Chapter 33: The Sword Before Its Legend
[ ✦ ✦ ✦ NARRATIVE QUEST TRIGGERED ✦ ✦ ✦ ]
[ THE SWORD BEFORE ITS LEGEND ]
[ ▮▮▮ CRITICAL ▮▮▮ ]
[ ERROR: Quest parameters exceed display limits ]
[ Objective: ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]
[ Reward: ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]
[ Relevance Projection: ERROR ERROR ER▮OR ]
The text was shaking.
In all the weeks since the system had come online, through all the quests and menus and errors, the boxes had been steady, but now, these flickered and tore and bled black bars across their own words like something trying to describe a fire from inside it.
Jin knelt in the dark of a bandit cellar, system light dancing over his face, staring through iron bars at a starving child with unbeaten eyes and a sword he would not release.
And one thought rose through the static, absolutely clear.
’It’s him. The Sword Saint.’
The Sword Saint.
Even in a novel crowded with monstrous characters and powerful figures, the title stood alone.
Of the Eight Stars of Astralis, he had been the author’s favorite - the one whose Chapters made the forums crash on release day.
He is the man who would one day be called the strongest sword of the continent. The man whose sword could cut through anything. The blade the entire last age of radiance eventually measured itself against.
The novel had said almost nothing about his beginnings. The background for his character was that he was a commoner from the north who taught himself the sword.
He appears in the story already grown, already terrifyingly strong and, already carrying the ancient sword that no other hand could draw.
A cloth-wrapped sword.
Jin knelt at the bars with his heart going like a drum, and did the thing he now did to everyone, hardly daring to breathe.
’Appraise.’
[ Name: ▮▮▮▮▮ ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]
[ Age: 11 ]
[ Realm: None ]
[ Star Level: Unopened ]
[ Talent: ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ ]
[ ERROR: Value exceeds display parameters. ]
[ ERROR: Subject record precedes narrative availability. ]
Black bars over talent were familiar to Jin, he had seen that once before, and his pulse had spiked then too.
But black bars over the name - that was new. Gus’s panel had at least admitted who Gus was. This one had looked at a starving child in a cellar and censored him.
’Subject record precedes narrative availability.’ Jin read the error twice. ’You know exactly who he is and what his talents are. You just won’t show it to me.’
The system as always said nothing at all.
’The novel starts in six years. He should be nobody right now - a name I couldn’t have found if I’d searched for a decade. And Rodric Maren’s hired thugs stuffed him into a cellar and handed him to me.’
The quest text still shivered at the edge of his vision, torn and bleeding black bars. He ignored it. There was a more immediate problem, and the problem was watching him with unbeaten eyes and had not moved a muscle.
Jin set down the iron bar.
Slowly, deliberately, where the boy could see it, he sat down cross-legged on the cold stone outside the bars, putting his eyes below the boy’s level.
"My name is Encrid," he said. "The men who kept you in here are tied up in the yard, and the people from the other cells are upstairs eating soup. You can hear them if you listen."
The boy didn’t answer. Neither did his grip on the wrapped sword loosen by a hair.
"I’m not going to ask you to come out. I’m not going to ask you what your name is. And I want to be very clear about one thing, because I think it’s the only thing you actually care about." Jin looked at the bundle, then back at those eyes. "Nobody here will touch your sword. Not me, not my knights, not anyone, or they’ll answer to me. It’s yours. It stays yours."
Actually, Jin was indeed asking him to come out. He also knew his name. But that didn’t stop him from lying because he was an expert at knowing what to do when, to move people’s hearts.
And it worked indeed.
Something flickered in the boy’s face- the first movement in that gaze since it had fixed on him. Not trust exactly.
The boy definitely had experienced too much to trust someone so readily.
For now it seemed like just attention.
Jin whispered something to Gus, and he readily walked out and disappeared behind the stairs.
Meanwhile, he stared at the boy, who was not yet ready to talk.
Now that he was fully visible, Jin could finally study him.
He was smaller than Jin had first thought, his body stunted by hunger rather than age. Dust and grime had turned what should have been fair northern skin into a dull grey, while dark, tangled hair fell past his ears in uneven strands, as though someone had once hacked at it with a knife and never bothered again.
His face was narrow, almost delicate beneath the dirt, the sharpness of his cheekbones was made harsher by starvation. A fading cut crossed one eyebrow, another disappeared beneath the hair at his temple, and his lips were cracked badly enough that fresh blood stained them whenever they parted.
Yet none of that was what held Jin’s attention.
It was the way the boy carried himself.
Even seated against the wall, shoulders drawn in from exhaustion, there was not the slightest hint of collapse in his posture. Every muscle remained coiled beneath the rags he wore, conserving what little strength he had left. His left hand never drifted farther than a finger’s breadth from the cloth-wrapped sword, while his right rested lightly on the floor, ready to move at the smallest provocation.
Like a wolf pup cornered by hunters.
Starving, wounded but still prepared to bite.
And his eyes completed the picture.
They were completely grey.
Not the pale grey of winter skies, but polished steel eyes that seemed entirely out of place on the face of an eleven-year-old child.
Jin had no doubt.
It’s really him...
A faint shuffle echoed up the corridor.
Gus returned carrying a rough canvas sack slung over one shoulder, breathing a little harder from the hurried climb to the courtyard. He slowed as he approached the final cell, carefully avoiding the boy’s gaze before holding the sack out to Jin.
Jin nodded his thanks, took the sack, and crouched once more before the open bars.
Without a word, he untied the cord around Marla’s cloth bundle, revealing a piece of smoked trout and a heel of black bread. He placed both gently on the stone floor just inside the threshold-close enough that the boy could reach them without moving far, but far enough that he would not have to come near anyone to take them.
Only then did Jin rise to his feet.
He picked up the iron bar, slipped it beneath the damaged lock, and with a single sharp twist snapped the mechanism apart.
The door swung inward with a tired groan.
Jin immediately stepped back, putting several paces between himself and the opening, leaving the path completely clear.
"Upstairs when you’re ready. There’s a fire."
He walked back down the row without looking back. It took everything he had not to look back.
At the foot of the stairs, Gus was waiting, lantern in hand, staring past him toward that last cell.
"Young master. Is he going to be all right?"
"I don’t know yet." Jin glanced back once, now, from a distance. In the dark of the open cell, there were small movements.
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