though she might descend into this place at any moment.

"Ah."

Then the devil spoke. She smiled, looking not at Najin but at Alderan's corpse lying before him.

"So you did manage to die a knight, didn't you?"

As though greeting a longtime lover.

As though welcoming her dearest friend, the woman's voice was gentle. She continued in a beautiful voice that tickled the ear.

"I lost the wager. I must keep my promise, mustn't I? What a shame. The beast that blows a horn, the mountain goat with golden horns, the sword shining with sunlight... It's such a shame to give them up. Truly, such a pity."

A pity, but... she said with a smile.

"I've gained you, so I'll be content with that."

Najin could not understand what she meant.

But he soon understood.

The moment the Emperor of Revelry gestured toward Alderan, a vast curtain draped across the sky. Like a curtain lowered before a play began, a pitch-black curtain covered half the night sky. Wearing the curtain that divided stage from audience like a cloak, the Emperor of Revelry raised her arm.

RUSTLE.

Threads spilled from her slender fingertips. They bound Alderan's body and his fallen stars. Erasing the full stop of a story already ended, the Emperor of Revelry turned to the next page and began writing.

『A jester is one who lives by laughter; thus even his death must be ridiculous.』

『Laugh, chatter, sing, and dance, jester.』

『Forever, forever, forever!』

Alderan's body rose. Pulled by the threads, his fallen stars hung in the sky. Yet the sky where his stars hung was not truly the sky.

It was an artificial night sky created by the Emperor of Revelry.

The curtain she wore, fashioned to resemble the night sky.

There, Alderan Basaglia's constellation was mounted like a preserved specimen. At the same time, his body began moving with a series of cracks. He moved like a puppet, caught in the Emperor of Revelry's threads rather than guided by his own will.

Najin watched the entire process in a daze.

His eyes wavered. What was he looking at? He could not comprehend the sight before his own eyes. No, he did not want to comprehend it. His mind refused to understand.

But the Emperor of Revelry would not allow him that refusal. She gestured. Lifting the helmet bound in threads, she gently cradled it in both hands, as though handling a precious treasure.

Then came a click.

CLICK.

The Emperor of Revelry placed the helmet on Alderan's head.

The Helmeted Knight had become a knight by removing his helmet. Only after casting it aside had he been able to declare himself Alderan Basaglia.

Then what was he now that he wore it again?

Alderan Basaglia became the Helmeted Knight once more. No, he could no longer even be the Helmeted Knight. That was nothing more than a helmeted jester. A jester dancing absurdly to entertain his master. An instrument permitted no will of its own.

The Emperor of Revelry grinned as she caressed the helmeted jester. The corners of her mouth split wide. Her paint-stained eyes half-opened. In those eyes, curved like crescent moons, lay scorn and mockery.

The Emperor of Revelry mocked Alderan Basaglia's end.

She laughed at, mocked, and insulted the end he had met as a knight. Had he met a noble end? So what? Who said nobility could not become a laughingstock? Everything depended on staging, on presentation.

She staged this performance as a comedy.

HA HA HA HA!

The mistress of the stage made a mockery of the knight's death. Laughter rang out from the audience. In the audience and onstage, dancing jesters laughed at Alderan's death, doubled over with mirth and clapping their hands.

—From the beginning.

From the beginning, Alderan Basaglia himself had never been included in the bargain.

What the Emperor of Revelry had offered in return was only Alderan's comrades. She had never intended to release the hero who had pierced her heart and brought down her stars. Whatever end he met was irrelevant to her.

Struggle. Writhe. Torment yourself again and again.

I will make a laughingstock of it all.

Your hundred and fifty years are nothing more than a ridiculous comedy danced upon the stage I created.

"... Ah."

And Najin...

Having watched it all, Najin felt his mind turn white. It was an emotion he had truly never felt before.

Until moments ago, his head had been full of judgments and calculations: how to escape the Emperor of Revelry, how to survive here, whether to call Merlin, whether to draw Excalibur.

But not now.

An enormous blaze devoured all those thoughts, all his judgment, all his reason. Anger took their place. Anger unlike any he had ever felt. Anger that turned his mind white and paralyzed his reason swallowed him whole.

GRRRK.

Najin ground his teeth.

His eyes grew bloodshot.

"... Stop it."

His voice was cracked, the words spat out as though he had chewed them first. Najin let go of his sword. But not because he had abandoned the will to fight. Quite the opposite.

His hand closed around empty air.

He gripped the space where Excalibur was stored as though he would shatter it. The space tangled around his fingers warped. Merlin's eyes widened, and she seized his wrist. She shouted into his ear, but her voice did not reach him.

Through bloodshot eyes, Najin saw.

He saw Alderan creaking beside the Emperor of Revelry with his helmet on. He saw his master, who had endured a hundred and fifty years to meet the end he desired, having even that end defiled. He saw the jesters mocking and ridiculing his master, their roaring laughter threatening to wash the world away.

The place where Alderan had won his glorious victory.

This stellar domain where he had closed his eyes as a knight.

The end Alderan Basaglia had desired.

The Emperor of Revelry was trying to turn it all into a ridiculous farce. Najin could not bear it. He simply could not endure this insult to a knight, this mockery of even his final moments.

At last, Alderan's body moved, pulled by the threads.

CREEEAK, RATTLE, CRACK...

The helmeted jester danced absurdly. He threw back his head and laughed, his helmet rattling. Ridiculous laughter spilled from the mouth that had once spoken of knighthood. The sword that had symbolized the Empire's hero and the helmet that symbolized the Order of the Golden Horn were stained with paint, their original colors lost.

The Empire's foremost warrior had become a jester.

HA HA HA, HA, HA HA HA!

Guided by the Emperor of Revelry's hand, Alderan moved. Waving his sword absurdly through the air, he burst into laughter.

The instant Najin saw it, something snapped inside his head.

SNAP.

—

Najin let out an inhuman scream. He did not understand what he had shouted. He only knew what he had to do.

BOOM.

Najin kicked off the ground and charged at the Emperor of Revelry. His chances of winning, rational judgment, calculations—all of it was meaningless now. He could not bear it unless he charged right this instant.

Excalibur was about to be drawn from empty air, and Merlin's stars were about to shine above. None of it had happened yet... It was that fleeting instant when just one more step forward would turn it all from future into present.

A flash.

At the very moment the situation was about to pass the point of no return, another star shone before Najin or Merlin could act.

The Martyr of the Thorn Vines.

The stars of that eight-star Constellation, who had ascended into the heavens long ago, blazed red.

2.

Descent. That was the name of the power.

Only high-ranking Constellations possessed it, and its name meant exactly what it said.

By concentrating starlight, they could transport their true forms to a particular place—a power akin to teleportation. It was limited to places their starlight could reach, but even with that restriction, it offered overwhelming advantages.

Yet few Constellations used this power.

The reason was simple.

Descent consumed an enormous amount of starlight and weakened a Constellation's true form at the moment of arrival. Revealing that true form was tantamount to exposing a weakness, and it attracted the attention of other Constellations.

A weakened Constellation. An enormous star. Appetizing prey.

Exposed to the countless stars hunting them, a Constellation's Descent was little short of suicide.

Yet the Emperor of Revelry had attempted Descent.

And into the very place where Alderan Basaglia had defeated her—a place that was forbidden ground to her. She had seized the fleeting moment when Alderan's death blurred its boundaries and descended into the forbidden ground in her true form.

The place where she had lost. The place where she could not be certain of herself. She had willingly descended into a place where merely standing wore away her soul and flesh.

An eccentric act bordering on suicide.

The Emperor of Revelry, who had offered no opening for hundreds of years, had exposed her weakness at this very moment.

A flash.

There was a star that did not miss that moment.

A star that hated devils. A star for whom devoting her entire life to killing them had not been enough... who had founded a religious order and continued hunting devils even after ascending into the heavens.

That star had been watching the Emperor of Revelry's stars and did not miss the moment they made their great move.

An eight-star Constellation.

The Martyr of the Thorn Vines.

The Fire That Has Burned for a Thousand Years.

And the fire that would continue burning.

A blaze of hatred that would not die until it had burned every last member of the devil race from this world.

WHOOOSH!

The star wreathed in flame called her apostle. Not only her apostle—she brought a star contracted to her down into this place as well. Even if she had to expend every last bit of her starlight, she would not let this moment pass.

SCREEEEEECH!

As the sky tore open, a tremendous sword strike cleaved the space between the Emperor of Revelry and Najin. The threads she had extended toward the charging Najin, along with her jesters, were caught in sword aura and dismantled into tiny pieces.

Six stars suddenly appeared above the wasteland, which until then had been lit only by the Emperor of Revelry's stars.

The Star of Heavenly Slaughter, Yuel Razian.

"Duck."

Falling toward the ground through the tear in the sky, she swung her sword. Sword aura hundreds of meters long bisected the battlefield. The sword's cry, resembling a human scream, buried the jesters' laughter.

The sword strikes did not stop at one. Swung again and again, her sword fell toward the Emperor of Revelry's head like a guillotine.

As sword aura slashed the surrounding area to pieces, one more new star appeared in the sky.

Just one star.

Though its bearer did not possess multiple stars like Yuel, that single star shone vivid blue, its brightness in no way inferior to hers.

A man suddenly appeared before Najin and caught him firmly by the nape of the neck, then threw him backward. As though to say this was no battlefield for him. Cutting down the entire oncoming mob of jesters with a single swing, the man spoke.

"Emperor of Revelry."

Najin had heard that voice before. But unlike then, it now carried profound anger.

"Do you remember me?"

Kirchhoff, Sword Master of the Forgotten Kingdom.

Kirchhoff pointed his sword at the Emperor of Revelry, one of the three Constellations involved in Londinel's destruction.

Two Sword Masters had entered the battle.

And the Emperor of Revelry...

She burst into laughter and covered her face with all five fingers. By the time those fingers drew away, a jester's mask covered her face.