Acquisition: Legendary Light-Attribute Healing Sword
The old ferry-ground was a place where water forgot to reflect. Noon stood over it like a patient judge; the sky in the pool remained a black, depthless pupil.
We stepped onto the warped planks. The little koi lantern at my elbow flickered faster, then pressed against the glass of its jar as if it could smell home. I knelt and loosened the cork. The fish slipped into the air as easily as into water, a thread of living ember that nosed toward the pool and dove. Light stitched after it in a narrow seam.
The black surface unzipped.
Below lay a cavity like the inside of a bell: smooth, pale stone, ringed in glyphs. In the center rested a sword upon a bar of sun-glass—no ornament, just a long clean line of metal with a simple guard, the whole blade veined faintly with light as if it remembered sunlight from a different world.
SYSTEM: Reliquary recognized: Bride's Fen Archaium.
Cantorblade "Lysithea" — the Bride's Oath (Legendary, Light)
The pool convulsed. Something tall rose from its rim, hood dripping weeds: a figure with a pole in one hand and nothing where a face should be except a circle of perfect matte—a hole where reflections go to starve.
SYSTEM: Hollow Oarsman (Boss: Minor) — Attribute DARK
Trait: Unsee — negates sight-based counters; reduces parry windows.
Ability: Ferry Due — steals stored healing as Bleakness.
Aurelia lifted her shield. "Trial."
"Trial," I agreed, hearing the bell under the word.
It moved, not fast but inevitable. The pole was not wood; it was the kind of straight line the world doesn't make without help. It stabbed for my heart as a fresh tax.
"Aegis Hymn." Tiles of soft daybreak layered us both. The first thrust met Aurelia's rim and slid—too clean. The oarsman pivoted and dragged the pole along her shield's face; Bleakness tried to write itself on her bracer like frost.
"Dual-Cant." Heals unspooled under her vambrace, hot and sure; the attack stave darted for its chest and slid off nothing. The Unsee trait sheared away my aim as if my eyes had been taught a wrong map.
The koi flashed below, tightening its circle around the blade. The reliquary thrummed—remember me—and the pool's sound became the inside of a shell.
"Eirion—" Aurelia's warning came flat and level.
"I know." We had fought inevitabilities before. You don't meet inevitability with speed; you meet it with timing.
The oarsman lifted its pole in a two-handed arc. I stepped in, wrong for any sane duel, and touched the bell-rim stone with my staff. "Bride," I said, voice steady, "we carry your promise."
The reliquary answered.
Light rose like breath from cold glass. The air tasted of first morning. The koi stretched—elongated—became a thin filament that sank into the sword's spine and lit it from within.
Without quite deciding to, I let the staff go.
My hand found the sword.
It weighed no more than a good word and as much as a vow. Where my fingers wrapped the leather, stats moved—not only numbers, but balances, lines of force, the way my own light carried its weight.
I drew it free. The blade made no sound. The world did.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ EQUIPPED: CANTORBLADE "LYSITHEA — BRIDE'S OATH" (Legendary) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Type: Healing Sword (One-Hand) Attribute: LIGHT │
│ Base Edge: 1,240–1,860 (Light) Weight: Very Light │
│ Scaling: INT A, MND A, WIS B, DEX B │
│ On-Hit: Heal nearest ally for 6% (↑ with MND) of damage. │
│ Overheal: Splinters into 3–5 **Starlit Reprise** bolts. │
│ Parry: **Bellguard** — successful parry adds +12% Aegis bank│
│ Active: **Sunline Suture** — slash leaves a curving suture │
│ that heals allies in its path and detonates on DARK │
│ foes for bonus Light damage. │
│ Unique: **Tricant** — Dual-Cant gains a third stave bound │
│ to **Lumen Thread** (cast all three simultaneously).│
│ Oathbond: Harmony decay −20%; cap +10% (to 110%). │
│ Replaces: Choirstaff of the First Bell │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
"Status," I breathed, feeling the balance settle.
┌──────────── BEFORE / AFTER (EQUIP) ────────────┐
│ HP: 12,460 → 13,180 (+720) │
│ MP: 18,300 → 21,100 (+2,800) │
│ STR: 121 → 148 (+27) DEX: 208 → 252 (+44) │
│ INT: 512 → 604 (+92) WIS: 540 → 618 (+78) │
│ MND: 501 → 596 (+95) VIT: 233 → 268 (+35) │
│ Light Skill Power: +22% │
│ Healing Efficacy: +18% │
│ Aegis Hymn Cap: +15% │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia's eyes flared. "Better than the staff."
"Insanely," I said, and lifted Lysithea to meet the falling pole.
Bellguard.
Metal kissed inevitability and made it blink. The parry window that shouldn't have existed opened like a tabernacle door. The pole staggered a hand's breadth; my Aegis Hymn drank deep—+12%—and hummed sweet, ready for mercy.
"Tricant: Smite + Mend + Thread."
Three staves left my throat in one breath.
The Smite rode the blade's path, a thin white seam that stitched a line up the oarsman's torso.
Mend washed Aurelia's forearm in warmth and eased the Bleakness trying to pen its line into her.
Lumen Thread snapped from the blade's tip and laced the reliquary's crack, anchoring Sunline Suture to the world.
I cut a shallow crescent—Sunline Suture. The arc hung in the air for a heartbeat, a glowing suture curving between us like a surgeon's planned line.
"Walk it," Aurelia said, understanding instantly.
She stepped through the curve; it kissed her plates. Where it touched, micro-dents smoothed; ligatures beneath knit and strengthened. The arc then detonated along the oarsman's ribs, light biting down on dark with a wet hiss.
Light advantage: +25% damage; Sunline bonus triggered.
On-Hit Heal: +6% to nearest ally (Aurelia).
Reprise: 4 bolts released (seeking).
The oarsman thrust again, but my world had narrowed to a clean staff of numbers and breath. The blade was a metronome; my voice was the score. We moved with Aurelia, not near—Oathbond riding high, decay slowed by the blade's gift. The boss tried its trick—Ferry Due—hands closing to pull my stored healing away.
"No," I said, and meant the word as a ward.
I opened White Mercy partially, shaping it along Lysithea's edge instead of exploding it from my chest. The mercy ran down the blade like water on wire and burst outward only where steel met shadow. The stolen healing snapped back into our bank with a sound like a coin striking a table and the oarsman reeled.
Aurelia's sword—sun-sure—drove from low left to high right, pinning the oarsman's elbow to nothing. I followed the line and cut a second Sunline Suture, this one tighter, looping behind the thing's neck so that any motion would make it heal us and hurt it.
"Status," Aurelia said between beats.
┌───────────── COMBAT OVERLAY ─────────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 86% (Sustained) │
│ Aegis Hymn Storage: 74% (surge ready) │
│ Bleakness: 0 | Sodden: 0 │
│ Boss Integrity: 47% │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
The oarsman tried to Unsee our timing again—smearing the world's edges, erasing the tell that bodies give. The blade's answer was not sight; it was tone. I listened—not with eyes but with the little bell behind them—to the pole's approach, the hush of displacing air, the pitch of intent.
Bellguard met it. White Mercy rode the riposte. Tricant layered over the cut: Smite to burn, Mend to flood our shared aches with morning, Thread to tighten the loop behind its head.
"Together," Aurelia said, calm as liturgy.
We crossed—her verdict down the centerline, my seam nearly invisible beside it. The oarsman's pole split; its hood fell like the idea of a hood. The matte circle where a face would be quivered, then cracked like old lacquer, light showing through the breaks.
"Radiant Nova—pulse, three."
Boom. Boom. Boom. Each pulse tapped the cracks wider. The reflectionless hole turned into a shattered mirror in reverse, pieces falling inward, until there was nowhere for them to go and it became only water again. The pole drifted, suddenly just a bit of straight driftwood.
The reliquary waited, patient as stone. I lifted Lysithea in salute, then slid the blade into a simple leather hanger the shrine offered as if it had been waiting for this exact waist.
The koi—now tiny again—spiraled up and tucked itself into the jar that had somehow returned to my hand. It winked once like a candle teased by breath.
The System chimed.
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ RELIC ACQUIRED │
├───────────────────────────────────┤
│ Cantorblade "Lysithea" (Legendary)│
│ Bound: Eirion Luminara │
│ Mastery Track: 0/100 │
│ New Skill: Sunline Suture (Rank 1)│
│ Tricant Unlocked │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia studied the blade with the same expression she used for maps that finally told the truth. "It suits you."
"It sings in my hands," I admitted.
"Then let it sing."
We tested the song before we left.
A patrol of marsh-wights probed the new ward, impatient gnats of shadow. We didn't break stride. I cut a lazy figure-eight—the sunlines hung like calligraphy in the air. Aurelia strode through both loops; dents erased; her breath lengthened. On-hit trickles of healing tethered to her steps, beads of morning dew that slid into her joints and made them young.
A wight reached for a child who had wandered too close to watch. I pointed with Lysithea and let a Reprise bolt off the tip take the thing's wrist away. The child squeaked, then laughed because the sound the bolt made was so absurdly bright.
"Status," I said once more when the fen quieted.
┌────────────── POST-TRIAL ──────────────┐
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 19,940 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 28% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 88% │
│ Weapon: Lysithea — Bride's Oath │
│ Staff: Choirstaff archived (off-hand) │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
Bride's Fen watched us with the unembarrassed gratitude of people who can sleep again. The elder bowed, deeper this time, as if the new blade had altered the measure of what we were.
"Next fissure?" Aurelia asked, gently, which meant eat first, then hunt.
I glanced north where alder-shadow pitched wrong. The koi jar warmed my elbow. Lysithea rode my hip like a promise kept.
"Next fissure," I said.
And as we walked, I drew the blade once—not to fight, but to cut a thin line of light across the plankway where it had cracked. The wood pulled together obediently, whole again without a nail.
Healing, with an edge.
Field Test: Lysithea & Advanced Healing
We borrowed the Abbey's back court—packed clay ringed by willow, a rack of practice targets, and a line of battered bells for timing drills. The ward over Bride's Fen hummed faintly in the distance, like a glass rim someone kept almost singing.
Aurelia rolled her shoulders, helm under one arm. "Warm-up. Then we make it real."
I thumbed Lysithea's plain guard. The blade held morning the way a bowl holds water—quiet, no waste.
"Status."
┌──────────── PRE-DRILL CHECK ────────────┐
│ Eirion Luminara │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 MP: 21,100 / 21,100│
│ Aegis Hymn: 0% (idle) Oathbond: Linked │
│ Weapon: Lysithea — Bride's Oath (Legend.)│
│ New: Tricant ready | Sunline Suture r1 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
I. Controlled Spar
Aurelia came in clean—shield front, blade low, textbook pressure. I let the first cut arrive and met it with Bellguard. Metal kissed inevitability and found a hinge; my timing slipped in. Aegis Hymn drank the jolt—+12% banked—warmth gathering under the sternum.
"Again," she said.
She obliged herself: feint high, hook low. Bellguard clipped the hook; I answered with Tricant in a single familiar breath:
Smite: a hair-thin seam riding the blade angle—never enough to char plate, just enough to teach it the path.
Mend: a warm pour through her elbow tendons after the parry torque.
Thread: two neat sutures latching her shield strap where leather had started to crack.
On-Hit Heal: +6% to nearest ally (Aurelia).
Aegis Hymn: 24% banked.
"Sunline," she reminded.
I cut a small arc in the air—Sunline Suture—then widened it into a curve that crossed her step. She strode through; micro-dents in greave and sabaton smoothed; her breath came easier without her noticing.
"Better," she said. "You're shaping Mercy without dumping your bank."
"Learning to pour, not throw."
She nodded once—the entire reason we spar: to find the exact place to stop being wasteful.
II. Triage Drill
The Abbey quartermaster volunteered three "patients"—battered militia. One with a crushed ring finger; one with a thorn of Bleakness lingering under the ribs from last night; one simply exhausted, feet raw.
I knelt. Lumen Thread made a fine lattice around the broken finger, knitting without swelling. Mend eased the Bleakness—small heat, steady pour; the thorn boiled out as a curl of black steam. For the third, I laid a low Sunline along the ground like a path; he walked it slowly, and with each step the line dissolved into him—stamina back the way dew returns to a leaf.
┌────────── TRIAGE OVERLAY ──────────┐
│ Patient A: Fracture → Closed (0 pain)│
│ Patient B: Bleakness → Purged │
│ Patient C: Fatigue → Restored (70%) │
│ MP: 21,100 → 19,860 │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia watched with her arms folded, pretending to critique. Her eyes softened when Patient C laughed at the simple relief of unblistered feet.
"Live test," she said.
The Abbey bell at the fen-edge tolled wrong—a wobble that meant the ward was touched, not breached.
We were moving before the note finished.
III. Live Contact: Alder-Shadow Fissure
The alder-shadow had thinned into a bruise. Inside it, three things prowled the line: griefmoths—paper-thin, fanning despair with their wings; a shadow pike shouldering up the bank with a jaw like a barn door; and, farther back, a slender fen-banshee with rivergrass hair, fingers long as opinions.
SYSTEM:
Griefmoth Swarm (Dark): Aura Despair (Will checks).
Shadow Pike (Dark): Rend (Bleed) on bite.
Fen-Banshee (Dark): Silence Keening (interrupts casting).
Aurelia stepped into the lane the ward left for us—wide enough to fight, narrow enough to funnel. "Harmony?"
I matched her breath. Oathbond slid tight, easy; the blade's gift slowed decay.
┌───────────── COMBAT OVERLAY ─────────────┐
│ Oathbond Harmony: 82% (Sustained) │
│ Aegis Hymn Storage: 0% → │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
The banshee drew breath for her Keening—I felt the empty sound taste my larynx in advance. I didn't speak. Lysithea spoke for me.
Radiant Nova—edge-cast. I sent the nova down the blade, a single clean tap. The pulse hit like a tuning fork to the banshee's throat; her breath shattered into harmless wind.
Griefmoths swarmed Aurelia's visor. Despair tried to write dull sentences in our bones.
"Stay with me," she said, voice flat iron.
"With you," I answered, and let On-Hit Heal do labor while I worked the edge. Each moth my blade touched died like wet paper; each touch flicked +6% into Aurelia. Reprise bolts hopped off my overheal and hunted stray wings like bright sparrows.
The pike lunged—jaw a hinge I could have stood inside. Bellguard met its snout; Aegis Hymn drank—+12%, then +24% as Aurelia slammed her rim down. Bleed tagged her thigh—hot, sharp.
"Tricant!" I split the breath: Smite stitched the pike's palate; Mend plugged the bleed before it learned to flow; Thread laced two quick sutures under her plate, bracing muscle while she pivoted.
Bleed: Negated (0.0s).
Harmony: 85%.
Aegis Hymn: 41% banked.
The banshee tried again, angling to my rear where my staff would have left me soft. The sword cared nothing about "rear." I cut a crescent without turning—Sunline Suture hung behind me like a drawn bowstring. She crossed it to reach me; it healed us, then detonated on her—a white bite at the sternum. She staggered, hair streaming like weed torn by a propeller.
Aurelia took the cue and shouldered the pike back, sword driving home along my seam. "Mercy?"
"Partial."
I poured White Mercy not as an explosion but as a pressurized ribbon riding Lysithea's fuller. It bit into the pike's darkness without splashing and returned as warm gain to our bank. The big fish shuddered, jaw unhinging wrong, and went still.
Griefmoths, robbed of their anchor sadness, tried to make a cloud. I drew a figure-eight—two Sunlines that lapped each other like good handwriting. Aurelia walked straight through the strokes; the loops sipped dents from her shield, then popped the moths mid-air with neat white pips.
The banshee gathered herself for one last Keening, mouth opening too wide—
"Together," Aurelia said.
We crossed—her Sunlit Verdict from shoulder to hip; my almost-invisible seam a finger's breadth aside. Radiant Nova—pulse three tapped the cracks wider: boom, boom, boom. Keening died in her throat, and then she did too, a sigh dissolving into harmless water that ran back under alder.
Silence came back like a respectful friend.
"Status."
┌──────────── POST-CONTACT ────────────┐
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 17,980 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 26% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 88% │
│ Debuffs: none │
│ Loot: Pike-Shadow Tooth (rare), │
│ Banshee Reed-Charm (craft) │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
IV. Stress Heal: Group Cascade
"Crowd's gathering," Aurelia murmured. Not fear—logistics. Villagers at the ward edge: cuts from work, coughs from damp houses, a sprain, a mother with a baby whose breath rasped.
I slid Lysithea into a low guard and cut three shallow arcs at knee height, fanning them to make a corridor. "Walk the light," I said. "Slowly."
They did. The sword's sutures kissed shins and calves, then braided into a soft mist at ankle level. Coughs eased. Sprain loosened. One man's old scar let go of its ache. I shaped Mercy as a pressure dome, thin and wide, just enough to keep the corridor's air warm like sun on a winter sill. The baby's breath found the right size again.
┌──────────── CASCADE HEAL ───────────┐
│ Beneficiaries: 11 │
│ Severe: 0 | Moderate: 3 | Minor: 8 │
│ Overheal → Reprise (9 bolts) │
│ Ward Integrity: +1% (ambient uplift)│
│ MP: 17,980 → 16,910 │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
Aurelia watched the corridor with a look she rarely let the world see. "Sword's better than the staff," she admitted, as if the world might overhear and get ideas.
"It lets me suture space," I said. "Heals while I fight without thinking about it."
She lifted her shield, turned it once, as if testing the weight again with this new truth. "Then we build our tactics around that corridor. I'll hold lines that cross your cuts."
"Understood."
The System tapped my vision with a small, satisfied chime.
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ Mastery Gain: Lysithea +7 │
│ Sunline Suture: Rank 2 │
│ New Passive: Suture Bridge │
│ – Two sunlines within 4m create│
│ a low-intensity regen field. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
We laid two parallel strokes across a narrow plankway to test it. The air between them thickened into comfort. Even I breathed easier standing in it—like stepping into a room that remembered morning.
Aurelia stepped out, then back in, measuring the drop and return. "Good. Field holds through motion. You'll make this on advance; I'll anchor at the far lip."
"We're getting… efficient," I said.
"We're getting alive," she corrected, which was her way of liking an idea.
The ward bell breathed a normal note—no wobble. Alder-shadow settled back into honest shade. Beyond the fen, the day kept being day.
"Next?" I asked.
"Next," she said, and pointed her chin toward the causeway that led to the Pilgrim Road. "Reports of ink-wolves nosing the road stones. They won't like corridors of light."
"Few things do," I said, and drew Lysithea for the walk. The edge showed me where to put the first stroke so later, when it mattered, our feet would already know the path.
We moved in step. The sword sang low and practical in my hand. My light learned new ways to be useful without being loud. And the fen, newly warded, hummed back approval, like a village that finally let itself nap in the afternoon.
Route Securement: Pilgrim Road Causeway — Ink-Wolf Hunt
Pilgrim Road rose a spine of stone above the fen, each guide-stone chiseled with prayers in a hand so old the letters looked like weather. Today those letters bled. Black gloss pooled in the grooves and crept down the faces in rivulets, gathering in the seams between cobbles like night forgetting where to be.
Wind moved. The stains moved with it—against it.
Aurelia angled her shield, reading the road the way other people read books. "Tracks," she said. "Not feet. Pens."
"Then they're written, not born," I answered, letting Lysithea tap twice against my thigh—once for readiness, once for calm.
The first ink-wolf shouldered out of a puddled word, spine bending like a calligrapher's flourish. It looked made of strokes—bolds and hairlines, joints where the pen had paused. More followed, pads leaving blots that sizzled the old blessing lines.
SYSTEM: Ink-Wolf Pack (Dark)
Traits: Blot (leaves silence pools, interrupts casting), Smear (on hit: chance to muddle buffs).
Synergy: Destroyed by clean Light edges; resists diffuse glare.
"Edges it is," Aurelia said, catching my thought the way she always did.
I drew Lysithea and cut two low, parallel arcs down the lane—Sunline Suture forming a bright corridor. The air between them thickened into that gentle Suture Bridge field we'd learned—breath easier, steps sure.
"Hold the far lip," I said.
"Already there."
She strode to meet the first wolf as if walking into a familiar room. Bellguard clipped the opening lunge; the shield's rim turned a paragraph of teeth into scattered commas. Aegis Hymn drank—+12%, then +24%—and hummed.
I breathed the Tricant in one smooth chord:
Smite rode my blade like a seam ripper, unthreading the wolf's spine-stroke.
Mend poured along Aurelia's forearm, unknotting the shock from the parry.
Lumen Thread laced the nearest guide-stone, suturing a cracked blessing so the ward-lattice would have something honest to grab.
On-Hit Heal: +6% to Aurelia.
Reprise: 3 bolts zipped downrange, pecking at flanks.
Oathbond: steady above 80%.
Two wolves veered wide, smearing blot-pools across the cobbles. Sound thinned over them—like stepping into a hush where spells go to lose their words.
I didn't speak.
Radiant Nova—edge cast. I sent the pulse through the blade and let the tone do the work. The nova's ring kissed the blot-pools and turned them to dry, flaked callus that swept aside on the wind.
Aurelia took the moment and split a wolf down the long axis—it fell into tidy syllables that evaporated. Another tried to worry her greave; she stamped it into a punctuation mark and moved on.
"Architect," she warned, chin notch toward the mile-stone ahead.
I saw it: a slender figure perched like a quill left in an inkpot. Hands long and stained, reed-pens spread between its fingers like a fan of claws. Every flick birthed a new wolf. Its head was a mask of parchment stitched too tight.
SYSTEM: Gutter Scribe (Mini-Boss) — Dark
Abilities: Redact (temporarily removes last applied heal), Margin Crawl (summons wolves from guide-stone text), Spill (cone blot; wide silence).
"Shield or blade?" Aurelia asked.
"Both," I said, and we went.
The Scribe flicked a Spill. Silence rushed at us like a curtain. Aurelia braced; I trimmed a tight Sunline right along the ground in front of us. The spill hit the line and split, pooling to either side like ink meeting a wax resist. Her boots stayed on clean road.
It splayed its fingers—Margin Crawl—and the prayers on the mile-stone began to unwrite, letters peeling up and stalking toward us as lean wolves.
"Not yours," I told it, and set Lumen Thread to the stone, stitching the old blessing back to bone. Thread took; Smite rode the same motion and shaved a notch from the Scribe's forearm. Mend swam Aurelia's ribs as a wolf's smear tried to muddle her breath—undid it before the muddle could decide how.
Aegis Hymn: 39% banked.
Harmony: 84% (Sustained).
Boss Integrity: 71%.
The Scribe's reed-pen stabbed, quick as thought, for the seam in my pauldron. Bellguard kissed it aside; the parry window opened again where none should. I felt White Mercy wanting to blow; instead I poured—a narrow ribbon along the fuller that bit down into the Scribe's wrist and returned as warmth to our bank.
It snapped a parchment grin and hissed Redact.
For a heartbeat, the last heal I'd poured into Aurelia vanished—history edited. Pain tried to reappear in her ribs like a paragraph restored by a cruel editor.
"No," I said once more, and this time I used the blade to annotate.
Counter-Suture: Annotation. (Improvised.) I cut a caret-shaped Sunline just above her sternum and wrote the heal back in with Thread, anchoring it to the moment before the boss's word. The System chimed approval as if it, too, liked accurate records.
New Technique (Inferred): Annotation — Converts a Sunline into a time-lock for the most recent Mend on an ally, resisting one Redact.
Aurelia laughed once—the sound a bright nick in the fight. "Keep doing that."
"I intend to."
The pack surged to break our corridor. I widened my stance and traced a figure-eight—Suture Bridge thickened to a lane. Villagers and Abbey guards watching from a distance could see it now: a pale, kind glow that promised safe footing and cleaner lungs.
"Push," Aurelia said.
We went to work—she a metronome of clean verdicts, I the line-keeper. Every Bellguard fed Aegis. Every cut I made stitched a path and a wound. When wolves got clever and leapt wall to wall, Reprise bolts picked them out of the air with the crisp pop of seeds in a pan.
The Scribe gathered a last Spill, lifting both hands to drown the lane. The miles of written prayer in its chest fluttered like a book about to close.
"Together," Aurelia called.
We crossed.
Her Sunlit Verdict tore the Scribe's mask down the spine. My seam rode beside it, a hair finer, opening a second track for the light to follow. I pulsed Radiant Nova three taps down the blade—boom, boom, boom—each beating the Redact back into its pen. White Mercy went partial along our paths, teeth on darkness, bread on our bank.
The Scribe fell apart into escaped letters that couldn't remember their order. They skittered, then faded, leaving only clean stone and the ordinary shadow of afternoon.
Wolves, suddenly unwritten, smeared into harmless drips. The blot-pools dried to ash. The old prayers re-seated themselves in their grooves and gleamed, as if someone had re-inked them with morning.
Silence landed—the good kind.
"Status," I said, letting the blade tip rest a respectful inch above the road.
┌──────────── SECUREMENT REPORT ───────────┐
│ Sector: Pilgrim Road Causeway (South Fen) │
│ Threats: Ink-Wolf Pack — neutralized │
│ Mini-Boss: Gutter Scribe — defeated │
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 15,640 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 22% residual │
│ Oathbond Harmony (peak): 89% │
│ Corridor Uptime: 100% │
│ New: Technique — Annotation (rank 1) │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘
Loot glittered in a sober way—a Reed-Pen of Honest Lines (rare, craft focus), a Vial of Fixed Ink that refused to drip wrongly, a Guide-Stone Shard humming with ward affinity.
We set the shard into a broken seam and let Thread and Sunline seat it until the Road sighed, satisfied. Pilgrims would walk here without learning new kinds of silence.
Aurelia turned, gauging the rhythm of the day, the colors of the fen. "North spur next," she said. "If the Scribe worked here, there's a Binder where the causeway meets the alder bridge."
"Binder?" I asked, already hearing the bell behind the word.
"Writes people into promises they didn't make." Her mouth went flat. "I don't like Binders."
"Then we'll unwrite it," I said, resting Lysithea against my shoulder. The blade hummed—you could almost pretend it was only metal and not a hymn shaped like a weapon, but it had opinions about honesty.
We walked. As we went, I drew a narrow Sunline down the center of each twenty paces of stone—a thin, almost invisible thread. Nothing dramatic. Just a subtle habit of morning taught to the Road so it could remember without us.
The fen breathed easier. The bells at Bride's Fen chimed a normal hour. Our shadows kept company, straight and parallel, as the causeway carried us toward whatever waited with its pen uncapped.
Turn-In: Pilgrim Road — Ink-Wolf Hunt
The causeway kept a straight spine back toward Bride's Fen, afternoon light laying long bars across the stones. Lysithea rode my hip like a thought that remembered to breathe; each step set a quiet rhythm through the scabbard.
I was marking a thin Sunline every twenty paces—habit now—when I noticed how still the road sounded behind us. Not quiet. Still. The kind of hush a crowd makes when it's pretending it isn't a crowd.
I kept walking, counting cuts. One… two… three—
A clink of mail. A mug set gently down. Boots that had been coming our way stopped and found something very interesting on the horizon.
Aurelia's shadow moved up beside mine. "Eyes front," she said to the air, voice mild and edged.
I glanced over, confused. "What?"
"Not you." Her helm tilted a degree. "Them."
Only then did I realize the pattern—how travelers, caravan guards, even Abbey novices along the balustrade had all done the same double take: glance → widen → jerk away as if the sun had barked. A few had the stunned look of people who'd just seen a statue blink. Others wore the dazed half-smile of folk struck by a hymn they didn't expect to like.
My hips, traitors that they were, had settled into their own calm sway, armor skirting to the rhythm of the walk. The plates hugged lines I didn't think about unless I needed to sprint. The road was smooth; the day was kind; the body I wore was light and balanced. I moved in it the way rivers move in their beds.
Aurelia's gaze tracked a pair of mercenaries whose heads began to swivel like weathercocks. Her eyes went flat gold.
Aurelia — Passive: Interdicting Gaze (Divine).
Creatures within 15m who behold you with improper intent suffer Daze (2s) and Shame (−10% Accuracy, 30s).
The mercenaries discovered pressing matters in their own boots.
"Are they staring at Lysithea?" I asked, genuinely.
"Yes," she said dryly. "That's what they're staring at."
"Oh." I considered. "It is a very pretty sword."
She didn't dignify that with more than a small, resigned exhale. "Keep walking."
We did. A porter passed with a rope-burned hand; I brushed his palm with Lumen Thread without slowing, suturing the angry line closed. A child tugged her mother's sleeve to whisper about the "glow road," and I put a fingertip to my lips and drew a mini-sunline at her feet. She giggled as it soaked into her boots like warmth.
Another clatter up ahead—a pair of lacquer-bright pilgrims craned openly for a better look.
Aurelia stopped. She didn't raise her voice. "Do you prefer your eyes where they are?"
Both pilgrims stared at their sandals so hard they nearly bowed through the stone. "S-sorry, Paladin."
I blinked. "What's happening?"
"You're beautiful," Aurelia said, very matter-of-fact. "And your walk has opinions." Then, after a beat: "I will remove the opinions if they persist."
I colored despite myself and looked down at my notes—at the thin, sensible lines of light stitched across the stones. "I'm just… setting lanes."
"You are," she agreed. Then, louder, to the road: "He's working."
That did it. The causeway remembered its chores. We moved on with only the appropriate number of glances, which is to say, none that rested longer than was polite or safe.
Bride's Fen received us under a ward that sang a clean, satisfied note. The quay bustled in the healthy way—no panic, only the economics of people who plan to be alive tomorrow. The elder met us halfway up the planks, reed-dye on his hands and gratitude sitting easy in his shoulders.
"You've ironed the Road," he said, relief making the words soft. "The splotches dried to ash. The mile-stones read truer. Pilgrims crossed at noon without their words going thin."
"Ink-wolves are down," Aurelia said. "A Scribe with them—gone as well."
I set Lysithea across both palms for a breath, letting the blade's calm taper the last of the fight out of my muscles. "Watch your guide-stones at dusk," I added. "If letters lift, ring the bell. We taught the road good habits—but habits like to be praised."
The System chimed.
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ QUEST TURN-IN │
├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Route Securement: Pilgrim Road (South) │
│ Status: COMPLETE │
│ Bonus: Corridor Uptime ≥ 90% — ACHIEVED │
├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Rewards: │
│ ▸ EXP +21,000 │
│ ▸ Fen Scrip +120 │
│ ▸ Sigil: Honest Road (+8% vs. ink-born) │
│ ▸ Craft: Vial of Fixed Ink (x2) │
│ ▸ Reputation: Pilgrim Wardens (Favored) │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
I glanced at Aurelia; she gave the slight nod that meant "good numbers."
"Take these," the elder said, pressing a small packet into my hands—flat cakes wrapped in cattail fiber. "Fen-marcher's rations. Sweet and salty. They keep."
"Thank you." I tucked them into the satchel. "We'll need them if we push to the alder bridge."
A clatter from the inn gallery drew my eye—a handful of travelers at the rail. A few were still… overly interested. Aurelia turned her head a fraction. The gallery collectively found the far wall instructive.
I leaned, sotto voce. "You really look like you're ready to kill someone."
"Only if they need killing," she said, which would have been reassuring from anyone else. From Aurelia it was a weather report.
"Status."
┌──────────— CAMP CHECK —──────────┐
│ HP: 13,180 / 13,180 │
│ MP: 15,640 / 21,100 │
│ Aegis Hymn: 18% residual │
│ Oathbond: Stable (decay −20%) │
│ Gear: Lysithea (Legendary) │
│ Sigil: Honest Road (equipped) │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
We filed the formal report with the Abbey scribe—a quick chalk rune pressed against a slate map. The rune brightened over the south spur of Pilgrim Road and held.
"Next assignment posts at sundown," the scribe said. "Rumors of a Binder near the alder bridge. People speak oaths there they don't remember after."
Aurelia's jaw flexed. "We leave before sundown, then."
I nodded, adjusting the hang of Lysithea. The blade settled against my hip like a well-trained thought.
On our way out, a caravan captain stepped forward, hesitated under Aurelia's gaze, then braved it. "Light bless you. The lane you left… my mother could breathe on it." He fumbled, then blurted, looking anywhere but my face, "And—uh—sorry. About… staring."
"It's all right," I said, offering him a small, earnest smile. "We all like beautiful things. Try the sky next time. It's less likely to glare back."
Aurelia said nothing, which in her language was merciful.
We crossed the ward's boundary as the fen tilted toward evening. The causeway ahead ran true, our thin Sunlines a barely-there stitch down its length. I set another, just because it felt good to leave the world slightly better than I found it.
"Binder," Aurelia said, eyes on the black edge of the alder stand. "Break it. Free whoever it's written."
"Together," I answered.
We fell into step, shadows parallel, the road a bright, honest sentence in front of us. Somewhere in the trees, something with a pen paused mid-stroke, sensing a correction coming.