Eris, born as a kin of the Star Crystal Beast Orleon, the very source of Mana that governs the world, carries an innate destiny. To stop the world's destruction brought about by human greed, she unleashes the forbidden magic 'Apocalyptic Seven Swords.'
Her sole purpose is to eradicate the exploitation of Mana by humans and to protect the life of the star. This is her answer to the countless cries of life she has witnessed over centuries. But humans call her 'the Last Boss who will destroy the w
Last Peril of the Supreme Star - Stars flowing backward, prayers running dry
The sky was cracking.
In the deepest reaches of the Noir Great Forest, the pale light filling the Altar of Dawn was no longer the soft phosphorescence it had once been. It was a sharp light now, as if the very air were screaming. Mana particles rising from the ground were being drawn upward, ever upward, churning the ink-gray clouds into spirals. The canopy of ancient trees covering the forest was hardening into gray, every leaf curling inward upon itself.
Eris stood alone at the center of the circular altar.
Her long silver-white hair swayed slowly, rising as if standing on end, though there was no wind. Her deep azure eyes, now devoid of golden particles, simply gazed at the countless ancient characters carved into the altar's surface. From the depths of the fissured earth, a pulse-like vibration crawled up through the soles of her bare feet and into her entire body.
—Three hundred years ago, in this place, she had been born.
The primordial nexus where the Star Crystal Beast Orleon had shaped the land and given birth to its kin. A sanctuary where dozens of kin had tended the ley lines and guided the flow of mana with song. And now, hundreds of her comrades' grave markers silently looked down upon her. The rows of stone seemed at once to accuse her and to embrace her.
There was pain in her left side.
Always dull, but over these past months it had grown sharper. The star's own agonized cry was carving into her bones directly, through the circuit of her flesh. With trembling fingertips, she once again confirmed what she clutched against her chest.
A shattered hair ornament.
The silverwork that had once glowed with moonlight had, since the mana reversal began, split in two from its center with a small, sharp crack. The single keepsake her kin had left her, wishing that she remember them. She traced the fragments with her fingertips. Cold.
"...Even so, the star's pain is something you could never understand."
The words slipped from her own lips.
(Who am I saying that to?)
A thin, self-mocking breath escaped her. Words she had once spoken to that human youth. That young man with black hair streaked with crimson, with eyes so foolishly, painfully direct. Where he was now, what he was doing—she no longer knew. But his existence continued to stir, quietly yet surely, the childlike soul deep within her that had wanted to be loved.
(You couldn't kill me that time.)
(And I couldn't kill you either.)
Eris slowly pressed the shattered hair ornament against her chest. Even through her clothing, she could feel the sharp edges of the fragments biting into her skin. A throbbing pain. Now, this pain was the only thing tethering her to the human side.
The wind howled.
The seven stone pillars arranged around the altar began to glow pale blue from within. The First Sword "Ley Line Seal," the Second Sword "Air Severance," the Third Sword "Water Vein Rupture"—the patterns of the six swords she had carved thus far rose to the altar's surface, and mana flowed into the final blank space, the seventh pattern at the center.
The Seven Swords of Revelation.
A forbidden grand magic that severs the world's mana circulation in seven stages. If completed, the swarm of pests gnawing at the star—human civilization—would be annihilated root and branch. In exchange, the world would fall silent for centuries, and only then could the star's life regenerate.
"I won't hesitate anymore..."
Her murmur was swallowed by the rumbling earth.
The altar cracked.
From beneath her feet, the mouth of the ley line leading to the star's core opened. From the pitch-black fissure, blazing pale light erupted skyward, illuminating her body from within. She could feel it herself—not just her left side now, but cracks of the star's veins spreading across her entire body. In place of blood vessels, lines of pale light pulsed beneath her skin like a net.
Hot.
Freezing.
Agony overwhelmed all five senses.
Still, she advanced the ritual to its final stage. All the loneliness accumulated over three hundred years, the memories of the nights her kin were slaughtered, the sound of the star's unending scream—she used all of it as fuel, driving the final sword into the star's heart.
"Orleon... hear my voice..."
The earth heaved.
The roots of the colossal trees composing the Noir Great Forest rose all at once. Soil burst, grass turned to ash. The mana reversal gushing from underground swallowed the entire forest like a mudflow, sweeping up leaves, branches, beasts—everything—and began flowing toward the northwest, toward Graustadt.
—In that instant, light vanished from the world.
******
In the lower district of Graustadt, in the Ash-Smoke Quarter, black ash had been falling from the sky like snow since morning.
The ash smelled of burnt paper, rotted flowers, and mud mixed with blood. Inhaling it seared the back of the throat, and it clung to the lungs' membranes, so that every exhale produced a thin, whistling sound. People covered their mouths with rags and shut themselves inside their homes. But even their homes were no longer safe.
The ground rumbled.
At first, it was a dull sound, like a distant carriage passing.
It grew louder, and soon the ground itself began to undulate, as if breathing. Dishes fell from shelves, cracks ran through walls. Beneath tilting beams, screams rose.
—Moments later, the earth split.
The old shopping street running through the center of the lower district twisted, warped, and then the ground tore open in a straight line from north to south. The fissure easily exceeded three meters in width. Its depth was invisible. From within the crevice, pale light and sulfurous, foul-smelling steam erupted upward.
Houses were dragged into the fissure.
Earthen walls crumbled, wooden frames snapped, roofs shattered into pieces and were sucked into the depths of the earth. The people inside, the people on the streets—some without even time to scream, others screaming—vanished into the dark crevice.
"Run—!"
Someone's shout was swallowed by another tremor.
The black ash kept falling.
The survivors desperately surged toward the stone staircase leading to the middle district. Shoving, pushing, trampling one another, people tried to flee upward, ever upward. But at the entrance to the middle district, guards in bronze armor already stood blocking the way, spears held horizontally.
"Back! No one from below passes any further!"
"Please! The lower district is sinking!"
"What do I care?! We can't have your filth spreading plague up here!"
One of the guards drove the butt of his spear into the chest of a young man at the front of the crowd. The man spat blood and collapsed backward into the mob.
—At that moment, an even greater tremor struck from behind.
Those who turned saw a torrent of black mana erupting from the depths of the fissure, shooting skyward like a pillar. It was the world's mana reversal, flowing in from the Noir Great Forest. The black snow mixed with ash covered the entire city like a shroud wrapping a corpse.
******
Celestina Mireth coughed faintly on the wet stone floor of the Inquisition Chamber.
Her throat was filled with the smell of ash. ...No, not ash. The taste of blood. Her upper front tooth had come out the night before. When she'd been struck, her lip had been cut on the corner of the bench. From between her still-swollen lips, the taste of iron dripped onto the floor with her saliva, drop by drop.
Her fingers wouldn't move.
The index and middle fingers of her right hand were bent at unnatural angles, the skin around the joints stained black-purple with internal bleeding. The dull sound of bone shattering still echoed repeatedly in the depths of her ears.
She slowly opened her young-leaf-green eyes.
One side of her vision was gone.
Her left eye had been burned. The inquisitor had heated a thin iron rod in the furnace until it glowed red, then pressed it quietly against the edge of her left eye. The optic nerve wasn't completely severed. So there were afterimages of light. But she could no longer see shapes.
"Still won't open your mouth?"
She could see him before her. A man with graying hair, his black inquisitor's robes stained with blood, looking down at her. Beside him stood Chief Priest Benedict, his expression sorrowful yet somehow cold.
"Celestina... why must a girl of your caliber be so obstinate?"
"I... only..."
Her voice was hoarse. In the back of her throat, a clump of blood and ash shifted with a gritty sound.
"...I only spoke of what was written in that scripture. The kin are children of god who protect the star... it was clearly written."
"That scripture was rewritten by degenerates. It is false doctrine. The Church's official position has already been conveyed to you."
"No... that's wrong. What was rewritten is the current doctrine. The star does not exist for humanity. The star is something humanity borrows. We should have been the star's prayers."
She said it. The same words she had spoken countless times before.
Benedict let out a heavy sigh. It was not a sigh of grief for her, but simply the sigh of someone faced with a troublesome object.
"...It can't be helped."
Those words were the signal.
The inquisitor pinned her broken right wrist to the floor. An iron instrument was pressed against the base of her little finger.
"Ah, st—"
Crack.
A scream was wrenched from Celestina's throat.
"Aaah!"
Her little finger broke.
The pain became white light, covering what remained of her right eye's vision. Her organs felt as though they were turning inside out. Like an insect, she writhed on the stone floor, clutching her broken finger.
"Press your blood seal to the oath. It states that the kin Eris is evil, an enemy of god."
"I... refuse..."
Celestina refused clearly, in a thin voice.
It wasn't that she felt no fear. Rather, she was steeped in terror. The pain of having her bones crushed was beyond imagination. The ruined vision in her left eye would never return for the rest of her life. Even so, if she acknowledged the lie here and pressed her blood seal, she would no longer understand why she had accepted the charge of heresy with that old scripture held to her chest.
"Why go so far..."
Benedict shook his head with an expression of disbelief.
"The teaching that condemns Eris as evil is a lie!"
She screamed, forcing out her voice.
"Eris is the star's sacrifice! She is a child of god who offered half of her own body to protect the star! The Seven Pillars Council is killing the star! So why—why must the one protecting the star be slaughtered...?!"
Her cry echoed dully against the underground stone walls and faded.
It reached no one's ears.
The inquisitor, his white gloves stained with blood, picked up another instrument.
******
The Tower of Vesper—the Seven Pillars Council's top-secret research facility hidden beneath Graustadt—third underground level.
Kaito Veldorunt leaned against the far wall of his cell.
The cold stone pressed against his back. His emaciated spine picked up every bump and hollow of the wall. His body was no longer that of the hero who had once swung a sword. His cheeks were sunken, and the crimson tips mixed into his black hair were matted flat with grease. The star crest on his left shoulder continued to flicker pale blue. Each time it did, a pain like bone being scraped from within shot through him.
(What am I even alive for...)
Kaito stared into the void. His eyes were open. But they reflected nothing.
The single justice that had sustained him since the night he lost his family.
—Protect people.
He had learned only days ago that this justice had, from the very beginning, been a script written by the Seven Pillars Council to move him as they pleased. Raising him as a hero, sending him to slay Eris—all of it had been education to make him a disposable tool for protecting mana interests. He had thought he was protecting humanity, but he had merely been a sword for those killing the star.
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