“We’re both edges forged for the light. Why are our blades crossing like flint against flint?”

“Because I want to give a lovely girl a chance to bloom like sunrise on frost.”

“Nagash isn’t a common heretic; he’s a great villain, a storm in human shape. If you truly care for Stini, come with us and fell him like a thunderstruck tree!”

“I’ve seen Nagash. He didn’t look like a blade meant to cut. Stini won’t die over one heretic; a Hero isn’t a reed that snaps in wind.”

“The danger isn’t Nagash the flesh, it’s his thought, a snake under the leaves. He’s a heretic who can, with words alone, rattle minds and bend wills like wet bamboo.”

“Stini’s a Hero, a mountain under snow. What spell could sway a peak?”

“No.”

Maki shook his head, his face clouding like a stormfront over iron-gray sea.

“Exactly because Nagash uses no magic at all, that bare blade of speech is terrifying.”

“Not magic? Then what wind are we talking about?”

“Language. Plain words, sharp as a knife. With language alone he jostles thought, no gift, no spell, no smoke and mirrors. That’s the horror. We can raise shields against spells like shields against arrows. Abilities, we can unweave like nets in fire. But if it’s only the power of speech, we’re bare in the rain.”

Maki clenched his iron-clad claws; his muscles drew taut like bowstrings straining in a gale.

“Texts can be hidden like stones under silt. Things can be destroyed like clay in a kiln. But a thought once released rides the wind, and we can’t bury the wind. Nagash’s thought is terror carved in the air. Unlike other heretics, he doesn’t despise the Divine out of private rot.”

“I know—he says it’s for humanity’s sake, right? I heard a couple lines; nothing struck like thunder in a clear sky.”

“Not quite. His core is this: if humans lean on the Divine for strength, we grow soft, like metal left to rust in rain.”

“He didn’t deny the greatness of the Divine, did he? That mountain still stands.”

“But he tries to prove mortals can stand shoulder to shoulder with the Divine, like men reaching for the sun on a ladder of bone.”

“So what? He can’t do it. Then it’s wind-talk, words scattering like leaves…”

“He did it. It’s a vile thing, born of a crooked proof, but with a tangible exhibit like a black stone on white snow, his theory stands.”

“...”

You’re kidding. If it were that easy, my younger siblings wouldn’t nurse hammering headaches day after day, winter into spring. Then again, in the Silver Era, there were plenty of hard folk like iron in mountain veins.

“So, what then?”

“What then… if the Hero sees Nagash’s proof, and her compass needle swings to him, what happens to the world of men, this river between ice and fire?”

“Even if Nagash proves his heresy right, so what? Even if he’s strong, so what? Stini is a Hero, a pine in snow. I believe she won’t bend.”

Fatigue flooded me first, a tide under stone, before my limbs even moved. I’d been flickering between flesh and elemental shadow, and my body was spent, smoke after flame. I couldn’t even lift my greatsword; I planted it in the earth like a flag.

My true body is the essence of Shadow. Shadow doesn’t tire; it’s night without heartbeat. But I’d draped myself in the weight of physics, kept wearing the name “Shadow Sorcerer, Andor Mephy” like armor. The fatigue came with the armor, copied and stitched like a shadow to a wall.

Now I’d tire, and I’d ache. As a mortal, I was as breakable as clay, using power with the “limits” of clay and bone.

So I’d mimic mortals in the best way too. I’d grit my teeth, and I’d guard what I wanted to guard, like a lamp cupped in wind.

Every muscle burned, sour as old wine. I hadn’t even taken a clean hit, so why did mortals get saddled with these needless thorns? I grumbled to the Creator like a child under rain, then lifted the greatsword with shaking arms and leveled it at Maki.

Maybe this would be the last swing. Casting a shadow blade didn’t drink mana, but after Maki shattered it, gathering elements to rebuild a human frame drank mana like sand drinks dew.

Before we split ways, Nivifar had hung mid-tier versions of Iron Fortification and War God Unparalleled on me—Iron Casting and Warlord’s Return. They were lanterns compared to Stini’s sun.

And time had blown them out. Their glow had faded.

I could only fight on my own now. I called what little mana I had left, and let the Shadow elements coil up my limbs like inked smoke.

Good. In elemental form, strength is only the tap of a spring; I don’t fear the clay vessel cracking.

“I wanted to talk you down, to keep blood from spilling like rain over fields because two justices collided. Are you set on letting steel decide right and wrong?”

Maki’s snarling claws lengthened with mana, wicked as thorns. He was done playing in the foam; now came undertow.

“I believe Stini can’t persuade Nagash. I believe I can’t beat you. Even so, I’ll burn myself for Stini, for a cute girl’s impossible dream, like a moth for a candle.”

Every moment, every breath, my remaining mana burned like paper in a brazier.

Maybe on the next strike, the mana that burned would be the very ink of my flesh.

I didn’t care.

“If there’s a path, I’ll push toward where Stini points, like a boat rowing toward dawn!”

I swung the greatsword with everything I had. The gale it raised tore the ground like a plow. One cut after another, I hammered Maki’s body. These were strikes at the human limit, steel at red heat—try and catch another, I dare you.

Our battle went so fierce that half our exchanges vanished into the Godspeed Realm, lightning behind a waterfall.

“Ah—so it’s love, then? A coal in snow?”

Unlike me, a spent crossbow creaking in wind, Maki either nudged or slipped aside. He deflected each stroke with casual grace, like a leaf turning rain.

“Boy, I admire your resolve, a stone in a flood, but…”

Maki angled his torso. His left hand drew power at the waist like a blacksmith at the bellows; mana gathered. His right claw guarded, not grabbing my greatsword as before, but parrying it aside like a paddle flinging spray.

“But even if you’re ‘right,’ I’m sharper than ‘right’ itself—sharper than the word, sharper than frost—”

He’d used mana wraps, mana bursts, and close-quarters fists, but no spell and no Divine Art yet. For a Heretic Inquisitor, the keystone is Divine Art, the sun in their sky. Maki’s a true Heretic Inquisitor; he’s no exception.

Meaning he’s already drowning me with his weaker oars. Guess what his strong current looks like.

“—I am the justice of this world!”

The hand he raised bloomed with the brilliance of the gods, a noon that burned through mist, and it poured over my body wrought of Shadow.

It was too bright, too vast. I flinched back like a moth from flame, lifting my greatsword to shield my eyes and my ribs.

But common iron can’t bar the most holy radiance. It’s a curtain before the sun.

My body began to dissolve, then to unspool, then to knit back, restored to my most human shape like clay smoothed by a river.

All my mana was erased into nothing, like salt in rain. My strength was siphoned out, a well run dry.

Grand Divine Art, Most Holy Mercy.

It strips every Dark-side concept like leaves torn from a branch, drains the target’s stamina to the dregs, and heals the body completely, a merciful blade for battle.

Its effect carries an Absolute brand, almost impossible to save against. Most Divine Arts stamp some degree of Absolute; if you’ve never stepped into the field of concepts, you can’t slip its net.

With my mana nearly spent, I had no wind left to resist.

“Andor Mephy” ends here.

If I revealed my true form, I could have saved against Most Holy Mercy, but I can’t bare that face here.

Stini, I’ve already bled to the line. From here, take care. I can only lie back and watch the play like a man under eaves.

“Don’t glare at me with eyes like a wolf in winter.”

No. I still had to show I cared for Stini, even if my teeth were dull. Even if I couldn’t stop you, I’d grind my molars and glare like a dog guarding a gate.

I took a beating from Maki for Stini’s sake; since I’ve paid this much, I’ll act the whole play. Otherwise, what a waste.

“I thought you were just a blind follower,” he said. “But if you can ruin yourself for Stini… rest easy. I’ll take you to see how this heresy is judged.”

Maki lifted my greatsword in one hand like a banner, grabbed my collar with the other like a farmer grabbing a sack, slung me over his shoulder, and ran toward Blue Moon Lake with the other Heretic Inquisitors trailing like crows.

It was still far to Blue Moon Lake. While we ran, Maki started talking to himself, a brook murmuring, though he meant it for me.

“You know, the Heretic Inquisition wears the name of slaughtering our own like a cloak in rain. But we’re the ones who know heresy best.”

Right, like how the people best at erasing murder traces are the police, with bleach and night.

“You’ve got us twisted,” he frowned, catching the scorn in my eyes like a thorn. “I mean the danger of heretical doctrine. We’re a violent organ, yes, but before we’re executioners, we’re scholars, we’re philosophers under a lamp. We study every heresy to the marrow, find the cracks. We can debate them in public squares like steel on stone.”

“But your executions are hidden, and even public ones seal the heretic’s mouth with iron.”

I’d clawed back a breath of strength, not enough to move freely. Talking was a candle I could still keep lit.

“We know we can win on logic, like a net over small fish. But the public’s philosophical literacy is foggy, not bright noon. Every argument finds takers and leave-takers. If we debate openly, even if we prove the heresy wrong, some will drink that sweet poison anyway. The Heretic Inquisition won’t let heresy spread like wildfire.”

“So in the end, you’re still a dictatorship with a sword, a storm that calls itself law.”

“We know how vast our power is, like a blade over dry grass. If we err, no one can stop us. That’s why we’re cautious to a fault when we judge heresy.”

“So you study each heretical doctrine in detail, turn it like a stone in a river?”

Maki nodded at me, a lantern’s bob in wind.

“Yes. We prove the heresy’s flaws with our own hands, nail by nail.”

“So you can prove Nagash is wrong too?”

“Nagash wants the Divine to stop meddling in the human world, to hand authority back to mortals, to let mortals hold their fate like a wheel. His dream is too naive, a paper boat in flood. Without the Divine’s favor, how does the human world stop the Demon Realm’s armies?”

“Didn’t he already produce results? The proof you mentioned—the thing that lets mortals stand shoulder to shoulder with the Divine.”

“First, ‘that’ was an accidental creation, a storm-born oddity, not a thing you can mass-produce like coins. Second,” a shadow crossed Maki’s face like a cloud over a field, “second, we can’t hand all authority to mortals. When the Creator shaped us, He seeded our souls with a shard called ‘not enough,’ a spur for moving forward.”

“You mean… mortals won’t be content with the harvest they have.”

“We’ll beat every Demonfolk and smash the Demon King’s legions like waves on cliffs. And then? Where will our sharpened blades point next, once the horizon is clear? Steel that isn’t tempered by battle rots, warps, and twists, ugly as the things it once cut.”

“Like chapter three of ‘Genesis’… when the Demonfolk betrayed the Creator, a serpent in the garden.”

“Exactly. In the end, even if the Divine gave everything to mortals, our hearts would still itch. We’d pour malice on the Divine who love us, like ink in milk.”

As head of the Heretic Inquisition, the one who should revere the Divine most, Maki spoke without expression, his voice a cold well:

“One day, the Divine will teach us to forge iron swords. We’ll lift those muzzles and aim at our guardians. Human greed will raise gun barrels toward the Starry Sky Divine Kingdom. It’s inevitable, like winter after autumn. On a future day, it will come.”