[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/nAqRqrZ.png[/img][/center]
[center][h3][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxxAmlmVvQ4]End of a Youth - 3[/url][/h3][/center]

What came was not death to the Lancer, but instead a hand. The smiling face of Percival's adversary filling his slowly refocusing vision.[color=ed1c24] "I have won."[/color] he spoke with the firmness of the declaration of a undeniable fact. [color=ed1c24]"But I did not say I will kill you."[/color] No suggestive or venomous jab about it being a mercy not offered to him. His words only carried sincerity as he grabbed at the pale wrist of Percival.

[color=ed1c24]“Stand. Lancer. No, that is incorrect. Stand, oh Sir Percival, stand o my dear cousin, the knight who truly stood alone. Your ability at arms even as a child is as clear as day, and your spirit has truly come far. Of course I know of your tale, I know of the end of you as a king. But that is not you. If you truly stood alone as you claimed, then you must be tested on your own merits. Your manifestation now, your story now.”[/color]

He looked upon the fallen youth, bloodied, and beaten into submission. Yet even in such a state his face was so fair it was almost annoying. It was wreathed in cold dread, in sorrow, in crushed hope, and resignation. The fool who he cursed would not be able to hold such things in his heart. His face would not be distorted, tainted or harmed by such emotions. Yet, those impure moments that harmed him, that took him from a sheltered fool and exposed him to the harshness of the world… It was not just mere suffering. He felt the other side to them before that spear, against that fist.

In light of that he could only call that heart, and that anguish beautiful. The struggle against such terrors.  Oh dear, Percival, oh dear knight. Their blood mixed, the great wounds of Ither dripping onto the defeated Percival. 

He did not love humanity in that manner at all, and indeed if it were a simple matter of cleansing the planet, of bringing forth beauty once more to this world, then he would simply stand to the side. But that sense of wrongness was something he too could not accept.

[color=ed1c24]“I am no king, nor do I hold no blade of coronation. Yet I shall declare you a knight. Let my authority be accepted by none in such a ruling, yet let my authority be absolute in such a ruling! Am I not the one who made you a knight in the first place? Was it not my place that you took? You did not seek out authority, nor did you seek out a wish. In the first place you came to me to be tested and to try and reach for something new that hadn't yet taken shape, no? Then I shall do what you cannot and put it to words, I shall do what you seek and brand you as what you have managed to claim. You stand now not as a fool, nor as a rabbit. Fate has indeed chosen a different champion, and our chains to our story are broken. Yet nonetheless, or precisely so, I shall give you my blessing.” [/color]

Their paths have taken a different turn. But that is fine. After all, what was needed wasn’t the one who found the Red Knight of the Round.

The one to stand alone, who would grow towards a golden future.

[color=ed1c24]“You are no Knight clad in Red. You are simply Percival, no less, and no more. So stand!”[/color]

Their wounds began to heal, their bodies becoming whole. As though heeding the words of the Saber, the abandoned rags transformed into the armor of the Red Knight and rose to add themselves to Ither who has proven himself the one and only Red Knight to exist in Fuyuki. 

In turn the youth who was pulled up changed, freed from his previous trappings.

Saint Graph Readvent. The fluctuating Saint Graph solidified and changed. Or perhaps it was not an readvent. In a certain manner it was growing closer to the origin of the story, and yet it traveled a new completely different path. Perhaps it could be called a genesis. This story existed only in the now, born from the events of this war. 

Percival was reborn.