Chapter 29: Star Wreckage

  The dream always returned, like a dark, relentless tide.

  It was not a noisy nightmare, but a white silence. A pure void, preceding creation and following the end. I floated in a sea of nothingness, alone, until I felt it in my hand. Familiar, cold, heavy. The Sword.

  Cut.

  The command wasn't a thought; it was an axiom, a part of my existence like breathing. So I obeyed. I cut the darkness before me, splitting the curtain of nothingness.

  But this time, something was different.

  In the ancient forest surrounding my childhood mansion, the forbidden Van der Wood forest, five specters stood around an old runic rock. Their faces were a blur, but their presence was heavy as mountains. They were writing on the stone with fingers of light, and their voices were a cold whisper, overlapping in an incomprehensible melody of strange words... words I knew somehow, but my mind refused to translate.

  I felt them weaving my destiny, laughing at my ignorance of it.

  "Deo... the star of change..."

  I heard my name, and I woke up.

  The awakening was not gentle. It was a glacial stab of reality. The first thing I felt was a sharp, burning pain in every cell of my body, as if a thousand glass shards had settled in my muscles. The pain was followed by the taste of blood and dry brass in my mouth, and the smell of rot and despair that permeated the filthy room.

  I opened my eyes slowly. There was no gilded ceiling or crystal chandeliers. There was a rotten wooden ceiling, from which drops of foul water seeped slowly and monotonously, and every drop falling into a rusty bucket counted the seconds in this new hell.

  I was lying on a rough straw mattress, in a room barely big enough for two people. Next to me, Kairo lay, his face pale as a ghost and covered in bruises, his breathing weak and irregular, emitting a faint wheezing sound with every exhale.

  "Finally... you're awake."

  The voice was calm and tired. At the door of the room stood a young man about my age. He was ordinary-looking, nothing distinguished about him, dressed in simple, worn clothes. But his eyes... they carried a sadness and exhaustion that belied his years.

  "It's been almost a week that you two have been like this."

  I sat up with difficulty, and felt the world spinning violently. "A week?" My voice came out hoarse and strained, like the voice of another person. "What... what happened? The capital..."

  The young man looked at the cracked ceiling, and sighed a deep sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the entire city. "It has fallen," he said simply, but the two words were heavier than any stone. "I'll introduce myself first, I'm Victor.

  Just a person from the general public. I was hiding in an old cellar when I heard the sound of the battle at your mansion. After everything calmed down... I found you both severely injured amidst the rubble. I couldn't leave you."

  "And what about the Five Families? Is no one resisting?" I asked, the cold fear beginning to creep into my heart like an icy snake.

  "The Eisingard family was the first," Victor said, his voice becoming a mere narration of tragic facts. "After the death of their master in the Lutetia massacre, they collapsed. Their mansion was stormed, most were killed, and the remainder enslaved."

  Silence.

  "The Rivemont family was next. It is said that Saint Antoine himself attacked their mansion... alone. And killed everyone in it, even the family head, Gaspard Rivemont."

  Silence.

  "As for Knoxville," Victor continued. "After the death of their legendary guardian, Layla, Saint Julian attacked them. Their master Lucius also died."

  Silence.

  "And for Philanter," Victor completed. "Something happened... that cannot be explained. Their main fortress, which was considered impregnable... it vanished. One moment it was there, and the next, there was only a great hole in the ground. It completely disappeared, with everyone in it."

  Victor was silent for a moment, then looked at me directly. "And about the 'Van der Wood' family..."

  Five Saints rule the world now. Saint Antoine, 'Saint of Mercy'. Saint Julian, 'Saint of Pride'. Saint Louis, 'Saint of Laughter'. Then Victor paused again, as if the next words were hard to utter. "And the Fourth and Fifth Saints... I think you know them well. Philip, who was a teacher at the Academy, became 'Saint of Poverty'. And..."

  He stopped, and turned his face away. "And the Fifth... is Corvus Van der Wood. 'Saint of Emotion'."

  A heavy, absolute silence fell. I stared at the moldy wall in front of me, my mind refusing to process the words. Philip... my father...

  "Clara..." The name escaped my lips as a dead whisper. "My wife... is she... is she dead?"

  Victor looked at me with sadness. "I don't know. After Alessandro Philanter's head was hung in the Black House square... the rest, I don't know."

  Alessandro... dead.

  Clara... missing.

  My son...

  At that moment, something inside me broke. It broke quietly, without a sound, like a piece of ice splitting in the winter silence.

  I screamed.

  It was not a scream of anger, but a raw howl of absolute pain. I stood up, pushed the wooden bed away, and grabbed Victor by the collar of his worn clothes.

  "Why?!" I screamed into his pale face. "Why did you save me?! If I had died! If I had died it would have been better! Why did you let me live to see this?!"

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  I stepped back, pushing him toward the door. "Get out... get out and leave me alone! I'm sorry... just get out!"

  Victor left quickly and closed the door, leaving me in the darkness with my wreckage.

  I collapsed to the ground. I crawled across the dirty floor until I reached the bed where Kairo lay.

  "Kairo." There was no reply. "Kairo, I know you're awake."

  Silence.

  "I beg you, Kairo..." I whispered, my voice broken. "Say anything. Any solution. I... I don't know what to do."

  Kairo did not move. He remained still as a corpse, but I felt a slight tremor in his body. He was crying silently.

  And we stayed like that all night. Two broken ghosts in a filthy room, listening to the sound of the rain and the silence of our dead world.

  With the first threads of gray dawn, which crept through the cracks in the wall like ghostly fingers, Kairo moved.

  "I think... I have a solution," he said, his voice weak and desperate, like an echo from a tomb.

  "What is it?"

  "Hit and run." He laughed a dry, broken laugh. "Fighting without honor. We strike and flee. We live like rats in the sewers, eating garbage, hoping no one crushes us until we become stronger.

  "Better than nothing..."

  "If we are going to get stronger quickly... if we are even going to try... we need a genius to help us. And I know a secret place," Kairo said, a flicker of his old light appearing in his dead eyes. "A place known only to one of the most cowardly and obsessive geniuses in the world. Sophie Van der Wood."

  "My aunt? Impossible. She is surely with them."

  "Sophie? With them?" Kairo scoffed. "That woman is narcissistic enough to see herself above everyone. I'm sure she's hiding in her hole now."

  We looked at each other. It wasn't hope, but it was the only remaining option.

  As soon as we left the building, the smell of Lutetia hit us. It was no longer the smell of fresh bread and rain-soaked flowers. It was the smell of cold ash, the smell of a burnt dream.

  We started walking in silence. It wasn't a walk; it was a funeral. The funeral of a world.

  We passed what was once our favorite cafe. We stopped for a moment, looking at the overturned, burnt chairs. I remembered the smell of coffee, and Clara's laugh as she mocked the amount of sugar I put in it.

  We continued walking. We passed the luxury clothing store. The glass facade was shattered, and the mannequins lay in the street, their plastic limbs broken at odd angles, like the corpses of a silent tragedy.

  The city was raped. Magnificent paintings that adorned the squares were torn and trampled in the mud. The fountains that used to play quiet melodies were now silent and full of debris. The Jacobins had passed through here, and they did not content themselves with killing, but deliberately destroyed everything beautiful, as if punishing the city for its beauty.

  We stood in front of the remains of the old cinema. I remembered the darkness, and her hand finding mine for the first time.

  We fell silent, each of us immersed in the ghosts of our memories. Every corner held a memory, and every memory was now a wound.

  We finally reached an old residential area. Kairo stopped in front of a rusty iron manhole cover. "Here."

  "You're kidding."

  "Do you have a better idea?"

  He lifted the heavy cover with effort, and a foul, sharp stench wafted from the opening, making me take a step back. It was the smell of centuries of filth, rot, and despair.

  We descended into the damp darkness. The sewers were a hell of a different kind. Not an open cemetery like the streets, but a suffocating tomb. The walls were sticky and covered with moss, and we heard the sound of dirty water flowing in the main channels, mixed with the squeaking of rats scurrying in the darkness.

  We walked for what felt like an eternity in this suffocating labyrinth. Kairo occasionally stopped, touched the walls, and searched for old signs. We didn't speak to each other at all on the way; we remained silent the whole time. Finally, we reached a dead end wall. No exit. No door?

  Kairo placed his hand on the wall. "Sophie is obsessed with security. She won't put a normal door." Then he looked at me with great hesitation and embarrassment. "Deo... what I'm about to say now... must die here."

  "???"

  He took a deep breath, as if preparing to jump off a cliff. Then he screamed at the top of his lungs at the wall:

  "SOPHIE! OPEN THE DOOR! YOUR UNDERWEAR HAS A PICTURE OF A CAT!"

  Silence reigned for a moment. Then I erupted in a stifled, bitter, exhausted laugh. It was my first genuine laugh in a week.

  We heard a metallic clattering sound, and the stone wall began to move inward, revealing a bright white light and a clean, sterile corridor.

  We found ourselves in a huge, brightly lit underground laboratory. There was no chaos, but strict order. Shelves extending to the ceiling filled with rare metal ingots, holographic screens displaying complex equations, and small robots moving silently to clean the floor.

  Sophie stood in front of a massive workbench, her back to us. "You brought the end of the world to my doorstep, Kairo," she said without turning around. "I hope you brought snacks."

  "We need things that enhance our strength, Sophie," Kairo said directly, ignoring her sarcasm. "Deo is the Magic Swordsman. He is an entity that can use external energy."

  Sophie slowly turned around. There was no shock on her face, only cold scientific curiosity. She examined me with her expert eyes from head to toe. "Using external energy... this opens up incredible possibilities." She walked toward me.

  "The Jacobins use swords as channels to direct their power. Their method seems artificial, and has devastating side effects on their bodies. But his way..." She touched my arm. "...seems natural. Innate."

  She looked at me again, and this time, I saw a hint of admiration in her eyes. "Fine. I will help you. On one condition: kill every one of those cursed Jacobins. I don't want to stay hidden in this hole all my life." She paused for a moment. "But I can't help you, Kairo. You are a wizard, and a wizard cannot use any tools. As for him..." She looked at me. "...that's a different story."

  She said seriously: "I will give you my masterpiece. But there is a small problem."

  "What is it?" I asked, ready for anything.

  "It is a chip I made to put in my own mind," she said, her eyes gleaming with pride and madness. "If it succeeded, I would be the only one who could use it, because my mind is stronger than others. It would have been a revolution, enabling me to use magic like sorcerers. But it failed to simulate the Soul Gate.

  It has other capabilities, though, such as: radically improving senses, automatic saving of any movement the eye sees, copying memories and techniques, and a tremendous improvement in magic control. I will adjust it to fit you, since you use external energy, which has solved the Soul Gate problem."

  "So what's the problem?" Kairo asked.

  Sophie looked at him indifferently. "The small problem is that this chip puts immense strain on the normal human brain. It consumes your life force as an energy source. In other words, it will severely shorten your lifespan. Given your condition, you won't have more than two years left to live."

  "Two years?!" Kairo yelled, his face pale. "Deo, don't do it! This is suicide! We will find another solution! We will find another way!"

  I looked at Kairo, at my friend who was trembling for me. Then I looked at Sophie. Two years. "Two years is better than nothing," I said calmly. "Two years is enough to find Clara and my son. Do it, Sophie."

  "Deo!"

  "Sit on this chair," Sophie said, ignoring Kairo's shouting. "This will hurt a little. In fact, it will hurt a lot."

  "Ah, right, wait a moment... Considering your external energy... this needs a slight modification."

  With a speed that Kairo couldn't even follow, Sophie's fingers moved. She disassembled the chip, used precise, needle-like tools to modify a delicate pathway inside it, then reassembled it. All of this happened in less than three seconds.

  Then she took a thin laser drill and began drilling into my skull. The pain was indescribable. It wasn't just physical pain; I felt as if my very soul was being pierced. I closed my eyes, and summoned a single image to endure: Clara's smiling face. After two hours of agony that felt like an eternity, she placed a small metallic chip into my brain, and closed the wound with another laser.

  "Thank you... Auntie. By the way, do you have a sword."

  "Don't call me Auntie," she said, tossing me a clean cloth. "Now, you want a sword? Just imagine one. The strongest sword you can imagine. What? Will it really work? Or is this the delusion of a genius?"

  I closed my eyes. I didn't imagine a sword. I summoned the nightmare. The sword that haunts my dreams. Its blade black as the ash of a dead star, vibrating between reality and illusion, its edge not metal, but the void itself.

  Suddenly, I felt it in my hand. It was real, cold, and terrifyingly powerful. It was an echo of a dark dream, materialized into reality.

  "I will call it... The Ash Blade."

  "Another feature of this chip," Sophie said, spitting on the ground. "The more you fight, and the more techniques you save, the stronger you become. It's like an empty book you must fill."

  "Why didn't you fill it?"

  "Because none of those stupid sorcerers agreed to let me save their magic."

  Kairo was standing silently, looking at the ground. I looked at him, smiled, and said, "Don't worry, I won't die in two years. My mind is stronger than Sophie thinks."

  He raised his head, smiled, and said, "Yes, you're right."