The thunderous crash of the bisected birch tree echoed across the dead lake, leaving a terrifying silence in its wake.
Eila couldn't breathe. He slowly raised his numb fingers to his throat, brushing the drop of blood resting against his collarbone.
'I couldn't follow the movements,' Eila thought, a cold spike of adrenaline piercing his chest. 'Couldn't even see the blade.'
On the boulder, the frail old man finally shifted. The terrifying aura of the swordsman vanished instantly. He slowly slid off the freezing rock, his knees popping audibly in the bitter cold as his boots hit the mud.
He turned around. An ugly burn scar crawled up from his collarbone, disappearing beneath the fabric of his haori. But it was his eyes that caught Eila. They were completely dead.
"B-But—" Lucio stammered, his teeth audibly clicking together in terror as he gripped his notebook like a shield. "Y-You forged for the Vanguard... Y-You..."
Sohrab didn't even look at the boy. He simply started walking toward his rotting shack. His bare, heavily muscled right arm remained entirely unfazed by the biting wind.
"Vanguard. Rebels. Kings," the old man rasped, his voice exhausted and cold as he walked past them. "You all are but meat, waiting to be ground. I am done forging iron to fill the graveyards."
He stopped at the ruined door of his shack, not bothering to look back.
"Go die somewhere else."
The old man walked inside to the shack, closing the door with a THUD.
Lucio's legs gave out as he crumpled in the muddy water. The rest of them looked at each other.
"He's lost his mind," Riko whispered, staring at the cleanly bisected tree. "The vendor was right. He completely snapped."
"He's just a coward," Kaito grunted, though his hands were still shaking slightly as his thumbs nervously rubbed the hilts of his twin blades.
Eila didn't say a word to them.
He wiped the single drop of blood from his neck. His dead eyes locked onto the rotting wood of the shack. His boots crunched heavily through the frozen sludge as he marched directly up to the closed door.
"Eila, wait—" Kian started, stepping forward. "If you push him, he will take your head off before you can even blink."
Eila ignored him. He stopped inches from the splintered wood, raising his voice just enough to cut through the freezing wind.
"I was here, Sohrab," Eila said, his voice entirely flat. "I remember this lake. The trenches were less than a mile south from here."
Eila closed his eyes. The cold of that day seemed to return to him, clinging to him. His stomach violently lurched. He slapped a hand over his mouth, leaning heavily against the freezing wooden frame of the door as he dry-heaved, his throat burning with stomach acid.
He forced the bile down, steadying his trembling jaw.
"The demons... they- they released the hounds right over those rocks," Eila retched, his breath pluming in the cold. "Our frontline was massacred. Butchered. But the men didn't run. They stood in the mud and they held the line with whatever shattered weapon th-"
CRACK.
The wooden door violently ripped inward.
Eila didn't even see the old man move. He only felt the blunt end of a scabbard slam directly into his sternum with the force of a battering ram, knocking the breath completely out of his lungs.
Eila stumbled backward, crashing hard into the freezing mud.
Sohrab stood in the doorway, his bared, heavily scarred forging arm extended. He hadn't even drawn the blade; he had merely struck Eila with the sheathed sword.
"Do you think petty war stories move me, boy?" Sohrab spat, his dead eyes glaring down at Eila in the mud. "Bravery? What is bravery, if death is the only boat waiting at the end of it? Tell me, Vanguard... when has your bravery ever saved a life that was not your own?
Eila ground his teeth. The words hit him like physical shrapnel. He ignored the burning pain in his chest and slowly forced himself up to his feet, staring defiantly into the old man's hollow eyes.
"Listen to me for I will say this but once," Sohrab warned, his thumb resting dangerously over the hilt of his sword. " No matter how perfect the craft, human flesh is destined to tear. It makes a sickening mockery of life. I will not light this forge again, just to serve another boy's corpse on a silver platter."
"A mockery? Don't joke with me..." Eila coughed, spitting a streak of blood into the freezing mud as he forced himself to stand. "I once thought humanity was a corrupted forest that needed to be burned to the roots. Now, regret consumes me every single day."
Sohrab's dead eyes flared with irritation. His right arm blurred.
It's coming, Eila's instincts screamed.
He knew he couldn't dodge. So he didn't try. Eila stepped forward, aggressively closing the distance.
CRACK.
The heavy scabbard slammed brutally into Eila's left collarbone. The bone fractured, sending a blinding wave of agony down his arm, but Eila didn't flinch. He used the impact to get inside the old man's guard, his right hand shooting out to lock like an iron vise around Sohrab's thick wrist.
Sohrab froze, his eyes widening in absolute shock. The boy had no mana. He had just deliberately taken a bone-breaking strike just to trap the weapon.
"I don't care about my flesh," Eila rasped, his grip on Sohrab's wrist trembling from the throbbing pain in his collarbone. "The Crown has fallen, The High Church is dead. I slaughtered them. But the throne was seized. The New King is choking the Kingdom in Noxara. The lower tier mages are dying as we speak, Sohrab."
Eila let go of the old man's arm, stepping back.
"I am not asking you to save my life," Eila said, his eyes burning with dark, exhausted fury. "I am asking for the teeth to fight a war before it spills past the borders again."
The lake fell dead silent. A bitter gale swept a flurry of dead, frozen leaves across the black water.
Sohrab stared at the boy. For a fleeting second, the pale-grey smog seemed to clear. He remembered a different boy standing before him, one with bright, hopeful blue eyes and gleaming silver armor.
'Sohrab, the war draws near,' young Elmoire had smiled, his hand resting on a pristine Vanguard hilt. 'Will you craft for us? The Crown will forever be in your debt.'
Sohrab blinked, and the ghost of Elmoire vanished. Before him stood Eila. There was no naive hope in this boy. There was no Vanguard pride. There was only the furious, suicidal determination of a man who had already died inside.
The old man slowly lowered his sword. He turned his back, his heavy boots crunching toward the rotting door of the shack.
"Come inside, all of you," Sohrab rasped, pushing the splintered door open. He paused on the threshold, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper. "But heed me. When sorrow sleeps in my forge... her hair is tangled in the ash."
"I am telling you, that man is crazy," Riko whispered, shivering as she rubbed her arms.
Next to her, Lucio nodded frantically, his cracked glasses slipping down his nose. "H-He is lethal. We are walking into a confined space with a predator."
They followed the old man through the splintered door. Kian stepped in last, the heavy wood slamming shut behind him, plunging them into suffocating darkness.
The air inside the shack was violently cold, heavier than the wind outside. It smelled like a tomb. The metallic stench of deep iron mixed with the choking scent of dead ash.
FLICK
A spark caught in the dark. Sohrab lit a single, sputtering oil lantern, casting long, jagged shadows across the room.
It wasn't a shack. The wooden structure above ground was just a shell. The floor sloped downward into the earth, opening into a sunken stone forge. The walls were lined with empty weapon racks, and the floor was buried in an inch of undisturbed grey ash.
Sohrab didn't look at them. He walked past the massive black anvil in the center of the room, stepping toward a wooden chest half-buried in the freezing ash.
He reached inside, his scarred arm flexing as he pulled out a rusted forging hammer. He set it down on the cold stone with a heavy, echoing CLANG.
"Runic stones don't come pre-carved," Sohrab rasped, his back still turned to the Cinders. "You cannot simply place a magic circuit into dead metal and expect it to work. The metal rejects it. For a true rune to be etched and survive... it must be fed."
"F-Fed?" Lucio stammered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his notebook. "You mean a sacrifice? A blood rite?"
Sohrab finally turned around, his dead eyes locking onto the boy. "I mean a life. The power isn't created out of nothing. The Universe demands a thing of equal value to grant the power."
The suffocating, freezing forge went entirely silent.
Sohrab reached down, picking up a shattered, half-finished blade from the ash and tossing it effortlessly into a dark corner of the room.
"If you want my craft, Vanguard, you will pay the toll," the old man said, his voice dropping to a hollow, echoing whisper. "Deep in the frozen woods to the north, some Kharis have made their nest. You will go into the treeline. You will butcher the beast. And you will bring me its heart while the blood is still warm."
Sohrab rested his calloused hand on the frozen black anvil.
"Bring me the heart, and I will etch the rune. Fail, and you can rot in the mud with the rest of them."