Chapter 180: The Heart That Remembers
The plain pulsed violently. Air drawn in from the void was sucked down into the earth, and the breath exhaled from underground spread out as crimson frost. The Wall of Memories heaved like a wave-battered shore, and along every crack on its surface, blood-red veins of light flickered on and off.
Calix stared straight ahead at the long wall. The blade in his hand trembled faintly. The pulse of magical energy was steady—and vivid.
Three times.
Heartbeats at equal intervals scattered into three streams, then gathered back into one. Minor vibrations unsettled his senses, but the point of origin was fixed.
"Dark energy…… Is flowing out from the wall."
At the low murmur, Hadiya raised her head and swept her gaze across the wall.
"Definitely—I can feel it on my skin too. It's spread across three points."
"Right. If we extinguish those first, the whole thing will shake."
Far in the rear, Ella closed her eyes and continued her prayers. Sacred light surged onto the battlefield, only to lose its force the moment it was blocked by an ashen circle on the opposite side. A faint outline hanging in the air revealed the grain of the dark energy.
Calix made his assessment swiftly.
The enemies charged within the domain but did not react to attacks from outside. Pulling back the troops was therefore the worst option.
"I'll take the center. Royce and Basim on the left flank, Marik and Volga on the right. Everyone drives toward their target. Sir Sevi Belgrado and the knights stand by as reserves."
As the order fell, Hadiya snapped the flag downward in signal. On a battlefield where drums and horns carried no weight, color and gesture conveyed command.
Calix took one last look at the wall's pulse, then turned his horse.
Immediately after, the battlefield split into three.
* * *
Left flank of the battlefield.
"Silver Shield—form the phalanx! Front-line spacing, three paces wide!!"
Royce's voice grazed the shoulders of the soldiers as it passed. Seasoned officers caught the shape of his mouth and relayed the order. Shields tilted, and spear tips angled forward at the same degree.
"Eyes ahead!"
He added shortly.
"Trust one another and advance! I'll watch the enemy!"
As Royce stepped forward, the silver-armored soldiers moved in his wake. Visibility was narrow in the dusty wind, but they read each other's positions through the curve of shields and the trembling of spear shafts. He dismounted and melted into the ranks of the Silver Shield Legion.
Dwarf Basim straightened up and read the enemy's current. The target—the ashen circle at the front—was five hundred paces away.
"Lower the spears! Front row low, second row above the shoulder! Back rows, ready javelins! Attack on my signal!"
"Hold your spears! We push through!"
At the same moment, he caught a faint light reflecting off the wall from beyond the front line—as though facing a mirror, it showed his own image back at him.
The two men set their jaws.
"……Imitations are coming."
They had to break through them.
The right flank, meanwhile, staked everything on speed. Across the flat ground where the wind had shifted, the cavalry formation spread out in a fan. At the vanguard, Marik pulled the reins. A white bud took shape on his blade—human resolve honed through training, overlaid with sacred power.
"Hold your speed. Charge forward, but don't tread on each other's shadows!"
Marik's voice was low, yet it carried far. Volga gave a nod beside him.
"I'll swallow those monsters whole. Light it up!!"
He thrust his iron mace outward. Sparks streamed from its surface. As Falling Fire blazed to life, the riders following behind dug in their heels.
Power surged into the horses' legs, and the rhythm of their hooves merged into one—smooth, yet building steadily in speed. Groundwork for the breakthrough.
The ashen circle ahead inhaled the wind, then expelled it outward again. The manes of the horses whipped like banners against the headwind.
"Into the darkness!!"
Marik feinted toward the outer edge, then swung his horse inward at the last moment. Countless riders drove diagonally into the right side of the front line.
At that same moment, Calix was at the heart of the battlefield.
The center, where both sides' forces were entangled, was the most ferocious. The ground heaved without cease, and shadows writhed like earthworms, becoming traps underfoot.
Crack-slash-clang!!
Calix swung his sword, and the space that had been packed with enemies was emptied in an instant.
He neither encouraged his allies nor issued commands. He simply ran at the very front, annihilating everything that came at him.
Calix raised his sword high again.
In that moment, color drained along the arc of his swing. Blood and flame, black earth, even the ashen energy vented from the wall—all turned to monochrome. With every stroke of the masterwork sword Srna, the air turned inside out, sound vanished, and the wind reversed.
Geomhwa surged at the sword's tip, and fierce heat conjured shimmering mirages.
Chaos energy defies the laws of the world.
Mud boiled up from underground, and the flesh and bone of enemies crumbled, turning to ash that scattered in the wind. Yet it was less like destruction, and more like purification.
The power to return to nothingness the domain ruled by dark energy—it stood on the delicate boundary between annihilation and order.
Soldiers followed behind it and breathed again. The sounds of battle returned. At the same time, they revered and feared.
"Don't—don't fall behind!"
"The path is open! Follow Calix!!"
Again and again, Calix drove his horse deep into the heart of the enemy formation. The direction he advanced became the shape of the front line; the place he stopped became the axis of the phalanx.
The allied forces pressed into the space around him, slowly—yet surely—shrinking the enemy's domain.
Rrrumble—
Then the wall trembled.
At first it seemed a simple vibration. But soon, turbid light seeped from within. Neither red nor white, but a hue strangely caught between them.
And that light quickly formed the shape of a person.
Earth surged up to fill flesh, and fragments of stone melted to become armor. As the light receded, figures with familiar faces walked out from within.
The Crest of Light—those who bore the symbol of the Elvra Holy Empire.
"……Surely not."
Sier Lagrin, who had been reciting a prayer at the rear, came to an abrupt halt. Kremens, the Order's aide, murmured with an expression of disbelief.
"Those crests…… Aren't those the ones who were martyred at the Battle of Luminas?!"
Those clad in armor of light drew their swords. Divinity rose at their blades, but in one instant it turned black and scattered. The blessing of god was not with them—instead, they held within them a corroded darkness.
Calix stopped the step he had been taking forward. In the radiance blooming from the enemy lines, he saw twisted magical energy.
"Verhas—you are a monster that feeds even on the sacred."
A grim truth rested in the low murmur.
Just then, a knight of Elvran origin drew up beside him and cried out,
"Those are Elvra's holy knights! They fell defending the altar—why are they here?!"
Calix raised his sword in answer rather than words.
"Those who fought in the name of god would never fight for one who mocks god. That is a lie."
As those words ended, the crusaders raised their swords to meet him. There were dozens of them, but four stood out conspicuously.
The Sword of Light, the Sword of Iron, the Sword of Judgment, and the Sword of Mercy.
From each weapon, divinity and darkness rose intertwined. But soon, that light bent and turned turbid.
Then the fallen knights charged forward with their swords leading. Dozens of blades poured down from every angle.
The first holy knight swung his sword horizontally.
He was the holy knight who wielded the Sword of Light. The arc of his blade curved like a crescent, and the soldiers swept within its range collapsed without even managing a scream.
But the moment Calix moved, the air was torn. Ripples spread from every spot his feet touched. An overwhelming difference in speed. The chaos imbued in his sword seized the opponent's magical energy and shredded it.
When the explosion faded and the dust cleared, a knight had been split in two.
But soon, the bisected corpse entangled with earth and reformed into its original shape. Calix murmured low.
"Even this is memory. Even losing form…… it revives to the original."
He cut down the enemies closing in on him, and cut again.
Speed and magical power—no, the difference in ability was overwhelming. Of course, the strongest four were clearly different.
Thoom!
Earth erupted from underfoot. One of Elvra's holy knights—the one wielding the Sword of Iron—had driven his blade down into the ground. In an instant, the struck earth could not withstand the force and exploded.
Even Calix's knees wavered briefly. Pressure that compressed even the air. But he too wielded familiar power. He reversed his energy and pushed back the opponent's ability.
Then sword met sword.
The second—the one wielding the Sword of Judgment—charged from the left. When Geomhwa and the turbid light made contact, the surrounding magical energy burst all at once. Calix discharged his energy to block it, but the soldiers behind him were swept away by the aftershock and fell.
'He set off the explosion deliberately. He's using that force in reverse.'
Calix's eyes sharpened.
Immediately after, he handled the opponent's magical energy as he saw fit. The swords clashed again, but no explosion followed. More precisely—before the spark could rise, energy reversed around Calix's sword as its center.
The knight of judgment faltered at the absence of explosive force, and in that gap, the blade drove in at an angle.
Shick!
A head fell to the ground.
Last was the Sword of Mercy. Unlike the other three, she did not rush in recklessly. With her blade lowered, she placed her hands on the wounds of the fallen knights. From her fingertips, earth and flesh fused—and even a severed neck reattached itself to its original state.
"Recovery…… No, regeneration?"
Calix narrowed his eyes.
Then her fingertips turned toward Calix. A line of energy reached and touched his shoulder. In an instant, his left shoulder blazed with burning heat.
The wounds he had inflicted on the enemy came back to him in kind.
Calix clenched his teeth.
"A power that copies wounds. How vile."
He wasn't speaking of the holy knights. He meant the being that forcibly revived them and used them as it pleased.
Legion Commander Verhas was truly hideous.
Then he twisted his sword, and Geomhwa exploded. Gray beams of light spreading from the blade's tip filled every direction. In an instant, the arcs of the sword stacked one atop another, and as the timeline reversed—
Shfft.
The forms of the knights crumbled. Imbued with the power of chaos, this time they did not revive. Yet the dust on the ground moved quietly toward the wall.
Calix exhaled as though in lamentation.
"In the end, it is only by splitting the heart that rest can be given."
His fingertips trembled faintly, but sufficient strength remained. Two hundred paces or so to the wall. Far enough to call far—but with momentum sustained, a distance reachable in no time.
And yet, strangely, his feet would not move.
From far beyond the wall, a dull pulse rang out. A single vibration—but it drove from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. Not a sound, but a heartbeat felt in the bones.
A vast shadow fell beneath the wall.
It was not one face. It was the overlapping forms of countless memories—a monster in which a king's crown, a knight's sword, and a farmer's plainness were all mixed together.
Even the shape of a god was in there, and yet it was not a god. Not a single life, but all deaths sewn together.
"……Verhas."
The master of the wall finally opened its eyes.
And in that moment, the trembling of the earth came to a complete stop.