The night was quiet outside the Sohrab's hut. He stood inside in front of Eila. His hand was extended, offering the sword to Eila.
Eila accepted the bare sword from Sohrab's calloused hands.
The blade was polished. He rotated his wrist, letting the firelight catch the razor edge. The polished steel reflected his own hollow eyes back at him. The hilt was made of silver, with dark leather wrapped around the grip.
'Lighter than the Vanguard standard,' Eila noted, his fingers tightening around the coarse leather 'The spine is thicker. The balance is shifted forward. Built to cleave and deflect. I can see why Sohrab is famous.'
He lowered the blade to his side. It felt dead. He looked at Sohrab.
"It is a dormant vessel," Sohrab grunted, wiping a soot-stained rag over his forearms. "For the rune hasn't been fused yet."
"D-Dormant?" Lucio stammered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his notebook.
Sohrab grunted, sinking into the torn sofa. The rotting wood groaned under his weight.
"The rune is carved from the Kharis," Sohrab muttered, pressing a calloused hand over his exhausted eyes. "No matter how intelligent, it is still a beast. The rune work upon its instincts. The weapon will not accept a master. You must beat it into submission."
Eila stared at the bare, ash-white steel. The blade possessed no sockets, no grooves. He turned to the blacksmith.
"How does the sword fuse with the rune?" Eila asked, rotating the heavy blade.
"Set the stone on the anvil. Press the blade against it," Sohrab instructed, his eyes remaining shut. "Deliver your oath. Force the bond."
Eila turned to the anvil. He placed the heavy pulsing purple slab onto the cold iron face. He gripped the dark leather handle with both hands and pressed the edge of the steel on the carved stone.
'Submit,' Eila commanded in his mind, his blue eyes narrowing as he poured his mind in the thought.
The purple light throbbed without any care, ignoring his presence.
'I am your master. Awaken,' Eila pushed harder, his jaw clenching.
Nothing. The steel remained cold. The stone remained rock. The heavy silence of the forge pressed against his eardrums.
The Cinders watched from the shadows. Lucio gripped his notebook, his knuckles turning white. Kian held his breath, his eyes locked on the dormant blade.
'I speak to you,' Eila thought. His grip tightened on the dark leather hilt until the coarse material dug into his palms. 'Awaken.'
Nothing. The steel remained dead.
'The rune must be broken,' Eila thought, his jaw clenching. 'Is there even a soul inside this stone?'
"There is."
A suffocating veil of grey washed over the forge. The deafening roar of the hearth went dead silent. The blistering heat vanished, replaced by an absolute, freezing zero.
Eila blinked. Kaito lay frozen mid-breath on the cot. Lucio's notebook stopped with a page still open. A single orange spark hung suspended in the air over the coals.
Time stopped.
Eila turned.
A girl stood behind the heavy iron side table. Her hair was a blinding silver, her eyes a striking red with endless depth. She wore a white dress wrapped in dark blue sashes that drifted around her shoulders, completely defying gravity in the dead air. Her face held zero emotion. She looked at Eila with profound boredom.
"Who are you?" Eila demanded. He pulled at the hilt, but the blade was fused to the stone. It did not yield a fraction of an inch.
"A consequence," the girl stated.
She stepped forward, her bare feet making no sound against the floorboards. She walked straight through the solid oak table as if it were mere mist.
"I ask of you," she murmured, stopping a few paces away. "Are you the mortal seeking to latch onto the power of the rune?"
"I am." Eila abandoned the trapped sword. His eyes swept the frozen room for another weapon, his posture shifting into a guarded, combat-ready stance. "Who are you?"
The girl glided past him, pausing to stare at Kaito's frozen form on the cot.
"I told you. I am a consequence," the girl repeated. Her voice carried no echo in the dead, freezing air. "Why do you seek this power, mortal? What drives your war? What fuels your fight?"
Eila looked at the frozen hilt in his hand. Why do I fight?
"Because the world is a rotting forest," Eila stated, his voice thoughtful. "The roots are diseased. I need the fire to burn the dead wood before the rot reaches the few pure things left standing. Humanity is a monster threatening to curse the only healthy ones left."
The girl drifted past him. She stopped beside the anvil, her hollow red eyes resting on Sohrab's frozen, calloused hands.
"You wish to burn the forest," she murmured,"just to save a handful of grass?"
"The forest is already plagued," Eila replied. He stepped closer, his boots silent against the stone floor. "The fire is a mercy."
"You desire to be the fire," the girl said, her tone never shifting. "You seek to execute the monsters. Tell me, mortal... what does that make you?"
Eila ground his teeth. The silence stretched in his throat. He had no answer.
"A question," the girl said. She drifted upward, her pale dress defying the dead gravity as she hovered upside down near the rotting wooden rafters. "Two ships burn on a black sea. The first holds ten healthy souls. The second holds twenty, but a plague infects half their number. The rot will kill them in days. You can only pull one ship to the shore."
She flipped backward, descending like a falling feather to land inches from his chest.
"Which ship do you save?"
Eila's brow furrowed. He stared into her absolute red eyes.
"The outcome is same. Ten live on the first. Ten survive the plague on the second. The result does not change no matter what option I choose!"
"An expected failure," the girl whispered, turning her back to him. "You assume the plague is absolute. You abandoned the possibility of recovery, and in your hesitation to calculate the dead... both ships burned to the water. All thirty of the passengers died."
Eila's breath hitched in his chest.
"How can you be so certain?" the girl demanded. She floated toward the doorway, her head tilting with a sudden child-like fascination as she inspected Riko's frozen hair. It was the most emotion she had shown in the entire encounter. "You label the entire forest as a diseased wood. What if the roots can heal?"
Eila stopped, his eyes narrowed. He stared at the girl.
"A thousand miraculous recoveries do not outweigh a single drop of infected blood reaching the healthy hull," Eila rasped, his voice dropping to a heavy decree. "I do not care if the plague can be cured. The mere risk of their sickness touching the ones I claim is unforgivable. A million lives on the plague ship are worth nothing to me. I will burn a continent of curable men to ash just to eliminate the risk."
The girl stopped.
The profound boredom in her red eyes fractured. They widened, making her face seem alive and unnatural.
She drifted to him, her pale face stopping inches from his own. No breath left her lips. Her red eyes searched his scarred face, looking for something she had not seen in a thousand lifetimes.
"You are a strange one, mortal," she whispered. The flat, echoing hum of her voice vanished, replaced by a piercing clarity. "You are no Hero. You are utterly a fool."
Eila stared back into the endless orbs of red. He did not flinch.
"A fool in a long line of thousands I bore witness to," the girl continued, tilting her head. "They all stood where you stand. They all preached of justice and salvation. They all broke, and they all bled in the mud."
A thin smile broke across her pale face.
"But you... you are the only fool who seems to crave the taste of the dirt."
She extended a slender and pale arm, placing her bare palm flat against Eila's chest. The touch carried zero physical weight, but the temperature of his dead mana circuits plummeted. The cold seized his heart, locking his soul as he coughed. The rune disappeared into particles, flying off into the air before disappearing.
"I accept your hypocrisy," the girl decreed. The grey of the frozen world began to splinter and crack. "Call me Clementia. I am the mercy in your plagued soul. Eila Hosenkai... I am your blade. The extension of your foolishness."
The girl disappeared. The grey of the world cracked, the spark over the fire disintegrated.