Sleigh Walt

Sleigh Walt is the Third Generation head of the provincial noble House Walt and one of the Seven Ancestors whose consciousnesses live on inside the Blue Jewel (the Goluboy Dragotsenny kamen), the family heirloom that advises and trains the protagonist Lyle. He is described as a young man with shoulder-length golden hair and a short green cloak who dresses like a minor noble and gives off a rather frivolous, easygoing impression — a stark contrast to his legend. His signature weapon is a silver 'bladeless sword' whose invisible blade can lengthen and shrink at will and collapses into a necklace, and he fights with a style built around thrown daggers as well.

In the official histories, Sleigh is celebrated as a valiant general and the first member of House Walt to die in battle: at the Miracle of Bansaim he supposedly held off a ten-thousand-strong army single-handedly and covered the king's retreat with his life. The truth, uncovered through his memories, is far bleaker — he was only a baronet, thrust into a hopeless suicidal charge by the king's own strategic blunder, and after his death the Bansaim royal house stole his achievements and burnished them into a comfortable myth of a 'loyal general,' a distortion that fed three hundred years of Walt resentment.

By temperament Sleigh is no warrior at heart. He loved reading and quiet places, dreaming of simply living out his days in a library, and never wished to be a battlefield strategist. He became heir only because his elder brother Dewey died as a child shielding him from monsters, a loss that leaves him carrying deep, lifelong guilt. His Third Generation skill is Mind (Maind) — far more than simple hypnosis, it plants hallucinations and dulls an opponent's reactions and judgment, which the ancestors themselves call an insidious, dirty technique. Behind his flippant manner sits a man of genuine nobility who gave his life for others.

Within the Jewel, Sleigh's arc is one of long-delayed reconciliation and release. He finally tells his son, the Fourth Generation Marks, that Marks was a far worthier household head than himself and his true pride, and he apologizes for the burdens he passed down. Reunited at last with the brother Dewey he could never save, he is moved to act for Lyle's sake: in the climax he leads several hundred soldiers, captures the royal family of Bansaim, openly reclaims the credit that dynasty stole, and helps his descendant on the road to becoming emperor.