The mirror no longer whispered, but its silence haunted him more than any voice. Morning seeped through the windows, pale and disinterested. The mansion, too large for one man, felt like a mausoleum waiting for its occupant to stop pretending to be alive.
Arata dressed mechanically, ignoring the cracked mirror that stretched across the bedroom wall. Every reflection seemed slower than the real him — as though the world lagged behind his thoughts.
On the table, the Army envelope still waited. Its red seal caught the light like a drop of dried blood. He'd ignored it long enough.
He broke it open.
To: Squadron Leader Arata
Subject: Preparatory Directives — Wyrmbound Academy**
One weapon compatible with personal resonance.
The rune-stone of your birth.
All else will be provided by the Empire.
Below the instructions, Monica's handwriting curved neatly along the bottom margin:
Choose carefully. The weapon remembers its wielder.
He stared at the words until they blurred. "Then mine might hate me," he muttered.
A knock interrupted the thought. He almost ignored it — his nerves were still raw from the mirror, from the voice. But when he opened the door, Darwin stood there, half-grinning as if nothing in the world could be serious.
"You look terrible" Darwin said cheerfully. "Good. That means you're still human."
Arata sighed. "You're persistent."
"Persistent is one word. Bored is another." Darwin pushed past him, looking around the immaculate foyer. "You need furniture that's been yelled at at least once. This place looks like a church that forgot what sin was."
Go and see the upstairs bathroom if that's what you think. Arata thought to himself.
"What do you want?"
Darwin tossed a small scrap of parchment onto the table. "You need a weapon. I know someone who can help. And before you start sulking , she's not just someone. I can guarantee you that."
Arata raised an eyebrow. "Meaning?"
"Meaning" Darwin said quietly, "she's lived through more pain than anyone should. Her name's Rhea. We served together, the Naval Division. We bled together more times than I can count.'
There was something in his tone Arata hadn't heard before it was like reverence mixed with guilt. He didn't push. He just nodded.
...
The forge lay buried beneath the eastern district it was a cathedral of heat and steel. Runes pulsing faintly along the stone walls, veins of light running like molten arteries. The air shimmered with the scent of metal and ozone.
At the far end, a woman leaned over an anvil, sparks bursting like dying stars with each strike of her hammer. She looked up as they entered.
Rhea's beauty wasn't gentle. It was the kind carved by flame, fierce and cracked, but still shining through the soot. Her uniform sleeves were rolled high, exposing scars that glowed faintly blue beneath the skin with thin lines of burn that never healed.
"Will" she said, voice rough with exhaustion and smoke. "Didn't expect you so soon."
Darwin's expressions softened. "I had to see if you're still pretending to be alive."
She smirked, but the humour didn't reach her eyes. "Barely. The blood's not getting any friendlier."
Arata blinked. "Blood?"
Rhea wiped her hands on a rag, revealing faint, shimmering scales running up her wrist. "I got clipped by a Storm Drake back in the Black Sky campaign. Dragon blood exposure. The healers filtered what they could but the rest decided to stay." She said it like a joke, but her breath caught at the end. "Now it eats me slowly. Every moment, a little bit. Every week, a little more."
Darwin's jaw tightened. "You could have stayed in treatment."
"And leave the forge unmanned? Please. Also, who would you come to when you were off-duty?" She tossed the rag aside and gestured at Arata. "So this is the one you said I'd like?"
"I didn't say that" Darwin replied. "I said he needed help."
"Same thing." Rhea studied Arata, her gaze sharp. "Show me your hand."
He hesitated, then extended it. She placed a thin metal ingot on his palm. It hummed faintly, then cracked. She didn't flinch, just nodded, as though confirming something she already suspected.
"You're not a soldier anymore" she said. "Whatever was put in you, it changed the sound of your blood. Metal resonates, and your blood is screaming. Hence, breaking the ingot."
She moved to a shelf, retrieving a small obsidian shard. It caught the forge light without reflecting it. "Try this."
The moment he touched it, the world shifted.
Heat. Darkness. A heartbeat that wasn't his own.
The shard pulsed once, sending black veins crawling faintly beneath his wrist before fading.
Rhea's eyes widened, not in fear but in recognition. "So the rumours were true."
"What rumours?" Arata asked, still shaking.
"That someone forged by the old rites, is now amongst us." Her tone was equal parts awe and pity. "You're a walking example towards what the Army is researching."
Darwin looked between them, uneasy. "That's… not bad, right?"
"For him?" Rhea said softly. "It's everything and nothing. That veins will sing for him, but they will also consume him if he lets them. It's not just the veins, I believe the power of that stone will also rage inside him if he lets it."
Arata closed his hand around the shard. "I will just have to try my best. What about the weapon?"
She smiled — a weary, beautiful thing that carried both admiration and sorrow.
"I'm sure you have a great sword from your time in the Army" she said, her voice cracking faintly on the last word. "You know, you sound just like Will and I when we were still dumb enough to think we'd live forever."
Darwin's eyes softened, but he said nothing.
Rhea turned back to the forge, her shoulders trembling under the flicker of molten light. The sound of steel meeting steel filled the pause between them it was a rhythm steady enough to mask the weakness in her breathing.
"I used to think weapons were just extensions of willpower" she continued, her back still turned. "But I've learned something since the blood took hold of me." She looked over her shoulder, the forge glow outlining the faint shimmer of scales creeping up her neck. "A weapon isn't about strength. It's about surrender. You don't master it, you let it consume you until the line between you and it blurs. Until it becomes and extension of your body."
Arata stared at her, at the quiet defiance in her movements, the way her fingers shook as she reached for a cooling blade but pretended not to notice. The veins under her skin glowed faintly with every breath, like lightning trapped in flesh. It was both mesmerising and horrifying.
She glanced at him again, the faintest smile returning. "You'll understand soon. The Academy will break you down. But that's good it's how the weapon learns about it's host."
Arata's hand tightened around the obsidian shard, its edges cutting slightly into his palm. The warmth spreading from it felt almost alive, a pulse that seemed to answer hers.
"I already know what it feels like to break" he said quietly.
Rhea nodded, as if she'd expected that answer. "Then maybe you'll last longer than I did in battlefield."
The words hit harder than any lecture could have. She turned back to her work, lifting the hammer again, her outline framed by fire and ruin. For a brief moment, the sparks that flew from her strike shimmered blue — the same hue as the veins crawling under her skin.
Arata wondered if she even felt the pain anymore, or if the forge heat and the dragon blood had burned it all away.
Darwin's hand found his shoulder, grounding him. "Come on" he said softly. "Let her rest. She never stops working until she drops."
Rhea laughed faintly, without turning around. "Don't worry, I'll live long enough to finish his weapon and to keep you from destroying yourself with guilt."
Arata hesitated at the door, looking back one last time.
Rhea was already lost in the fire again, a silhouette of a woman slowly being forged into myth, consumed by the very thing that made her brilliant.
"Thank you" he said.
She didn't answer, but her next strike on the anvil sang louder than the last just like a promise.
As he and Darwin stepped out into the night air, Arata realised his hands were still trembling.
The shard pulsed in his pocket, faint but insistent, as though echoing the dying heartbeat of the forge behind them.
As they left, Arata glanced back. Rhea was leaning against the anvil, her silhouette outlined in forge-light. For a second, the glowing veins in her arms flared with a rhythm matching the shard's in his pocket.
Two kinds of curses, humming the same song.
...
That night, Arata placed the obsidian shard on his desk beside the scale and the Stone of the Night Priestess.
The three objects pulsed faintly, out of rhythm, like mismatched heartbeats trying to find harmony.
He thought of Rhea's scars, of Darwin's silent grief, of Tiro's name echoing through empty halls.
"Everything alive is dying" he murmured. "Some of us just get to choose how fast."
The shard answered with a slow, deliberate thrum with a pulse almost like in agreement with Arata.