The Grand Arena at the Hero Academy roared for four days, a forge that burned without rest.

The Nameless Sword Saint felled challenger after challenger like reeds before a flood, yet Augustus never appeared, a ship that kept the horizon.

“He’s not coming. I said that four days ago,” I said, voice flat as a stone in rain.

“Truly, a pity,” he answered, like a petal falling at dusk.

He looked toward the Academy’s main hall, as if sensing a gaze meeting his across a river of air.

“Time to go,” I nudged, a breeze tugging a banner.

Workers waited with hammers and ropes, black as crows ringed on a field.

“Mm. I know.” He nodded, stepped off the stage with the weight of a traveler leaving his hometown, turning back again and again like a tethered kite.

Only in moments like this did he feel human to me, a warmth under the frost, not that clean inevitability he wore like iron.

Later, on the road to Swordgate at the edge of the Arctic Tundra, I told him as the wind wrote lines in the snow.

“I am, of course, a mortal,” the Sword Saint said, hand at his chin, stubble like ink thorns sprouting in winter. “Plain life, plain effort, plain strength.”

“To hope for a fellow countryman to see me off—that plain wish also lives in me,” he added, voice steady as a still lake.

He looked younger—though it’s hard to name the change. He had cut away his “story” before, left no features, like a figure pared down to a shadow.

Now, after a month traveling together, the Nameless Sword Saint grew distinct, like ink-wash turning to oil paint, from a name to a face that sticks in memory.

I could name his eye color, the length of his hair, the fine lines at the eyes, where before I could only speak in mist about a mood.

On that base, he grew younger, spring pushing through permafrost.

On the road, he stopped being the first to ask for rest. His stride grew firm, drumbeat-steady, and even his muscles filled like ripening grain.

“How can someone who grows against the years be called ordinary? How does an ordinary man earn a Divine Being’s personal send-off?” I said, hands behind my head, lazy as a cat in sun.

“Your view runs opposite the truth,” he replied, calm as a mountain. “Because the Divine honor is given, I take back my strongest youth, to face it with all I have.”

“Yeah, I know. You were never some blazing prodigy. To reach what prodigies can’t, you paid a price even storms wouldn’t speak of. Don’t tell me,” I said, waving it off like smoke.

“…You seem in good spirits,” he said, a strained smile, like a crack through ice.

“Just made up with my girlfriend. So don’t ruin it. Let me ride this weather to the end. Go tell Julian your heavy thoughts. She won’t turn you away.”

“Sometimes we speak words we want denied to the very person who will deny them,” he said, voice like a bell behind fog. “Demon King, you have felt that, yes?”

“I don’t get tangled that far. I don’t distrust my conclusions. I don’t sink into that kind of self-belittling,” I said, dry as ash.

“Indeed. You are pride, might, and greatness braided in one. I am only a mortal,” he said. “So can you, with scorn unbothered and heart unshaken, listen to a mortal’s rambling before his last road?”

We walked into the fortress of Swordgate, the heaven-piercing gates towering hundreds of meters, cliffs of steel no cloud could hide.

The Nameless Sword Saint swept his gaze over the gathered witnesses at this last act of a pilgrimage, eyes like clear water, no joy, no grief, no clinging to life, no spite for death.

He wasn’t looking for them, not for wreaths or noise. What he wanted wasn’t in their faces, only in a far star.

We passed through streets and alleys as crowds flared like a coronation bonfire, their cheers a tide, their garlands a rain of spring.

They didn’t understand that the hero they praised, the unmatched Sword Saint, called himself ordinary. Even if they heard him, they’d deny it, because heroes must be statues of glory.

The Nameless Sword Saint spoke softly, or perhaps not soft, only drowned by the gale of voices. Maybe only I heard, a whisper inside thunder.

“I am an ordinary man, born in a time both civilized and savage—more savage, if I must choose,” he said, a leaf turning in wind.

“I am no different from my lover, kin, or friends: same blood, same pursuit, same resolve. The one difference—my dullness, heavy as clay.”

“I learned forms and grew strong, but only strong. Aside from strength, there is nothing. My words, my thought, my spirit, all bounded by the mortal fence, not great.”

“I want to see the peak of swordsmanship—as other warriors do. I want to die as a warrior—as other warriors do. I want peace for my homeland forever—as other warriors do.”

“My wishes are ordinary wishes. I am an empty strength, a bell with one note.”

“So, I hope a Hero will send me on my way, not a Divine honor. I… have no reason to receive such radiance,” he said, lowering his gaze like a reed in wind.

“If there’s anything to leave behind for those after me—words, acts, a lineage—what a joke. If the world no longer breeds a fool like me, that would be right.”

“As for Julian… she…”

“I’m guessing you want to leave words for me to pass on?” I said, deliberately impatient, a heel scuffing dust.

It’s what he wanted. And I’m not known for service. But on the doorstep of death, I can hold the door.

“Yes. Exactly. These weak and dull words can flicker through your ears and fade. No need to pass them on. For Julian, though, I have words…”

“Why not tell her yourself? Julian and Eil are busy now, but if you want, I can call her back any time,” I said, a finger poised on a thread.

“Because she is like a daughter to me. If I see her, I’ll remember her hopes of me, and I might…”

“Lose the resolve to die,” I finished, a knife that doesn’t hesitate.

I see. Foolish. Attached. Unwilling. Three stones dropped in still water.

“…Weak. Yes. I fear the craving to cling to life,” he said, breath like winter smoke. “So, please pass on my last words.”

Yet a great hero always finds what he truly wants, and then sets his resolve. His eyes cleared, pride returning like a sunrise on steel.

“Speak, then. I’ll help,” I said, tossing a hand, doing the kindness all the way, like pushing a boat off a shore.

We stepped onto the martial platform at Swordgate. At the central altar, the Divine Healers’ rite neared its end, incense drifted like pale rivers.

A Divine Being would descend. A death match would begin. Words left unsaid now would never cross another mouth.

“Tell her this: ‘The thing I’m most proud of in my life is that I never acted a false self for others’ expectations. I never deceived others, nor myself.’”

“That’s it?” I raised an eyebrow at the Nameless Sword Saint, surprise like a spark.

I’d expected a thousand-word Letter to Julian, maybe two, silk rolled and sealed. Or at least, a name to leave behind.

“As for the rest—knowledge and strength—please teach her in my stead,” the Sword Saint said with a mild smile, calm as wine at a friend’s table. “Too much self-praise is embarrassing.”

I shrugged and left the platform, a shadow stepping off a stage.

Radiance was already gathering like dawn condensed. The gods had agreed not to interfere with this Demon King’s incursion.

If a Divine Being only came to send the Nameless Sword Saint off, fine. But standing in the same place as me would be trouble.

On the Divine side, it would be a mess, a net snagged on thorns.

The Nameless Sword Saint rolled up his sleeves, set the censer on the ground, drew the steel of his twin blades, reversed the grip, and pressed the hilts to his heart.

“Thank you.”

His lips formed that shape, a petal on the edge of a cup.

He lowered his head. His shoulders fell. A warrior’s courtesy before a god, a bow at the end of a road.

He saluted.

——

Rite complete.

Giving thanks to food that will turn into your strength and flesh matters as much as thanking the Creator, the Divine Beings, or your parents. It’s a small fire I keep.

Maybe it’s uncommon. I don’t see people honor the meal before eating. It’s just one habit my dad taught me, a thread in a pocket.

Stini breathed warmth onto her numb hands, mist blooming like flowers, then took a small knife from her coat and cut from the wolf’s belly, red steaming in cold.

She didn’t have her father’s space magic. She didn’t use Andor’s Shadow tricks. She had no alchemist’s space ring like Vega. So everything stayed on her body.

Her armor had to hold it all, like a turtle shell with quiet secrets. To move light and clean, the placement of tactical pockets mattered like constellations.

The upside: even in an anti-magic field, she could draw any tool, a well that never froze. So far, “anti-magic” and “trapped” hadn’t shown up together.

The downside: when the Hero Squad went adventuring, Vega and Andor carried nothing, light as picnickers on a hill, while she thought about rations, blades, oil, potions, loot, weight.

Stini did not have Miss Vega’s hyperspace skirt hem, a smile that hides a warehouse.

Speaking of hems…

She pulled the wolf’s guts free and set them aside for the toss. Blood on her hands smeared dark on fur. She touched her cheek; the phantom ache still pricked.

Stini pouted. She’d tried to learn how Miss Vega stashed so much under her skirt. She’d, well… yanked the long skirt up, with effort and curiosity like wildfire.

Then what happened? She’d forgotten the sight, as if erased by lightning. She only remembered waking with a face puffed like a bun, a red handprint blazing.

“Fear and hunger, or both together, are nightmares humans can’t escape,” a clear voice said, as the blizzard outside the little cave surged like a white sea.

Wolves howled in chorus. The voice seemed to cross time and space, an arrow through fog, and struck her soul with a cold ring.

“So I want to ask,” she said, as if talking to the wind. “When will you let me go?”

“Or kill me?”

She didn’t flinch at the haunting anymore. She slid the skinned wolf onto Holy Lance Thousand Gallop, set it over the fire, scattered salt like snow, and began to roast.