But the follow-up strike never came. Cliff lifted his face from the dirt and stared at Jair.
“…Strangely enough, your words sound familiar, almost nostalgic,” Jair admitted sadly. “But these are not the emotions of Asusrad Grinzam. I was born to become him. As such, I should abandon these feelings.”
Cliff frowned at his confession. He was beginning to understand what changed his friend. “Master, is it possible you…”
Adamah lumbered slowly toward Cliff. His right hand seized Cliff’s throat.
“I can no longer return to being Roche… I was born in exchange for his life,” Jair said, his voice quiet. Adamah tightened his fingers around Cliff’s neck.
In the exact moment that Cliff’s life tipped precariously over the edge, a single flash of light cut through the dark, severing Adamah’s right arm.
Both Cliff and Jair followed the flash with their eyes. A knife stuck out of the ground, about five meters away. Cliff recognized that knife.
Isn’t that the knife of…?
Cliff’s eyes searched where the knife had flown from, and noticed a silhouette drop down from the Church roof. The figure landed on the ground and ran toward them at lightning speed.
Lovel, recognizing who it was from where Sephiroth had her suspended in the air, called out his name. “Heath!”
It was Heath, covered in red Engrave Incantations from head to toe. He yanked the knife out of the ground and flayed Adamah with it. In a matter of seconds, Heath chopped Adamah into countless crumbling pieces.
“Why is this Fresh Golem here?!” Jair yelled.
Cliff called out to the surrounding building, “Erie! Are you here, Erie?!”
No one answered him. No one understood why Heath was there, or how he was still moving. Heath swung his knife at Jair without a Tamer telling him to do so.
Jair caught the slash with his right hand, and the knife sliced clean through it. Blood spurting from his wound, Jair kicked Heath away and shouted, “Sephiroth! Defeat this Fresh Golem first!”
Sephiroth pried his spear from Aru’s palms. He drew back his right arm and threw the spear at Heath. The spear sliced through the wind with a zip of sound, flying in a straight line like an arrow. Heath leapt up a second before impact and kicked the spear back in the air.
Shock overtook Jair’s features. The spear spun through the air and pierced into the ground, right beside Aru.
“Aru, the spear!”
Aru grabbed the spear at Lovel’s command. Sephiroth tossed Lovel aside and made a fist. Spear and fist lashed out at the other’s chest. BANG! Scarlet sparks flew with the metallic clangs.
Silence followed. The spear had been thrust deep into Sephiroth’s heart. Sephiroth’s fist had also pierced through Aru’s chest.
Aru stopped moving and Sephiroth’s massive body shuddered.
The two metal giants collapsed on the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust.
“Impossible…” Jair uttered, overcome with his shock.
The red glow started to vanish from Heath’s forehead. But even then, he wouldn’t give up on getting revenge until the very end.
Heath spun around and focused on Jair. He held his knife aloft.
Electricity shot down Cliff’s spine. Lovel shouted at Heath, “Don’t!” But he ignored them and threw his knife at Jair.
“MASTER!” Cliff’s cry echoed through the courtyard. Heath’s knife flew in a fast, precise line—and pierced through Jair’s chest.
“…!” Violent shudders wracked Jair’s body.
The knife passed through him and pierced into the wall of the bell tower. The smell of blood doused the vicinity. At long last, all of Heath’s Engrave Incantations vanished. As they stopped working entirely, Jair slowly fell, face-up.
“Master!”
“Jair!”
Cliff and Lovel called for him and ran to his side.
A butcher’s knife sized hole had been opened in Jair’s chest. Vast amounts of blood gushed and spurted from him. Cliff saw a red cube tumble out of his chest, mixed with the blood.
“No way…” Cliff stammered in shock.
Cliff had vaguely considered the possibility before, but couldn’t believe it until he saw with his own eyes. Looking over his shoulder, he asked, “Lovel, did you know?!”
Lovel didn’t answer his question. Sadness and pain contorted her face when she saw Jair’s injury. Cliff sensed she had known all along about the cube in his chest.
She quickly picked up the cube and reinserted it in Jair’s chest. The skin around the injury immediately tried to fuse, as if jumpstarting the healing process. Inserting the cube had activated its power, but the hole was far too large for the regeneration to take effect fast enough.
“Oh no…he’s not healing!” Lovel said in a quivering voice. Jair’s hand jerked into motion and pressed down on the cube in his chest.
“…I lost?” Lifeless eyes turned to Cliff and Lovel.
After a short pause, Lovel quietly said, “…So you were Grinzam’s double, after all.”
“Yes. I am a doll embedded with a cube that is engraved with all of his memories, in order to make his dream come true,” Jair said in a weak voice, staring down at his bloodied chest.
“What do you…mean?” Cliff asked.
Though he had vaguely guessed the answer, he couldn’t stop from asking.
Jair shifted his gaze to Cliff. “I am a being that had Grinzam’s personality embedded in the body of the boy you call Master, after he was put into suspended animation with the tranquilizer drug,” he quietly explained. “Humans with the cube buried in their chest transcend the rest of humanity. We gain the ability to use the Remote Engrave Incantation which surpasses human knowledge, along with super strength, and regenerative abilities. And above all else, we exist as the only beings capable of Taming Golems powered by the cubes.”
Those words made Cliff’s heart ache. He knew of others who fit that criteria.
“Do you understand?” Jair put the question to him. “Cubes with the Restrictor ‘can’t kill humans,’ and cubes without Restrictors. Tamers capable of thought and reason, and monsters without reason. Combining the two is when you finally obtain a completed weapon. That’s the real way to use Sehem-hamphorasch.”
Cliff thought back to how many times Jair had cornered him and his friends, yet he only ever directed his Golems to kill them, without ever directly raising a hand against them. He couldn’t do it himself because of the Restrictor placed on a person embedded with the cube.
Out of the corner of Cliff’s eye, he saw the destroyed giants. Sephiroth and Aru were two monsters embedded with the cubes. But Cliff didn’t want to think about what that meant right now. He simply listened to what Jair had to say.
“But halfway through, that stopped mattering to me. I just wanted to bring Catalina back. All I wanted to do was start anew, and live with her in place of Grinzam, who had lost everything.” Jair touched Lovel’s cheek. His hand was soaked in blood, but she let him touch her.
“That wish didn’t come true. Things didn’t go according to plan, and it seems that…I’m not completely Grinzam’s double after all,” Jair confessed, returning his gaze to Cliff. A ghost of a smile dimpled his cheeks. “‘The girl I love lives on Head Island.’ I said that to you, didn’t I? It’s not as though I can remember it, but for some reason, those words ring so terribly true…”
Jair stared into Cliff’s eyes. His expression was so very like the person Cliff knew.
“…Master Roche.” Cliff’s heart overflowed, seeing that nostalgic expression again.
In barely a whisper, the boy said, “It appears I’m not Grinzam. But your master no longer exists either. So who am I, then?” He gazed up at the dawning sky. Speaking more to himself, he said, “I have no name. All I have is a temporary name and life. Someone tell me, what is my name?”
“You’re Jair!” Lovel said loudly through her teary voice. “I know all about you. You loved Lovel. You’re the tiny disciple who loved her!”
Jair directed empty eyes toward her. His lifeless eyes softened with a smile. “…Thank you,” Jair whispered and quietly closed his eyes.
Blood poured from his injury, pushing the cube out of his chest. The cube fell onto the ground and broke with a tiny crack.