"Alright" he said quietly. "Now it's my turn."
He looked at both of them.
"Do you remember the note I gave you" Darwin asked.
"The Academy is listening." Arata replied.
"I hope now you understand what I meant by that."
"The Flame listens!" Arata finally put the puzzle together.
"When the Flame encounters fear, it reinforces obedience. Fear is efficient. That's why Sierra aligned perfectly." Darwin continued
"When it encounters resistance, it pushes harder. That's Flint. Anger doesn't break rhythm."
He turned back to Wanuy.
"But when it encounters absence that is when someone hears silence and remembers it—" his jaw tightened "—it edits them. No imperfections should be remembered."
Wanuy frowned. "That's not what reaffirmation is."
"I am sorry Kid. That's exactly what it is" Darwin replied. "They didn't take something from you. They simplified you. They took away your Guilt, and in the process your doubt."
Wanuy opened his mouth, then closed it again.
Darwin turned back to Arata.
"And you" he said quietly, "are the problem they don't know how to solve."
"I already know all this..." Arata replied.
"Just listen." Darwin said as he stopped Arata from talking ahead.
"They can't correct you," Darwin continued. "They can't reaffirm you. And they can't erase you without admitting the system failed."
Wanuy looked between them. "So what happens now?"
Darwin's mouth twisted into something like a smile. "Now" he said, "they will try to own him. They will make him part of the system by making him obey them."
Arata glanced at the case. "And this?"
Darwin rested a hand on it.
"This" he said softly, "is insurance."
The case hummed faintly, blue answering blue.
Outside, the Vein pulsed once it was slow, deliberate.
And for the first time, Arata realized:
Flora hadn't been an accident. She'd been the warning.
After a while Darwin finally picked up the black case.
Darwin didn't open the case right away. He rested it on Arata's desk instead, fingers lingering on the clasps as if listening for permission. The hum inside had grown steadier now, no longer restless.
"I had thought this will be an ceremony with whiskey and everything. I even brought an bottle. The finest in kingdom 'Johnny Runner'." Darwin said.
Wanuy watched silently from his bed.
"I mean I do feel like drinking today." Arata said.
Darwin unclasped the case. "Let's have a drink then shall we. But first your blade. Otherwise Rhea will kill me."
The lid lifted without resistance.
Inside lay the blade.
It wasn't long. Not oversized or ornate. Obsidian-black steel, matte rather than reflective. No light escaped from that surface.Veins of blue ran through the metal—not etched, not carved, but grown, like something that had learned how to be solid.
It reminded Arata of the veins on his hand. He looked at his palm and there they were glowing like an incandescent blue light.
The hum deepened.
Wanuy inhaled sharply. "That thing—"
Darwin raised a hand. "Easy."
He reached in and lifted the blade carefully, two hands on the grip, as if handling something awake.
"It found it's bearer the moment it was forged." Darwin whispered.
He turned the weapon slightly. Along the base of the hilt, a faint seam pulsed once—then faded.
"It found you."
Arata stared. "It's… listening."
Darwin nodded slowly. "That's what she said too."
Arata hesitated only a moment before wrapping his hand around the hilt.
The hum deepened, spreading through the room like heat through water. The veins along his arm flared—blue answering blue. The connection was instant. The same vibration that had haunted his bones since the ruins now lived in steel.
"It feels" Arata whispered, "like I've met it before."
Darwin's eyes softened. "Maybe you have. She forged it from meteor iron and obsidian dust. Said the metal was older than the Empire itself. She swore it remembered things."
Arata tilted the sword slightly.
The edge shimmered—not reflecting the room, but fire. Smoke. A forge blazing white-hot. For a heartbeat, he saw the faint outline of a woman leaning into the light, hammer raised.
Then it was gone.
"She put herself into it" Arata said quietly.
Darwin let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. "Yeah. She always does. Every weapon she makes keeps a piece of her heartbeat. This one…" He shook his head. "More than most."
For a while, no one spoke.
Darwin finally poured two drinks from the bottle it was amber, bitter, grounding. He slid one toward Arata and kept the other.
"To the mad," Darwin said, raising his glass, "the brilliant, and the ones who never rest."
Arata lifted his. "To the ones who make us dangerous."
They drank.
Darwin set his glass down and leaned against the table. "She named it Resonance. Said it isn't a sword, it's a bridge. Between you and whatever that thing inside you is."
Arata turned the blade slightly. The blue veins brightened, then dimmed again. It was impossible to imagine such an powerful thing came from a human. If the veins hummed, this sword was singing to him.
"It's not just a bridge," he murmured. "It's a song of human and divine."
Darwin smiled—tired, proud.
He pushed off the table and headed for the door. "She'll want to know if you felt it respond. That did it recognise you? I'll tell her it sang."
Arata nodded. "Tell her—"
He paused, searching. "Tell her it remembers her too."
Darwin's hand lingered on the doorknob. "I think she'd like that."
He looked back once more, voice low, almost breaking the quiet. "Arata, if the Academy get's on your nerves, come talk to me. You know where you will find me."
Then he was gone.
After Darwin left, the room felt empty.
The hum from the blade lingered, low and steady, like something awake but waiting.
Wanuy rose from his bed. His movements were careful, deliberate, the same controlled economy Arata had come to associate with him since the reaffirmation.
"Can I wield it?" Wanuy asked.
Arata looked up. "That reminds me" he said. "I've never seen yours. Where have you kept your weapon?"
Wanuy nodded once. "In the cupboard. It's a scythe. Not exactly something you leave lying around."
He crossed the room and opened the narrow compartment beside his desk. From within, he withdrew a long object wrapped in black cloth. The fabric was old, stitched with faded sigils of rites of passage, endings, the quiet geometry of death.
Wanuy's domain. He unwrapped it slowly.
The scythe beneath was beautiful in a restrained, solemn way. A crescent blade of darkened steel, neither polished nor corroded. The shaft was bone-white, warm to the touch, etched with runes meant to accept inevitability rather than resist it.
Wanuy held it with familiarity, then offered it to Arata.
"You should feel it" he said.
Arata took the scythe.
The moment his fingers closed around the shaft, the weapon settled into his grip as if recognising competence. Not ownership it was capability. The balance was perfect. The blade hummed faintly, respectful.
Arata gave it a small, testing arc.
The air parted cleanly. "…It's beautiful" he said quietly.
Wanuy nodded. "You adapt quickly."
That phrasing again. Arata handed the scythe back.
Then, after a pause, he extended Resonance, handle first.
Wanuy hesitated. Just for a fraction of a second. That alone felt like progress to Arata.
He took the blade.
At first, nothing happened.
Then the hum changed, becoming sharper.
The blue veins along the blade flared violently, crawling across the metal like lightning trapped under skin.
Wanuy froze. His breath caught it did not not slow, it was not controlled, it was caught.
"Wanuy?" Arata said.
The blade pulsed. Wanuy's pupils dilated. His grip tightened, knuckles whitening.
"I..." His voice cracked. "I hear—"
The hum surged.
The air in the room bent inward, pressure collapsing toward the blade. The Vein beneath the Academy pulsed in response — once, then again it was as if something long-muted had been struck awake.
Wanuy staggered.
Images hit him all at once.
Flora screaming.
The chapel silence.
The moment the reaffirmation basin went quiet.
The feeling of something being smoothed away.
"No..." he gasped. "That's— I wasn't supposed to—"
His knees buckled.
Arata caught his shoulder. "Wanuy, let go."
Wanuy didn't.
The blade screamed, not aloud, but inside.
The blue light flared brighter, and then Wanuy screamed.
It tore out of him raw and unfiltered, fear and grief and rage tangled together. The sound echoed off the dorm walls, alive in a way Arata hadn't heard since before the rites.
Wanuy dropped the blade.
The moment it left his hand, the hum snapped back into place.
Wanuy collapsed forward, gasping, hands clawing at his chest like he was trying to pull something back into himself.
Arata lowered him onto the bed, heart pounding.
Wanuy laughed it short, broken, disbelieving. It was the laugh of a friend he had known for some time now, and was missed.
"I..." He sucked in a breath. "I was so scared."
Arata stared at him. "You're scared now."
Wanuy nodded, tears slipping freely down his face. "Yes."
His hands shook.
"I remember why" he whispered. "I remember why I was afraid… and why I stayed anyway."
He looked up at Arata, eyes wet, alive, burning with something painfully human.
"I didn't lose it," he said hoarsely. "They just buried it."
Arata swallowed hard.
The blade on the desk pulsed once as if satisfied.
Wanuy wiped his face with the heel of his hand, breathing uneven, terrified — and present.
"I don't feel quiet anymore" he said. "I feel… loud. Messy."
He let out a shaky laugh. "I hate it."
Then, firmer: "I missed it."
Arata sat back slowly.
The reaffirmation hadn't been erased. It had been broken.
Resonance hadn't rejected Wanuy.
It had reminded him.
And for the first time since the rites, Wanuy looked like someone who might still choose to stand his ground, even while afraid.
The blade hummed softly.