The power that Reinard granted him is hindering him.
It was not that Sieghart lacked strength. His blows were heavy, nearly feral in their ferocity. More than once his blade came close to tearing through Noah’s guard. Nonetheless, Noah adapted with ease, turning Sieghart’s fury to his advantage.
When Sieghart’s sword came crashing down, Noah caught it on his blade, steel grinding against steel. As Sieghart pressed forward, Noah shifted his sword’s angle into a parry, their swords glancing apart before the next strike began.
Shifting his balance, Noah deflected a blow aimed at his shoulder and immediately thrust his sword forward again, aiming for Sieghart’s face.
Dodging by a hair’s breadth, Sieghart retaliated, trying to stab Noah’s throat, but with a deft motion, Noah knocked the attack aside in a single arc, leaped back, and widened the distance.
“I will have her,” Sieghart growled, more to himself than to Noah. “I have been preparing for this for so long.”
“I told you once already,” Noah said coldly, raising his sword above him. “You should abandon the foolish notion of ‘having’ her.”
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!!!”
Enraged, Sieghart rushed forward, closing the distance at once. A black light danced along his blade, threatening to lose control. The dark magic’s instability reminded Claudia of the moments before a curse collapsed. It was pure malevolence that harmed everything in its path, and as such, it surged toward Noah.
“My liege is mine alone.”
“If only I had been you...!!!”
Letting out a breath, Noah slipped past Sieghart’s blade. Then, rather than countering with his sword, he drove his fist hard into Sieghart’s solar plexus.
Sieghart gasped before bringing his hand to his mouth. He sank to his knees upon the sanctuary floor. It was now Noah who held the advantage and lowered the tip of his golden blade as he stood over his cousin.
“It’s remarkable you’ve been able to survive in this state. Did Reinard’s curse weaken your body?”
Sieghart offered no reply, only shallow, labored breaths as his gaze dropped to the floor.
“During the three-year mourning rite, he must have done something to you. Perhaps he conscripted you in a ritual designed to eventually take your body for his own.”
Claudia, too, had reached much the same conclusion.
Eight years earlier, under the pretense of a betrothal meeting, she had traveled to a distant country, and there, encountered a former disciple. That disciple had been preparing vessels, young girls put into deep sleep, for the day he might house Claudia’s soul within one of them.
The “vessel” Sewell prepared for me was also born from cursed artifacts. And the one who bestowed that on Sewell was, without question, Reinard.
He was using his own descendants for the same purpose: as vessels.
It was difficult for her to imagine such cruelty coming from Reinard. But five centuries had passed. Who could say what that could do to a man’s soul?
“Damn...it...” Sieghart, still breathing heavily, pressed his forehead against the chapel floor.
Noah watched calmly as a black mist once again began to rise at Sieghart’s throat.
“What you bear is no different from the slave contract forced on me. You die if you try to escape. And that’s why you cling to Her Highness, pretending she gives your life meaning.”
“What do you know...?” Sieghart’s voice, barely above a whisper, trembled with pain. “All I’m allowed to want is Adelheid. That’s the only reason I have to keep living...”
Noah did not respond. He stood silently holding his sword, still shining gold with his blood.
“This is punishment for my sins of being born to a disgrace of a father, stealing the crown from you, and living as if I deserved it,” Sieghart said, his fingernails digging deep into the red carpet beneath him. “But most of all, it is punishment for my cardinal sin of failing to protect Anna. I have no path to atonement.”
This was truly a solemn confession.
As I thought, this boy’s true nature is the same as the Sieghart I met in my dream.
He had let that nature show through when she had first met him at the magic academy, where he had taken the guise of Lucas, a boy who smiled as brightly as the sun.
“Noah,” Claudia said gently.
“As you will it.”
Still gripping his sword, Noah stepped forward to stand before Sieghart.
Surely, even now, Sieghart had enough strength to resist. And yet, he made no move to do so.
“Perhaps it would be best if you just killed me,” he said. “My life is utterly meaningless. I do not wish to continue living as a body that has been planted with Reinard’s desire for Adelheid.”
Sieghart slowly raised his head to meet Noah’s eyes with his own. On Sieghart’s face was a resigned smile.
“If I’m to spend the rest of my life tormented, unable to choose how I live, then I would rather have it end here by your hand.”
In Claudia’s mind, the image of the Noah from ten years ago arose unbidden.
Perhaps Noah, too, remembered. She could now see a faint trace of anger in his eyes.
“How foolish you are,” he said.
“What...?” his cousin murmured.
Was it Sieghart before him that Noah found so infuriating? Or was it the reflection of his own younger self? Claudia wondered this as she listened, for the words he spoke now echoed her own from long ago.
“Do you truly believe you’ve made some noble choice, choosing the terms of your end?”
“Leonhard...”
“If you must choose,” Noah said, raising his glowing sword, “then do not choose something so trivial. Choose a way to live.”
And with that, he plunged the blade into Sieghart’s left breast.
Black lightning surged from the point of impact, wild and terrible, but the golden light flowing through the sword flared brighter, overpowering the darkness.
Without so much as blinking, Sieghart stared at the sword. “This blade... Is it really breaking Reinard’s...?”
Noah slowly closed his eyes. He parted his lips gently, drew in a quiet breath, and uttered a single, brief incantation.
“Demolish.”
Claudia’s vision filled with a bright light.
The black lilies that blanketed the floor now rippled as if caught in the heart of a storm. A wind stirred, whipping at Claudia’s crimson dress and Noah’s uniform alike.
Then the chapel stood still, bathed in a quiet light.
“Sieghart...” came Noah’s murmur as he watched the radiant blade he’d driven into Sieghart slowly dissolve.
Like petals shedding from a wilting flower, the sword crumbled bit by bit, without leaving a single wound on Sieghart’s body.
“I forced you to bear the fate that should have been mine.”
“Leon...hard...”
“I don’t expect forgiveness for that.”