[Draw me out…]

Silence fell, heavy as wet ink.

The chamber held its breath; even the dust hung like stalled snow.

Edmund’s gut tightened like a knotted rope before a storm.

He fixed his gaze on the sword before him, yet its unseen eyes pricked him like needles.

The command to pull it scraped his nerves like a whetstone, and he wanted no part of it.

Why lay a flawless blade here like bait, a hook under still water?

Why does a sword carry a mind, like a ghost trapped in iron?

Why did it cross paths with me, like fate tugging a red thread?

Questions swarmed like hornets, all stinging toward the same blade, and Edmund felt danger coiling for him and for his master.

[Why worry? Dost thou not crave power?]

The Daemon’s whisper slid over him like honeyed poison, sweet sound, barbed intent.

Edmund’s regard for the sword sank like a stone; a voice that lures is a trap dressed in silk.

[Is not power born on the edge of risk, like steel born in flame?]

The sword pressed again, eager like a starving wolf nosing the latch.

“Enough. Save it. I’ve no reason to draw you,” Edmund said, voice hard as frost.

“I don’t know how strong you are, nor what harm you bring; drawing an unknown is lighting a fuse in the dark.”

His refusal rang like a slammed door, and the sword fell quiet, a pond without ripples.

Edmund stayed, mending wounds that refused to knit, counting this place as a half-safe harbor in a storm.

Beast and blade shared silence, two stones under snow.

After a long while, as his mana trickled back like water through sand, Edmund felt a faint, eerie current brush past his side.

It slipped through the door crack like smoke, and was gone before he could snare it with thought.

Before he could chase the feeling, the sword drew his ear again, like a bell struck in mist.

[By thy meaning, must I lay bare what I am ere thou accept me?]

“More or less. Even then, it’s my call,” he said, caution coiled like a spring.

“I won’t free a terrifying Daemon just to satisfy you.”

[No matter. Once I explain, thou wilt draw me. For…] The voice dipped, a murmur like a pebble lost in a stream.

“What did you say at the end?” Edmund asked, suspicion flicking like a tail.

The sword ignored him and slid to the heart like a knife to the core.

[I was born nameless, yet some called me ‘Calamity.’]

[This shape is no true blade; I am a thing that devours mana, without shadow, without form.]

[I can merge with living flesh and become a slayer of all, a harvest in crimson.]

Few words, yet they fell like seeds with weight, and Edmund sifted meaning like grain from chaff.

So it drinks mana; that much is simple, like a leech under clear water.

Merging with life reeks of cost, like fire that warms by burning the house.

Swords that trade years for power are not rare under this sky.

But what is “without shadow or shape,” he wondered; if it lacks a body, why sit here like an idol waiting to be drawn?

He pushed the surplus away like fallen leaves, and fixed on the one thing that mattered.

“You can devour mana, right? So that black smoke before—was that you?”

[Yes. That black smoke was mine to loose.]

[Yet it was not my will. I am a blade that obeys my ‘former master’s’ command: use every means to find a new master.]

“So it was you!” Edmund’s eyes chilled like winter water.

“Then you’re the one who made those Skeletons turn into that?!”

[I repeat: that was a ‘former master’s’ order.]

[I awaited thee here as bid, and those Skeletons only crawled out due to ‘an accident not of my making,’ then my nature reshaped them.]

Edmund shot the sword a sideways look, cold as a knife’s back; the excuse sat like grit between teeth.

“Tch. How convenient. Call it an accident, call it fate—what a tidy story.”

“If you want me as your new master, keep dreaming. Sleep on it for a century.”

[…Why refuse?]

“I’m not stupid enough to trust someone who dragged me here by unknown means,” he said, pride rising like heat.

“And I won’t lean on outside power just to grow strong.”

[That leaves me… in a bind.]

“Not my problem,” he snapped, temper sparking like flint.

“You said you’d use every means? Do it. I’m hurt, sure, but I can play with you till dawn—”

His words broke off; unease rippled through him like a chill wind.

His mind flashed back to that tiny thread of mana that brushed past, and a shadow settled like a crow.

[Yes. I will use every means. Including… threats.]

Boom—!!

The door Edmund leaned on exploded inward like a storm, and he sprang aside as instinct cracked like a whip.

A three-meter giant Skeleton filled the frame, clad in full armor, a massive nodachi gripped in bone hands like a reaper’s scythe.

Above its skull floated a pinprick of mana, a firefly of wrongness, and Edmund knew it at a glance.

It was the same eerie wisp that had slipped by him through the door crack, the ghost-thread he’d felt moments ago.