What the Sword Left Behind

4E 201 | Early Sun's Dusk | Sixty Days Since Arrival

The crimson aura receded without warning.

Tsukihana fell to one knee, coughing and shaking. Every injury the power had ignored returned at once.

Katana reached her and forced a healing potion between her lips.

Tsukihana looked around at the dismembered machines. "What happened?"

Katana's expression tightened. "You happened."

She described the speed, the markings, the absorbed attack, and Tsukihana's empty fixation on targets.

Tsukihana touched the unmarked skin beneath her eye. She remembered almost none of it.

Mei stood across the chamber winding the chain around her arm. The Calamity considered how easily she could kill Tsukihana in that moment: exhausted, confused, barely standing.

Katana stepped between them.

"Try it."

Mei's hand remained on the chain.

Then she released it.

Not mercy. Curiosity.

They found a Dwarven elevator at the rear of the workshop. The platform carried them through darkness to an isolated tower in the Reach.

At the surface, the truce ended.

Mei looked at Tsukihana for a long time.

"Not tonight," she said.

She stepped from the cliff and swung away on her chain.

Her laughter returned from the canyon.

"Become stronger, Tsukihana Kurogane. I want to see what breaks first."

Katana built a fire beneath a stone arch. Tsukihana sat with her sword across her knees and searched her own reflection in the blade.

Inside her heartbeat, another rhythm waited.