She had to admit it: Augustine was strong—closest to her among humans, a mountain tested by storms.
He alone forced open the boundary between the X Layer and the Y Layer of the World, and came for her in Y, a moth tapping a sealed window.
It surprised her, but only faintly—like seeing a bug kept beneath a glass cloche hop free and skitter across the table.
If she smiled when she saw Augustine on the Y Layer, that smile held surprise, and the interest of the unexpected, but never doubt.
Even the strongest is only the limit of flesh, a bow drawn to its last inch.
For her, anything that doesn’t break the Rules is an ant beneath the tide.
So it was.
When Augustine showed a viral bent, killing him would be easy, no harder than putting down a stray dog.
But—
Ye Weibai.
At that name, even her calm rippled, like moonlight touched by wind.
Black hair, ink-dark eyes—the 9,679th Hero King—he appeared in her blind spot, a shadow where sight should have been.
She knew when he appeared, and why—he answered this era’s Hero King’s petition—but not the manner of his coming.
Cunning ones like Augustine, and Qi, slip the net using tricks—hiding their scent, masking their strength to pass as ordinary—and buy a little time.
If you live in this World, you leave trails; if she hunts, the wind’s flavor, the flow of air, the lift of dust, the stirring of magic betray you.
And once betrayed, she kills, clean as frost on a blade.
Under that premise, if those impurities that outlived the Cycle curl up and keep quiet, she won’t bother—she’ll use their human flaws to do what she won’t touch directly.
She has moved like that for a long, long Time, a cold river carving stone.
Yet Ye Weibai did not exist in her sight.
She could find none of his threads, no ash, no wake.
If the World is a still lake, every existence is a floating stone, each rise or sink throwing ripples she can feel.
Ye Weibai was a drop from another World that vanished into the water, no circle, no shine.
Confusion alone would be a small thing—but that day’s brief clash made her frown, a thin line in winter.
By the Rules of X–Y–Z, Ye Weibai could not touch her, not even the edge of her attacks.
Yet he used a teardrop crystal to brush the lightning she sent—lightning meant to stop his words from reaching Aerin’s ears.
He only touched her method, a single thread, less than a thousandth of it.
But the Rules were offended, like a temple bell struck off-key.
She did not know the cause, but she sensed the current Demon King’s tool at once: a crystal seeded with gray particles.
This thing did not belong to this World; it rang like iron from another sky.
At first glance she knew—its power wasn’t deep, but its grade was high, pure and condensed like winter light.
This World cannot birth strength like that, not from its soil, nor its stars.
She did not know it was a maiden’s tear, heavy with Misfortune and truth, but she felt the threat, a knife in silk.
Threats are to be excised; she moved at once, like thunder behind clouds.
She killed Old John.
…
In the Witchwood Forest, where a hand finds no fingers in the dark, the air is ink, the ground a whisper.
A golden-haired girl walked slow and sure, like a candle crossing night.
Her hand wrapped the silver longsword at her waist, five fingers locked around the hilt, a winter branch firm against wind.
It was her father’s second side-sword, and it lent her a weight of confidence, steel beneath breath.
Greater still was the quiet confidence standing outside the trees—Master Bai, a presence like a lighthouse beyond fog.
She could not see him, but felt his gaze, a cool moon on her back.
From the icy grip, a thin chill threaded into her body, calming her heart—a Tranquil Heart enchantment her father had Saint-tier High Priest Wes fix into the blade.
The price of that single, permanent Tranquil Heart could buy a sprawling manor, let alone the stronger arrays etched across the steel.
The blade itself was said to be forged from the seventh dragonbone her father—the last Hero King—“borrowed” from the North Sea’s Silver Dragon Feister.
The seventh dragonbone is a dragon’s hardest rib, holding its hoarded magic wisdom, a vault of storms.
No dragon would lend it; “borrowed” was won by strike and flame.
Long ago, when she was a small girl hugging the sword to sleep, Aerin sometimes wondered how strong her father’s first side-sword was—the one called Golden Sea of Stars.
Drawn, it would be like a sun unsheathed, gold pouring across half the sky.
Sheathed, it would be dusk sinking, ten thousand golden threads pulled into a single line and laid to rest in a red scabbard.
Inside that scabbard, a sea of stars, a golden cosmos, silent and bright.
Thus its name: Golden Sea of Stars, a crown of light.
Such a splendid, blazing picture.
Aerin feels she has seen it once—a golden curtain burned deep into memory—but that memory is blurred, like frost on glass.
In that vague scene, she cannot find herself, a voice missing from a choir.
Perhaps it was when she was very, very small, before thought had bones.
As she grew, she thought of it less; distance dulls flame.
Her father’s figure and the title Hero King drifted farther as she learned more, like constellations beyond the horizon.
Today, bathed in darkness, sword silent, her heart and spirit settle, a pond under snow.
Her soles press dry grass, but no sound rises; she walks like cloud over moon.
Only sometimes the leaves whisper, paper against paper.
Wind skims her pale, fine skin, a cool hand on porcelain.
She feels something hard, heavy, bitter peeling away, layer by layer, bark shedding off the trunk.
As it leaves, her steps grow light, her mind opens, a window to dawn.
She feels an ease she has never known, a feather above a field.
In this dark world, beyond the tall silent trees, there is nothing else, and that nothing is kind.
She expected fear and loneliness before she entered; she had braced for an empty hall.
Instead she finds peace, even joy, a lamp lit inside.
Almost like that day on the arena, when Master Bai’s shadow bathed her whole, shade warmer than sun.
Bathed in darkness, yet warmer than sunlight, a hearth built of night.
No loneliness, no fret; a world of one, and breath comes easy.
No distant dreams that cannot be touched, no crushing pursuits that press like stone.
No eyes hot as fire and cold as ice, no crowd to weigh her bones.
She is herself.
“I am me,” she murmured, not anyone’s Hero King, a bell tone in quiet.
In the dark, her cheeks warmed, a cherry glow under frost.
If—
If she must become someone’s something—
Then—
Let her be Master Bai’s Aerin.
