Blade (Kuro / Shujin) woke with the light of Rampart thin through the shutters and moved with the same easy cheer he always wore. He fed the horse, checked the leather straps, and whistled a tune that made even the innkeeper roll her eyes. Shira — newly christened and newly given the rank and magic that had reshaped her life overnight — pranced at his heels, a small comet of grey fur and eager motion.
"Master, look!" she chirped, spinning once to show off a stretch of newly taught footwork. Her ears flicked; her tail twitched in bright, nervous energy. She still used the old titles out of habit and gratitude, but there was no trace of the trembling slave she'd been the night before.
Blade smiled, the grin quick and quiet. "Don't get cocky. We've a long road and an impossible day." He tilted his head in question. "Why didn't you go back to your tribe, Shira? You had family. You could have tried."
Shira's smile faltered, then became steady in a way that sounded older than her years. She tucked a strand of ash-gray hair behind one ear and looked at the cobbles like she read old scars in the town's stones.
"Our village…" she began, voice small. "We were in the low hollows near the moor, by the river's spit. We kept cat-traps and small gardens. Then the Mistwood soldiers came. They said 'cooperation' — like a kindness. They took the men first, then the women. My parents—" she stopped and inhaled, the sound sharp, "—they were taken and worked. They got sick and… they died there. I was sold twice. The dukes said grey cats were no good. They threw me back into the market."
Blade's face went unreadable for a beat. He folded his hands on the carriage rail and let the horse chew. The tale was a grim, common shape in those borderlands: promises of 'unity' that smelled of iron chains. He watched Shira's small jaw set and something like a soft ache—an echo of other losses—slid through him.
"You should have gone back," he said quietly. "You would have had kin."
Shira's ears twitched. "They were gone, Master. I was little and no one listened. If I had gone, I would have been sold again. I—" Her voice cracked, then she laughed like a bright, defiant bird. "I don't cry for it. I want to learn. I want to be stronger."
Blade watched her, and a tiny question folded in his mind: would Rei understand? He thought of the warm, steady girl who lay at the hill with fireworks and soft smiles—Rei, who had forgiven him his past and leaned into him like the most honest of things. He wondered if Rei would accept that he had bought a person from a cage and then undone the law that had bound her. The thought troubled him only a little; he had overturned worse things for clearer reasons.
At the Adventurers' Guild of Rampart Blade marched with Shira at his side. The hall was the usual cacophony of noise: contracts on a board, travelers with scuffed boots, and a receptionist who kept everything together like a nervous spider. The girl behind the counter — Elyn — peered up at Shira with polite curiosity.
"Testing?" Elyn asked, half smiling. "We have a line today, but we'll try."
Shira's chest puffed with the pride of someone offered a place. She accepted the trial with the eager stubbornness of one who had chosen not to be broken.
They waited. Blade drank bitter ale and let his eyes mark the room — the Guild Master who kept his ledger a little too close, the apprentices with scarred fingers, the old banners. When the testing concluded, Shira emerged with a grin so bright it cut through the tiredness of the hall.
Blade noticed the grin and the way it sat oddly on her small features. There was a spark in her eyes that told him she'd done something unexpected. Elyn stepped forward and presented the card with a flourish.
"We…" she stammered, a little stunned, "we've... processed the registration. Here." She handed the card to Blade. The ink-stamped seal glinted under the rafters: a Rank-A seal.
A hush slid across the hall like a drawn blade. Rank-A — in Rampart and broader Mistwood — was rare even for humans; demi-humans and beasts reaching that height were almost stories children recited to keep warm. The Guild Master, an imposing man named Korren Harlan, came forward with his brows drawn in a knot.
"This isn't right," Korren said, voice low and threaded with disbelief. "Demi-humans of that… sort rarely register at all. They're not meant to hold such Class. Are you certain the tester certified correctly?"
Shira turned the card in her small hands and laughed, bright and a flash of triumph. "I did the trial. I ran the maze and climbed the tower. I took the wards and answered the riddles. I studied all night and held the magic. See?" She held up her hands and small smoke tendrils curled from her fingertips, harmless but sharp as a child's spark.
Blade's lips flattened. He had begun as Rank-C once; the leap to Rank-A for someone newly freed in a town famous for its markets was eyebrow-raising, to say the least. He felt the room's eyes prickling on them like nettles. People murmured about the oddity; whispers rolled to the rafters about loopholes and tricks. But Blade did not care for shrill attention — his life had been the quiet business of fixing hard things.
He caught Korren's eye and inclined his head. "We'll be taking a job," Blade said, voice even. "A long run. One of your more… strenuous requests."
Korren's brow rose. "Which one?"
Blade rolled the parchment he'd plucked from the board earlier: the impossible listing. "Eliminate the Western Demon Lord," he said. The hall's temperature dropped. The Adventurers Guild was realistic about dangers; they would post a bountiful pay for such a thing, but they rarely expected it to be taken seriously.
Silence broke into a ripple. Shira's ears flattened just a fraction; she felt the change in the air and looked to Blade with trust shining at the edge of fear.
"You can't be serious," Korren said, but the Guild Master's voice had an edge of hollow laugh.
Blade smiled—thin and oddly pleased. "We're leaving now."
He did not tell the hall about the iron in his belt, or the way his new dwarf-forged blade sat calm at his hip, or the smirk that came to his face because impossible things were sometimes the only things worth trying. He simply placed a coin on the board for the quest's acceptance and led Shira out.
As they loaded the brown horse-drawn carriage and rode north toward the Western Demon Lord's lands, Shira's mood flickered between jubilation and a sudden serious hush. The countryside rolled by in a tapestry of pines and peat, sunlight slanting through the trees and turning moss to a kind of false gold. Shira pressed her face to the carriage's side and let the air play across her face. For the first time since being wrenched from her home, she tasted green grass and thought of her parents not as lost names but as a warm memory.
Blade glanced at her and felt the odd pull of paternal warmth — not love in the romantic sense, but a protective weight that had not been there before. He thought of Rei again, and whether she would scold him or nod if she knew he'd turned a market purchase into a partner. He decided, privately, that whatever Rei thought would be dealt with later. For the moment, he had a small, fierce apprentice who smiled like sunlight.
He read the quest in the dim light of the carriage: The Western Demon Lord — a regional lord of the Great Demon Empire, known for fog-weave and iron legions — was not to be taken easily. The bounty promised coin, but also hinted at things Blade did not like: entrapments, wards, and the political snares of other guilds eager to see a new champion fall.
Blade's smile changed. It had sharpened, like a blade heated to blue. An unusual aura, coiled and dangerous, leaked from him — the sort of presence that made small animals quiet and children look away. Shira, newly attuned, flinched at the change and curled into the crook of Blade's arm like a bird in a shelter. "Master?" she asked, small and unsure.
Blade put a hand to her head and ruffled the soft grey ears. "Don't worry," he said, though his voice was a notch darker than the morning's banter. "If we're to fight gods and men, I prefer to take the longer road."
Unbeknownst to them, a small party of lesser adventurers who had been watching the carriage since morning — curious, jealous, and always eager for glory — chose to follow. They had seen Shira's Rank-A card and heard Blade take the Western Demon Lord quest. To their minds it was an open invitation to witness a drama and perhaps make a name.
The carriage clattered north, the road narrowing as the lands tilting toward the western marches. The trees closed in, the light went thinner, and the fog — the same that had earlier harried witches and wrapped villages — breathed at the edges like a living thing. Blade held the reins with casual control, his grin a promise and a warning both. Shira sat close, fingers curled around a strap, cheeks flushed with the joy of a new life and the tremor of the first real danger.
Ahead, in the darkened ridges, the banners of the Western Demon Lord would be waiting — and men were following in their wake, some with good intent, some with motives as shallow and sharp as a trader's knife.
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✦ To be continued...