Sacrifice of Love

  It's much faster to walk through the tunnel when the path has already been marked. Thankfully, my sister's group had taken care to mark the way well, so we wouldn't get lost. There were entrances and exits to different tunnels, both natural and man-made, which led to forgotten ruins—vast antechambers that led to even larger ones. The place was quite strange. I had been there before and walked through it several times—probably hundreds more times in my dreams—yet I still couldn't make sense of it. Everything was both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

  After walking for a while, we found my sister's group. They were sitting and eating while waiting for us. They seemed to be having a lot of fun, like on a school field trip. Even those keeping watch joined the conversation to joke around. When they saw me arrive, they were surprised and tried to act serious, thinking their lack of decorum might offend me. I reassured them, saying that they had helped me find this place and that I didn't want to ruin the camaraderie just because I—and my traumas—were present.

  Vorona was sitting a bit farther away from the others, eating a large portion of meat. She seemed quite happy with her meal. When I approached her, she pointed to a cave much farther down where we could see the outline of more ornate ruins.

  To reach the entrance, one had to walk through the now-forgotten trenches, filled with the remains of fallen soldiers, weapons worn down by use, bullet casings scattered everywhere, and explosion damage that had become part of the architecture. The massive cliffs had been leveled by rubble and hidden by hastily built trenches, with barbed wire stretching endlessly and numbing the eye. It was a strange and twisted mixture of fantasy with impossible buildings and colorful vegetation combined with the horrors of World War I's no man's land. It was a place forgotten by all and claimed only by timid hints of vegetation that didn’t quite dare grow too close.

  The last time I was here, it was a marvel of engineering and craftsmanship. Streets were filled with workers feeding the forges and soldiers hastily transporting carts of minerals to warehouses. Blacksmiths planned their masterpieces through endless discussions on parchment. Now, it was nothing but emptiness and oblivion.

  When we reached the main gate, we found that the massive doors were still sealed. It was an order from the Guild of the Dawn Hammers, who believed that it would keep Orion away. It took only the touch of my hand and the use of my imperial decree to open them. Fortunately, Orion never lived long enough to reach this place.

  We finally entered the antechamber of the Celestial Forge. Only the highest ranks were once allowed to visit this place. Beyond the next door were the blacksmiths and the emperor. But now, it was no longer the grand hall of artistic luxury that only the chosen few could enter. It was now nothing more than another wretched catacomb of horror and the damned.

  The vast hall was filled to the brim with twisted, dry chambers and faces frozen in horror and pain. Thousands of mummified corpses were scattered across the floor and pushed aside just enough to make room to walk deeper inside. The corpses wore little to no clothing, just bits of metal around their waists. I recognized the symbol immediately: the Guild of the Dawn Hammers. All of these mummies were the blacksmiths who forged Avalon. Now, here they lay, discarded and forgotten.

  "Hey, take a look at this one. He looks like a modern soldier, unlike the others."

  "He looks more horrible than the others."

  "I think I can read the last name on his dog tags. It says 'Vin...somehing'" my sister shouted from across the room.

  I walked over to see what she was pointing at so insistently.He was an ordinary soldier with standard equipment; his clothes were already tattered with age.Around him was an unusual amount of medical gear and empty blood bags. Massive red stains had permanently dyed the carpet where the skeleton rested. Great efforts had been made to keep this man alive, even as more corpses of blacksmiths filled the room.

  Another body lay beside him—someone in a white coat with a cross symbol, a doctor.Her skull had a massive hole in the back. She had been executed despite her efforts to save the patient. I didn’t need to read anything to know who the patient was; the remains told the whole story.

  "I was never very photogenic."

  “Huh? Who are you talking about?” my sister asked.

  Confused by my terrible joke, she picked up the soldier’s dog tag and read it silently.

  Her eyes widened as she uncovered the truth.

  "Wait a second! This is your corpse!"

  "But you’re here! You’re alive!"

  "What the hell is going on!?"

  "Yeah, and I'm a girl now, remember?"

  "…"

  "A lot of things happened. Don’t you remember when I told you?"

  "Well, one of those things was when Nanami rescued me after the brutal battle for the Celestial Forge."

  “The same battle where I was mortally wounded.”

  "This is where they tried to treat me."

  "There's nothing more to add."

  "Wait, so this is where you died during the Atlantis War!?"

  "That means this is where Nanami died to give you her body so you could live on in her place!"

  But my sister's words didn't interest me in the slightest. All my attention had gone to one place. The new walls of the room. The stone mural. The wall was carved beautifully, but hastily. It tried to recount a tale that was as heroic as it was forgettable to the dwindling survivors.

  My fingers trembled as I traced the reliefs on the wall, whispering the ancient words aloud. The marble was veined with cracks, yet the carvings retained their drama. A thousand figures of blacksmiths with raised hammers were depicted, their bodies dissolving into spirals of energy flowing into a colossal sword. At the center, a woman with a broken crown embraced the blade, her silhouette merging with the metal.

  "Know this, O traveler through time: Forging the Soul of Atlantis demanded more than fragments of lunar aether, bleeding orichalcum, and fire—and that was no other than the so rare or essential as 'life force.'”

  Each hammer strike upon Avalon consumed a heartbeat from the blacksmith; each immersion in the waters of the stars stole a breath from their chest—the final gasp that consumed their inner light. A thousand hands of the Masters of Dawn struck the blade a thousand times, and a thousand lives were tempered into its steel. Each plunge into the eternal flames of the Celestial Forge burned years from their fates. A thousand souls were given so that its edge would never yield! A thousand sacrifices were offered to the sacred metal.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Avalon would be born indestructible—the eternal guardian, the sword that would never break.

  But even the blood of a thousand artisans was never enough for Avalon sake.

  An sword forged without mind or will is merely a lump of steel. The weapon could not be merely brute; it had to be educated. To infuse it with wisdom and judgment, the ultimate sacrifice was needed: a pure soul, given willingly and sealed into its core.Only imperial blood could tame such power—a spirit willing to embody eternal protection. Then the Empress, who had asked for her name to be erased, rose. She saw the Dying Warrior from a Foreign Land on the sacred ground—her beloved—and the Healer with Stained Red Hands, struggling in vain against fate. She smiled in their stead. With her imperial blood and pure heart, she dedicated her future to the sacred fine metal. With her imperial blood and pure heart, she offered her soul as the eternal seal. Her life force intertwined with the orichalcum; her soul was bound to Avalon born.

  Let the cosmos remember: Avalon is not a sword, but the tomb of a flawless empress and her testament to the truest love.

  Its radiance is the farewell of a dynasty "

  The final relief depicted Nanami not as a ruler but as a fragile girl. Carved hastily yet precisely, her hands were laid over the chest of a dying soldier—my chest.

  Avalon was never just a weapon, It was a sarcophagus of a forgotten soul.

  The last relief was left behind, but its echo still pulsed in my ears. The image of Nanami—with her hands on my chest, smiling in farewell—was etched into my mind with a clarity that hurt. The silence of the place was absolute. Not even my companions dared to speak. The air had grown thick, saturated with memories too vast for a single heart.

  I stepped away from the mural, unsteady. Each step was a struggle against the weight of a newly unearthed truth: I was not meant to be alive.

  That was when I saw it.

  There, in a corner bathed in a light that came from no clear source, rested an old hammer. It wasn’t a weapon, nor a symbol, but a tool: worn, blackened by time and the heat of a thousand forges. The handle was cracked, the head covered in dry slag and marks of inhuman labor. And yet, something in it still echoed. A whisper, perhaps, or a memory trapped in the metal.

  I knelt before it. Took it in both hands, and the moment I did, a shiver ran through my soul. It was heavy, yes, but not because of the iron—because of the legacy it bore. Every smith, every life consumed in the creation of Avalon, still seemed to breathe on its surface.

  My fingers tightened around it.

  —"What are you doing?" my sister asked, still confused, still trying to process what we had seen.

  I didn’t answer. I simply stood up, the hammer still in my hands.

  In the distance, beyond the dry corridors and the eternally still corpses, the entrance to the central hall of the Celestial Forge stood open. I felt something calling to me from within. A growing heat, a silent expectancy. It wasn’t magic. It was history. It was pain.

  I moved forward.

  I passed among the remains of the smiths like a ghost among ghosts. And when I crossed the threshold into the final chamber, I knew: I could no longer carry that sword without doing something. Without answering what it meant. What had been given to me. What had been lost so that I might breathe.

  Upon entering the main hall of the Celestial Forge, the atmosphere changed once again. Waiting for us was the strangest landscape I could have imagined—yet another display of Atlantean greatness that I had never been able to appreciate. It was a dreamlike scene at the edge of the universe.

  A vast plain of purple grass with randomly scattered trees atop a floating island in the endlessness of space surrounded by undatable ruins. In the near distance, the edge of the island seemed to form an eye, silently watching everything like a mute judge—a black hole. This was the eternal flame upon which Atlantis survived the eternal winter, part of the secret that the Atlanteans and dragons once tried to steal. The forge from which Avalon was born was nothing more than a stone altar at the center of the island.

  “AVALON!” I shouted into the air.

  The heavy sword appeared at my command just as it always had—only now with the pain of seeing it with my own eyes and knowing the truth of its origin, Carefully lay the sword on the altar.

  Filled with fury, I raised the hammer. My hands had become the claws of a white dragon, tense and trembling with the power surging through my veins. I gripped the shaft tightly, my eyes fixed on the metal of Avalon. With all my strength, I struck the immortal blade. Such an act would never be enough. It never would be. I raised the hammer again and again, like a war hammer suspended in the air, striking blow after blow, instinctively and wildly. For a warrior, their weapon is their life, but I did not want mine.

  But Tamamo gently moved me aside, embraced me firmly, and stopped my burning arm. She took up the hammer in my place, and her divine strength transformed it into a celestial weapon whose force obeyed the will of a goddess.

  Tamamo rolled up her sleeves with resolve. With even greater power, she began striking the hammer against the metal, firmly and unwaveringly, without pausing for a moment. Each blow was faster; each swing was more powerful. Her hair began to shine with perfect brilliance, as if a thousand stars were tangled in her locks. Pearled sweat reflected her physical exertion, and flames of pure energy danced around her body—a living manifestation of her magic and conviction.

  She closed her fingers around the hammer's handle, and instantly, the deadly tool transformed: the shaft became solidified moonlight and the head became a miniature sun, spitting sparks of primordial creation.

  As she struck Avalon with the hammer, she proclaimed,

  "I won’t let my beloved carry the weight of miracles alone!"

  The sky behind her shimmered with fear. The impact caused the foundations of Atlantis to tremble and glowing cracks to streak across her bare arms.

  She struck again, and with each blow, her voice rose.

  "If I can't save the girl who gave her life for you, what kind of useless goddess would I be?!"

  She challenged the universe itself, the Celestial Forge. Divine blood—liquid gold mixed with tears—dripped from her knuckles. Light devoured by a black hole burned with fervor.

  And again, without pause:

  “She gave her life to save the one I love. I will save her in return!”

  The flames of the forge bowed before her, creating a chorus of fire and pain. Horrific golden flames tried to consume her, but an explosion of her own blue fire clashed against them.

  The forge responded.

  The next time, she shouted for herself:

  "This story of Atlantis is part of my legend too! I will forge its ending!"

  She vowed as her kimono began to char, revealing skin covered in cracks and blood.

  The earth split open. Her ankles sank into molten marble and her hair turned into a cascade of stars.

  “Tamamo! Be careful! Don’t do anything reckless!" I shouted in panic to my beloved.

  But her resolve only grew.

  "I won't save just one... I’ll save them both!”

  With the next strike, Tamamo ceased to be a being and became the walking concept she had always been—a figure of light, barely human in shape. Where her eyes had been, tiny supernovas burned. Her spine shone through what was once flesh, like a galaxy’s axis. With each breath, fleeting golden and blue flares erupted over the anvil, melting the ancient stone.

  The forge did not resist.

  The next blow struck—

  "AAAHHHGG!"

  Tamamo fell to her knees, smoking and glorious. Her face showed only seriousness and absolute determination—a blend of love and duty that shook the walls of the Celestial Forge. When the hammer came down one final time, a deafening roar echoed through the infinite hall.

  The first crack ever in the weapon appeared.