Chapter 124: The story behind Arthur’s death
The door swung open, revealing a room considerably more cluttered than the rest of the house.
Shelves lined every wall from floor to ceiling, packed tightly with books of every size and condition, some clearly ancient, their spines cracked and faded, others newer, though still worn from years of handling.
Leon stepped inside slowly, his eyes sweeping across the room.
A large wooden desk sat near the window, covered in loose papers and a few scattered trinkets, small carved figures and what looked like old, tarnished coins from some currency he didn’t recognize.
"She collected a lot of things," Iris said, watching him take it all in. "Books, mostly. But other stuff too. Said she liked keeping pieces of history around her."
Leon moved closer to one of the shelves, running his fingers lightly along the spines of the books lined up in front of him.
Most of the titles were unfamiliar, written in a style of lettering slightly different from what he was used to seeing on modern texts, older fonts, worn ink.
"These are all originals?" he asked. "Not reprints?"
"Some are," Iris said. "Others are copies she made herself, by hand, from books that were already falling apart by the time she got them. She was meticulous about preserving them properly."
Leon glanced back at her, mildly impressed despite himself. "That’s a lot of effort."
Iris shrugged slightly, moving further into the room herself, running her own hand along one of the shelves as she passed.
"She didn’t care what other people thought. She always said the truth doesn’t need permission to exist."
Leon let that comment settle for a moment, turning his attention back toward the shelves.
His eyes caught briefly on a small, framed photograph resting on one of the higher shelves, tucked between two thick volumes.
It showed the same older woman from the front room, though younger here, standing beside a man Leon didn’t recognize, the two of them posed in front of some kind of large, ornate building he couldn’t quite place.
"Who’s that?" he asked, nodding toward the photo.
Iris followed his gaze, her expression shifting slightly.
"My grandfather," she said. "He passed a long time ago. Before I was even born, actually. I only really know him through stories she told me, and photos like that one."
"Did he believe in all this too?" Leon asked. "The old stories?"
"More than she did, from what she told me," Iris said. "He was the one who actually started the collection, originally. She just kept it going after he was gone."
Leon nodded slowly, filing that detail away without commenting further. He continued moving along the shelves, scanning titles as he went, though most of them meant nothing to him without more context.
A few words jumped out occasionally, names he vaguely recognized from history lessons at the academy, mixed in with others he’d never encountered before at all.
"So where do we start?" Leon asked eventually, turning back toward Iris. "With Arthur, I mean."
Iris moved past him toward a specific section of the shelving, her fingers trailing lightly across several spines before stopping on one particular shelf near the middle.
She crouched slightly, tilting her head as she scanned the titles more carefully.
"It’s somewhere around here," she muttered, mostly to herself. "She used to keep everything organized by region, originally. Western myths on this side, Southern ones over there, and so on."
Leon watched her search, his patience holding steady despite the quiet hum of anticipation building somewhere beneath his composure.
Whatever she eventually pulled off that shelf, he was fairly confident it would tell him more than anything he’d found in the entire library back in the city center.
"Here," Iris said suddenly, her hand pausing on a particular book near the bottom of the shelf. She crouched further and pulled it free carefully, brushing a light layer of dust off its cover before straightening back up.
The book looked older than most of the others surrounding it, its cover a deep, faded green, the edges worn soft from years of handling.
Iris held it for a moment, studying the cover herself, before finally turning back toward Leon.
"This one has the most detail on Arthur specifically," she said. "It was one of my grandmother’s favorites. She used to read parts of it to me when I was younger, though I never really remembered most of it properly until much later."
Leon’s eyes fixed on the book in her hands, something in his chest tightening slightly with anticipation.
Whatever answers waited inside those worn, faded pages, he had a feeling they were about to matter a great deal more than anything he’d read so far since arriving in this unfamiliar country.
"Can I see it?" he asked.
Iris hesitated for just a moment, her fingers tightening slightly around the spine, before finally extending it toward him.
Leon took the book carefully, feeling its weight settle into his hands.
The cover felt rougher than he expected, the leather binding cracked in places from age, though clearly cared for despite the wear.
He opened it slowly, the spine creaking softly with the motion.
The first few pages held nothing but faded illustrations, hand-drawn depictions of a sword surrounded by flame, light, and lightning, each element rendered in careful, deliberate detail.
"This is where it starts," Iris said, stepping closer and pointing toward a passage near the top of the next page. "The origin story."
Leon began reading.
The text described a kingdom fractured by endless war, ruled by petty lords who cared more for their own power than the people beneath them.
Out of that chaos, a young man rose, one without noble blood, without wealth, without any claim to leadership beyond his own conviction.
Leon’s eyes moved carefully over each line.
The story matched, almost exactly, the vague impression he’d already formed of Arthur from their brief, hostile encounter, which was that of a king who valued worth over birthright. A king who judged based on character rather than status.
He kept reading.
According to the text, three goddesses had watched the young man’s rise from among the chaos, each moved by different aspects of his character.
The goddess of fire admired his unyielding passion. The goddess of light valued his unwavering honesty, while the goddess of lightning respected the sheer, decisive speed with which he acted whenever the moment called for it.
Together, the three had forged a blade unlike anything that existed before it, infusing it with their combined blessing, and gifted it to him beneath a night sky split wide open by their combined power.
"Excalibur," Leon murmured, reading the name printed clearly beneath the illustration.
"That’s the one," Iris confirmed, watching him closely.
Leon continued through the next several pages, absorbing details about Arthur’s subsequent rise to power, and how he managed to unify his broken kingdom.
The most compelling thing about the book was his reputation for showing mercy to enemies who yielded, while showing none whatsoever toward those who abused their own power over the weak.
That detail struck something uncomfortable in him.
It aligned unpleasantly well with everything he’d already learned about how this particular continent, and Ratdale specifically, treated its own most vulnerable citizens.
If the legend held any truth at all, Arthur himself would have found the current state of the Western Continent deeply, personally offensive.
He turned the page again, and the tone of the text shifted slightly, growing heavier, more solemn.
The passage described a war fought against something the book referred to only as the Formless Horde, an army of demons that had apparently torn through the kingdom’s borders during the later years of Arthur’s reign.
Excalibur, the text explained, had proven instrumental in turning back that invasion, its blessed power capable of striking down demons that ordinary weapons couldn’t even scratch.
Leon paused there, his eyes narrowing slightly.
He thought immediately back to the skills in the blade, such as Crescent Slash, Tornado Fury, Radiant Ascension, Holy Severance, and the final skill, locked away behind a question mark he hadn’t yet managed to unlock.
If the sword had truly been forged specifically to combat demons, it made sense that its strongest abilities would carry that same purpose, purification and destruction wrapped together into a single, devastating package.
"There’s more," Iris said, reaching over and turning the page for him before he could do it himself. "Keep going."
Leon’s eyes moved to the next section, and his breath caught slightly.
The passage described Arthur’s eventual death, though not in battle, as some versions apparently claimed elsewhere.
Instead, the book described a quieter, more personal betrayal, someone close to him, someone he’d trusted completely, turning against him during a moment of vulnerability.
The text didn’t name the betrayer directly, referring to them only through vague, indirect language, someone bound to him by both blood and oath.
Leon frowned slightly, a bit annoyed by how vague the story was. He wondered if the omission was intentional, a detail lost to time, or something else entirely.
Following Arthur’s death, the text explained, Excalibur itself vanished from the world entirely, sealed away by the same three goddesses who had originally forged it.