[World] Origin
A boat cut the wide river like a dark blade.
From far off, it slid closer, a shadow drawn by the current.
At the prow stood a lone figure, a marker nailed into the wind.
He lived in deep forest, used to a bare, empty river.
A human shape cracked his view like thunder splitting cloud, and he froze like a mossed stone.
Age had sanded his sight thin; he saw robes flutter like cranes, not the face behind them.
He had pictured this moment a thousand times, like rehearsing dreams in rainfall.
If he met someone from home again, what would flood him—joy, fury, fear, or a cold mask?
Maybe none. Maybe all, braided tight like weeds in water.
She drew nearer, her face and her weather came into focus.
His own storm of feeling folded into one word, a weight dropped into a well—sorrow.
He saw her—she stood at the prow, crying like a willow in wind.
He’d forgotten when he last cried, but he knew her tears on sight.
They were the salt of being cast out by your own clan, a wound like frost on bone.
It was familiar. It was the old ache in him, waking like a buried wolf.
…
“You want to sleep with me?”
Her voice poured like warm wine from silver lips, and bones went soft like wax.
Not a metaphor—bones truly rotted, the body failing like damp timber.
Squelch—
Blood misted the air; a fist broke bone with a drumbeat that made spines ice over.
Screams, roars, glasses hitting floor, blades whispering free—noise tangled into a single storm, and the tavern howled.
Thud—
A corpse hit the planks, a dull stone dropped in a well.
Two legs in black leather crossed, curves tight and smooth like polished river rock.
Silver lounged sideways on a chair, one hand palming her chin, the other retracting like a cat’s paw.
“You went for the kill!”
“Courting death!”
“You touched one of ours?!”
He’d been some mercenary’s man, all mouth to Silver, and she popped his heart cleanly.
More than half the room surged up—thick necks, mean faces, matching gear, one nest of wolves.
Night lay black; the tavern burned bright; shadows swallowed the silver-haired woman.
She didn’t fear; her fox-bright face went distant, eyes like mirrors in rain.
Silver stared at her fist; the viscous blood clung like honey and refused to fall.
Her glazed calm stoked the mercenaries’ rage like wind stoking fire.
“Ignoring us?!”
“Don’t wait!”
“Do it!”
Their voices cracked, tempers spiked, steel bloomed light under the lamps.
They chopped down like falling axes.
And that was the end of it.
Three minutes later, a slender, pretty hand pushed the tavern’s yellowed door.
A woman with silver short hair and silver eyes stepped into moonlight.
The stink of wine and blood spilled out together, sweet and cloying, enough to gag.
At the threshold, she lifted her face to the high moon.
Her short hair rattled like grass in wind; her gaze went far, a boat drifting off the map.
A passerby froze at her beauty, then glanced inside and bleached white like paper.
Thinking he’d misseen, he looked hard, then spun, braced the wall, and retched.
Inside, blood ran like a river, flesh clotted like storm-torn leaves.
Organs and limbs lay scattered, a human hell pressed into rough plank and lamp-glow.
…
She walked alone on a mountain path, a blade of light threading the trees.
Silver felt wrong, a grit in the gears she couldn’t name.
A day ago, she finished drinking the power of the half-transparent greatsword.
That blade had run her through from behind, pinning her on the Empire’s square like a moth.
She swallowed it all, locked it in her body, broke the shackle like rusted chain.
Impaled and shamed by that black-haired youth, she’d only thought of wrath.
She’d planned to pay pain back double, to make him taste his own fire.
But that night, while she drew in the youth’s power, the buried past reared up.
It charged like a beast from a pit, opened a bloody maw, and tried to pull her under.
The black-haired youth arrived right then, woke her from the brink, and squatted to talk nonsense.
She took it as fresh humiliation; whatever he said, she threw away like husks.
But his last line snagged in her throat like a fishbone.
“I know what you’re truly after.”
Moonlight sifted through branches, dappling the path like broken porcelain.
She muttered his words, walking the dark under leaves.
She didn’t know if it was the line or his power, but a fine crack ran through her mood.
Like earlier tonight:
Being slighted should’ve meant the whole town strewn with corpses, streets washed red.
Yet when her fist mashed the first heart, she looked at the blood on her knuckles and felt tired, felt sick, a boat longing for harbor.
His face flashed; his words echoed like winter in a bell.
The sentence slid in like an ice spike, straight into her heart.
It melted inside, slow and cold, changing what she’d sworn she held.
“What am I chasing?”
In the silent forest, the Empire’s nightmare showed a seam of fragile light.
Suddenly, she halted, a hunter scenting a change in wind.
She raised her head to the bright moon, a silver coin pinned on black silk.
The moonlight seemed drawn, shining harder, pouring down like a river.
It fell into her eyes, lit her irises like twin blades.
She blinked—black, then white—the awakened memory leapt the banks.
Phantom and real crossed, a pair of swallows cutting air.
Her face shifted; her vision swung like a door.
She stood inside that dark hut again, that room soaked in blood and screaming tools.
Limbs, organs, instruments flew in a storm; the walls dripped like night rain.
Despair, pain, fury, grief, hate—garments she’d stripped off—slid back on, layer on frost.
They made her colder, a lake locked in ice.
A breath later, washed and stung by that black swamp of recall, she returned to now.
Her face went pale; her expression hardened like stone after fire.
“What I’m chasing—”
She tightened on a silver dagger hidden in her sleeve.
Her eyes went glacial, focus fixed somewhere far, where the black-haired youth stood in memory.
Her voice hissed like winter air through teeth.
“Is to kill you.”
