act29side

We will no longer shy away from self-expression, nor will we struggle to find ways to do so.

We will understand how to live with ourselves, and live strong we will.

Sankta, the results of your performances are often unsatisfactory. You should know that for most, emotions are inadequate guidelines, and wholly following one's heart will only lead to dire consequences.

Crafty is the Creator, who, for each house built, has orchestrated a blizzard that brings its ruination.

Yet you hope for your future to include... everyone?

An amusing delusion.

No, Your Majesty—it <i>must</i> include everyone.

Indeed, your existence is an exception to the laws and reasons that govern these great lands.

Born from order, yet ruling over it, your incredible personality, formidable strength, boundless knowledge, adventurous spirit, and subversive insight... all condensed into an essence of one.

You have glimpsed beyond the horizon of perception into the black woods of mystery, and even wield the power to traverse the unknown in your hand.

But they are also the root of your madness, your downfall...

These extraordinary qualities, and the nigh unattainable achievements built upon them; they cease to exist with your demise.

It's a cage trapping us all, and we should not expect any individual to break it open, however powerful its soul is.

Therefore, <i>everyone</i> needs a strong soul, they need the power to 'empathize.'

We will be able to share our knowledge, our experiences, our abilities and insights, all via our emotional bonds.

Then, there would be no crisis able to undo our ties, no defeat able to wear down our rapport.

There will be no truths unrevealable, no pain incomprehensible, no obstruction unsurpassable. Our power comes from our individual strengths.

We would be distinctly ourselves, yet as one.

And when adversity and the unknown are at the gate, they would find our sanctuary unbreakable, as our collective emotions have formed a wall of steel.

<i>Thus</i> I am here. If a 'strong soul' can truly exist, strong enough to resist a predestined doom, then by no means should I ignore it—the future.

Much have you witnessed and experienced, and devoted you are to the power of emotions.

Why, then, did you not seek it from yourself, Sankta?

Are you... reading my mind?

You've been doing this from the moment I arrived at your throne... Is this your 'performance'?

A performance that befits a performer like you, pilgrim.

Everything in my Pavillon, I command at will. They are <i>mine</i>.

Accumulated guilt?

Unreconcilable sorrow?

Hopeless disappointment?

Powerful courage?

Endless regret?

Unwavering affection?

There is no 'performance.' No performance will allow such cruelty and arbitrary.

You do not come to a common understanding, nor are his joy and sorrow yours. You have thrown open the gate to your mind, and he is the guest and the host.

Leithanian history has recorded how the Witch King reformed and rearranged his people, his orchestra and army. Disobedience is not tolerated nor possible.

Sankta. If emotions had forms, by all rights you should be the fullest individual I have ever met.

But I sense in you nothing. Why?

Because you use yourself as a mirror, reflecting the emotions of others. Nein, you do not see and tell. You receive.

You are a receptacle whose content is overflowing with the emotions of others, with no room for your own. You feel what they feel, but at the same time feel <i>nothing</i>.

You undo the knots of others while further tightening yours, a state that resembles only chaos.

Arturia feels a pair of hands on her.

They stretch into the lakebed of her consciousness, and do not stop there, but stir up the mud at the bottom, arriving at the void in the very depths.

Suffocation resembles a rushing river, scrubbing every nook and cranny of her consciousness as it thoroughly engulfs her within.

Hm?

I see.

I saw your only truth.

The Witch King remains silent for a long time as he stares at the person before his throne.

Arturia has never felt her heart beat as fast as it is now.

Sankta, the future you describe does have its value.

Perhaps it will find its place in the river of time.

However, you are the one person furthest from your utopia.

If you are just a receptacle, just a mirror, if you cannot even see the reality you have neglected...

Then you have reached your end, before your path has yet to reach its.

Your Majesty...

Your audience is over, Sankta.

Your request I will not answer.

Now, bear witness to my end.

New guests at my Pavillon. Very well. Come forward, twins.

I recognize you both.

At first, a pipe organ hums in the distance, its sound reaching the throne loud and clear.

A gentle shade of gold follows. Like a splotch of rich ink soaking into view, the color climbs over the palace walls before melting the Pavilion down.

Brilliant rays of light dye the clouds aureate, and Zwillingstürme's glowing sunset illuminates the black spire that had long ceased to exist.

You truly are attached to that throne, Herkunftshorn.

Twenty-three years ago, when Hildegard and I made our way here, you were sitting on it just as you are now.

Summoned here late at night by a creed, your subjects crawled beneath the steps as your melody shredded their souls away, not daring to make one move. You were disinclined to even take notice of them.

Judging by your attire... you have both proclaimed yourselves the Kaiserinnen of Leithanien?

The blades painstakingly forged by the nobles are now pointing back at them, freshly resharpened.

How amusing.

I won't deny you. Lieselotte and I were born from your Arts. Our flesh and blood, as well as our power, were born from the nobles' boring ambitions. Indeed, we are only creations.

But precisely because of that, we can be loyal only to Leithanien.

Answer, then: how did you serve the Leithanien you are devoted to?

Hildegard and I do not judge ourselves by our merits, Herkunftshorn.

But at the very least, when the people of Zwillingstürme lift their heads, they should be able to see a brilliant sunset, instead of dark clouds brimming with the metallic tinge of blood.

That is our dream, and what we work towards.

How naive.

Do you wish to continue indulging yourselves in the illusions you weaved, and enshrouding your minds from the truth?

Humanity is shackled by repulsive rules. Our legs cannot walk. Our eyes cannot see.

And what kind of future can you possibly bestow to Leithanien, given your wayward minds and narrow sights?

Is the Witch King, who nearly drove Leithanien to the brink, actually rebuking us for our incompetence in giving her a future?

Lieselotte, we don't have much time.

We've performed together on every one of the twenty-three celebrations of Leithanien's rebirth, and your skills have never faltered. I hope I can put the same trust in your combat practice.

You and Leithanien have my shield, Hildegard.

I admire your experience, courage, and achievements, Herkunftshorn. You overthrew prejudice and the old order—more firmly entrenched than the Spires are now—and brought opportunity to every Leithanian.

You gave the nation unprecedented vitality, and were to be revered as the greatest monarch in its history.

But then you pushed the country into war, erected even more terrifying spires, and inflicted suffering a hundred times more painful to the very people you had given hope to. You were ruined by your own desires.

Herkunftshorn, our widespread standards, our harmonious melodies, and our arts and morals make Leithanien what she is.

But you rocked her foundations, undermined her survival, and made her your own vassal.

Your meddling turned the entire country into a resource to be exploited. And it is only righteous that everything you have explored or mastered belongs to Leithanien.

So we're here to retrieve it.

A spire that remains only as a shadow should not exist in the first place. To think it actually lingered over Leithanien these past twenty-three years.

What did you call it earlier... your 'Pavillon'? A palace?

No matter. Today will be your last, and this place shall serve as your final grave.

Originium clusters surge from thin air, first hitting Grimmacht's blade before fragments splash onto Ewigegnade's shield.

Black and red unite into one. A dazzling gold. An intense purple.

Their Arts are condensed to their very limits, like unchangeable, primitive blocks of color. They collide, but cannot blend into each other, and only splash before the throne, seizing every inch of space.

An ear-splitting rhythm accompanies the explosion of colors. Their weapons, originally instruments, perform two movements in two completely different styles, at the same time and place.

Brass, woodwinds, strings, percussion, keyboards, and even bell trees, as well as death whistles...

The rusty reeds beneath Sargon's golden sands, the flame-wreathed amber under the sludge of the Black Flow, the rootless flowers buried deep in the frostbound soil of Sami, and the boundless chaos itself in this Kargereich...

A cosmos coexists with its voice within the Witch King's melody. Notes are woven, conducted, and played by his hand, notes to sing a melody of the 'Witch King,' notes to sing a melody for the 'Witch King.'

This mortal realm will never again know a symphony this clamorous, harsh, and illogical, yet also spectacular, majestic, and striking.