Lilith crashed at Fafnir’s for three days. The Black and White dragons took the Shattered Ark apart from hilt to ragged tip, like watchmakers prying at a fallen star.
At the cost of Fafnir’s left hand getting stabbed into a honeycomb, Lilith finally grasped the Broken Sword’s trick. What looked like a near-perfect block was actually a shearing snip. Once that snip touched an enemy, the Shattered Ark showed its true face: every swing exhaled a razor arc of sword aura, sharp enough to nick even Fafnir’s hide.
Even in a human shell the Black Dragon’s defenses are paper-thin compared to his scales, yet dragons don’t bleed for just anything. Only weapons with enough “rank” in the world’s script can truly wound a dragon. Back then, Ofira nearly had a claw torn off by Lilith and still bled not a drop. Lilith had just become dragonkind; in the world’s eyes she was a whelp. Her rank wasn’t high enough. To Ofira, the Little White Dragon had only been playing.
In short, the Shattered Ark is a Broken Sword that can hurt dragons, a relic with roots deep as bedrock. If someone could mend it, who knows what would hatch from that steel.
Its blade even boasts that it fought the world’s evil; whatever it becomes won’t fall far short of Lilith’s old Holy Blade.
Only, neither Lilith nor Fafnir had ever heard the name Shattered Ark, nor knew how to repair it. They even carried the sword across the Dragon Territory to ask the remaining mentors. Not one had a clue. Only Lirum recalled a mural in the Vampire lands shaped much like this sword and suggested they visit when the road ran quiet.
Empty-handed, the two slunk back to Fafnir’s home, dust in their hair like ash. After three sleepless nights, they sprawled on the hall floor and drifted off sweet as kittens. Nidhogg padded out with quilts and slid them under the pair, keeping the two dragons from catching a cold.
Leaving Fafnir’s place, Lilith slid the Shattered Ark into the scabbard strapped across her back, the leather snug as a second spine. Her System’s inventory still existed, but it might lock without warning like a door in winter. She’d hauled everything out and piled a cabinet in her room to the brim, a jumble like fallen leaves. The Little White Dragon went back to old-school storage. Luckily, the Shattered Ark is still a Broken Sword. If it turned into a normal longsword, she doubted this small frame could carry it without bending like a reed.
Nidhogg stayed at Fafnir’s. She’d been glued to Lilith lately and had fallen behind; now she was grinding hard to catch up, sparks off the whetstone. Typhon was stuck at the altar by Asterios, punished for skipping homework, scrubbing the stone in misery until it shone like ice. As for Tartarus, say no more—no one knew what storms she was chasing.
Freedom felt strange, light as mist. Lilith, the Little White Dragon wearing a girl’s skin, stood alone on Gaia’s shoulder and weighed what to do next.
For a long time, she hadn’t needed to choose. Once, she was the humans’ Hero and the Church of Icarus’s Saint, a lantern held against the night. Even when she herself was lost, countless souls trapped in the Taint lay before her, pleading like drowned stars.
Earlier still, back when she was Fan Wei, the family had mapped his future like rails across a plain. They left a sliver of choice, yet no matter what he wanted, a tide of hands pushed him along the plotted road.
This was the first time the river bent where she chose. She could go home and sleep. She could hole up and read. She could walk this road just to hear the wind. No one would jump out of a doorway to tell her what she should do.
What a curious taste, crisp as first snow on the tongue.
She cherished the chance and began to sketch her next steps like brushstrokes on water.
She’d taken a few days off already; drifting around the Dragon Territory felt dry as stale bread. Asterios and Fafnir were busy, so lessons were out. She’d just napped at Fafnir’s; sleep wouldn’t come.
She lifted her eyes to the darkening sky. Then the memory struck like a bell: her brick-thick Starshine Codex. If she remembered right, it listed what a novice Astrologer should be doing at this stage.
Lilith dashed back to Tartarus’s house, scrambled onto her bed, and hauled out the brick of a book. Hugging the Codex, she climbed onto her window frame. From her pocket she fished a lens she’d made under Asterios—glass fused with aquamarine, sea and sand married into crystal.
She’d sweated over it for ages and produced only two. Asterios kept the better one to turn into a monocle; it still wasn’t finished. So Lilith used the flawed piece she’d smuggled out in her clothes, a secret coin to spend on the Star Canvas.
The Little White Dragon lifted her skirt and, using the room’s full-length mirror, copied onto parchment the pale-blue feather pattern on her uniform. The book said such a star map would be truer. Feed it a breath of Star Energy, and the magic lens would mark the stars of the Void Command Seat in the sky. Then add a little more Star Energy, play a round of connect-the-dots, and deepen her resonance with the Star Canvas.
Bright with enthusiasm, Lilith raised the parchment and trickled in Star Energy. Pale-blue ghostlight seeped from the vellum, skipped through the air, and dove into the lens in her hand.
She pressed the lens to her eye and stared at the huge eye in the night, a pupil vast as a lake.
Normally, even with a pale-blue frame, finding a few stars inside a colossal eye isn’t easy. Lilith spent nearly two hours to lock onto the first.
She wanted to strike while the iron was hot, but the Star Energy she’d laid on the lens guttered out. She had to lower it, feed it again, and lift it back to the stars.
Two or three cycles later, with only three or four stars marked, dawn bled along the horizon like a cut. The Little White Dragon glanced down at her chart. Scattered across it, more than a hundred tiny lights glowed.
Cold prickles ran along her skin. Lilith began to be afraid.
