From the dark corner of the shop, smelling of old oil and rust, a man in his forties materialized. He looked... strange. Light clothing, almost travel-wear, no armor, but a sword hung at his belt. And it wasn't a parade blade for balls, but a battered, working piece of iron that had clearly seen a lot of other people's blood.

  "Since you're so smart and strong," he smirked, leaning against the doorframe, "and so quick to hand out evaluations... would you deign to show us how it's actually done?"

  I glanced sideways at the mountain of boxes in my arms. "Nope. I'm busy. I'm on a highly responsible mission transporting scarce goods."

  The man burst out laughing. The sound was dry and unpleasant. "I see. A typical windbag. An errand boy hiding behind his mistress's back. A weakling, what else is there to expect."

  "Sorry to disappoint your expectations, uncle," I replied lazily, "but my schedule for today is packed solid."

  I had already turned toward the exit when I suddenly heard a quiet, but steely voice behind my back: "Greg. Show him."

  I froze. I don't know why, but her request felt... different somehow. Normally, I ignored orders, but right now... right now I suddenly wanted to prove to her that she wasn't feeding me for nothing so badly my palms itched.

  I sighed and carefully set the boxes on the floor. I stepped up to the rack and grabbed the very same spear Alexia had been torturing a minute ago. Heavy. Good.

  I didn't strike any pretentious poses. Just one short, almost imperceptible lunge. I struck the training dummy with the blunt end of the shaft. At the exact moment of impact, I released a short burst of wind magic, compressing it into a point as thin as a needle.

  CRACK.

  A hole the size of a fist appeared straight through the chest of the straw dummy. The straw didn't even scatter—it was simply incinerated by the airflow.

  "Something like that," I said, returning the spear to the rack.

  The man stepped into the light. His eyes gleamed with excitement. "Magnificent..." he whispered. "I never thought I would see such technique in this backwater. Control at the very tips of your fingers."

  I silently picked up the boxes. "Alright, we're done. We have to go."

  SCHWING.

  The sound of steel leaving a scabbard sliced through the silence of the shop. Even without turning around, I knew—the blade was pointed directly at the back of my head.

  "Nope, kid," the man's voice turned hard. "You aren't going anywhere now. It's been far too long since I found a worthy opponent. Entertain me."

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Why do people love complicating life so much?

  I carefully set the boxes back on the floor and sighed heavily. "Listen, uncle. I'm not looking for adventures, and I'm not looking for conflict. I just want to carry these purchases and, if I'm lucky, go home."

  But the man wasn't listening. He had already fully entered his character. He struck a dramatic pose, extending his blade forward, and began delivering The Speech. You know, the kind they write in cheap novels about heroes.

  "I am the swordsman Varinton!" he proclaimed, his voice booming under the vaulted ceiling of the shop. "Student of the great master Arumaki! The last follower of the Blue Wind style!"

  "Blue wind?" I thought. "Why blue? Did it catch a cold?"

  But Varinton didn't care about my doubts. He continued: "For so long I have searched for a worthy student! A worthy rival who can inherit this legacy! This style must not fade into oblivion!"

  "I'm not going to be your student, get off my back," I said.

  He started moving. Every movement, every step—silent, light, almost weightless. A true master. He made a lunge—sharp, calculated, repeated thousands of times over a lifetime. It was obvious he had more experience than hair on his head. But I was absolutely not in the mood.

  I simply took a half-step back. The sword whistled through the air a millimeter from my jacket, but Varinton immediately twisted his wrist, trying to catch me with the point on the return.

  And that's when I saw it. Etched into the blade, right near the guard, was a strange engraving. Symbols that would have been just a decorative pattern to anyone else. But to me...

  I froze. Something clicked in my head. “DEATH TO DEMONS.”

  My arm shot forward on its own. A reflex beaten into my very bones. I grabbed the sword right by the flat of the blade, avoiding the cutting edge, and locked it in a dead grip.

  In that exact second, it felt like a red-hot crowbar was driven straight into my skull. WHAT THE HELL?!

  Images poured down like hail. War. An ancient, endless war. The smell of flesh, a sky the color of blood, and this exact sword... only back then, it wasn't so clean.

  I grabbed my head with my free hand, feeling my brain melting from the overload. "A-A-A-ARGH!" my scream turned into a roar that made the weapon racks tremble.

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  I looked up at Varinton. My eyes—one black, the other red—were burning with such a flame right now that the air around us began to crackle.

  "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS SWORD WAS CREATED FOR?!" I roared, and there was absolutely nothing teenage left in my voice. It was a voice straight from the Abyss. "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO FORGED IT?! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHOSE BLADE THIS IS, YOU WORM?!"

  Varinton turned deathly pale. He instantly jumped back, breaking the distance, and stared at his weapon as if it had suddenly turned into a venomous snake.

  It grew very cold in the shop. And very quiet.

  I collapsed to my knees. The stone floor hit my joints hard, but I barely felt it. The pain inside was a thousand times worse. It was tearing my skull apart, burning out my eyes, making my lungs forget how to breathe.

  War. An endless, gray horizon piled high with corpses. The sky, painted in blood. And this sword.

  Frames of its forging flashed in my mind. The heat was so real I could smell the scorched skin on my own hands. It was forged from a meteorite—a fallen star that carried the cold of the void inside it. The greatest mages of that era, whose names had been erased from the chronicles, whispered spells over it, weaving steel with pure light. All for one goal. Victory over... whom?

  This blade wasn't just a weapon. It was hope cast in metal. And they gave it... to him. My old friend. A man whose face I could almost see, but couldn't quite grasp in the fog of memory.

  I clutched my head with my hands, trying to stop the flood. How did that war end? That man... did he win? Or did he remain lying in that mud along with his meteorite sword? What happened next?!

  The void in my memory offered no answers, it only demanded more pain.

  I lifted my head and looked at Varinton. My face must have looked like a mask out of a nightmare right now. "WHERE?!" I croaked, a small cloud of freezing vapor escaping my mouth. "Where did you get this blade?!"

  I lunged forward, grabbing him by his clothes. "HOW DID IT ALL END?! Speak, old man! What happened to the one who held it first?! Where is he?!"

  Varinton was paralyzed. All his bravado, his entire "Blue Wind" combat stance had evaporated. He stared at me with unconcealed terror.

  I stood up. Heavily, as if the entire sky of that life had crashed down onto my shoulders. The air around me vibrated, distorting space like the heat over the scorching sand of a desert.

  "You are not worthy," my voice sounded hollow, as if coming from underground. "You, pathetic spawn, do not even have the right to breathe near it."

  I took a step forward. Varinton, still trying to preserve the last shreds of his dignity, swung the sword. Slowly. Too slowly.

  CRUNCH. A short, sharp strike to his wrist. The bone snapped with a dry sound, and the meteorite blade flew into the far corner of the shop with a loud clang, striking sparks from the stone.

  "You are not worthy to touch it," I repeated, looming over the groaning swordsman. "You cannot even begin to imagine what it cost him to get it. With what insane faith they forged it... how many lives were poured into this piece of steel so it could cut through the Darkness."

  But why? The question tore into my mind like an icy wind. Why did all of this happen? Why do I remember this? What fragment of memory has broken free from its chains?

  The world before my eyes began to flicker.

  Blink. I see the blood-spattered floor of the shop and Varinton, white with terror. Blink. And I am standing in the middle of an endless field of corpses. Mountains of bodies stretching to the horizon, and I am alone among them, clutching this very sword.

  I grabbed Varinton by the collar, hauling him toward me. "WHERE?! Where did you get this blade?! Speak, before I erase you!" "I... I..." he stuttered, choking on his fear. "I bought a house. An old mansion on the outskirts. There, under a false floor, in a hidden stash... lay this sword. I didn't know! I swear, I just found it!"

  "You..." I raised my hand, but reality flickered again. The smell of fear was replaced by the stench of decay. The sounds of the city morphed into the death rattles of thousands of soldiers. Past and present intertwined into one ugly knot tightening around my neck.

  I felt movement behind my back. The familiar rhythm of footsteps. "DON'T COME CLOSER!" I roared, feeling my mana begin to erupt uncontrollably, turning the nearby display cases into ice dust.

  But she didn't listen. Alexia stepped right up to me, ignoring the freezing cold and the sparks of magic. Her palm, warm and confident, rested on the crown of my head.

  Click.

  The lights went out instantly. The fury, the pain, the mountains of corpses, and the meteorite iron—it all vanished, washed away by a wave of tactile warmth. I simply fell. My legs gave out, my consciousness plunging into a saving void.

  I felt her crouch down beside me, her fingers gently running through my hair, calming the storm inside. "I'm sorry, Greg," I heard her quiet, infinitely sad voice.

  And then there was only darkness. And her hand.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the canopy of the bed. My head no longer felt like a split watermelon, but everything inside was still humming, like the aftermath of a magical bomb detonating nearby.

  I sat up. Nearby, sitting on a chair, was Varinton. He looked awful: pale, gaunt, and his right arm, packed into a tight splint and bandages, rested forlornly in a sling.

  My gaze slid to the dresser. There it was. The meteorite sword. In the morning light, it looked... ordinary. Just a well-polished piece of steel. No darkness, no blood, no tragedy. Just a piece of iron that people had been killing each other over for centuries.

  Absurd. Complete, hopeless absurdity.

  But why then were those flashes of memory so real? Why could I feel the icy wind of that war on my skin? And the most important question, the one that left a bitter taste in my mouth: whose side was I on back then? Was I the one they forged this sword to protect, or the one they forged it to destroy?

  "Forgive me, Greg..." Varinton spoke up, making me flinch. He was looking at the floor, his shoulders trembling slightly. "I have disgraced my teacher. I am a stain on the reputation of our style. I challenged someone I shouldn't have even dared to look at."

  I sighed and flopped back onto the pillows. I really messed things up. This damn control again, evaporating the second I see something from the past. If it hadn't been for Alexia and her perfectly timed "off button," I would probably be staring at the ruins of that shop and the remains of this wannabe-swordsman right now.

  Varinton suddenly slipped off his chair and collapsed to his knees right beside the bed. "Forgive me! I didn't know... I knew not what I was doing!"

  "Just get up," I tossed out lazily, covering my eyes with my arm. "I'm not mad. Consider it as us just... exchanging opinions. Your arm will heal, your style won't fall apart. Take your sword and go in peace. It's still just a piece of iron. You need it more."

  Varinton froze. He looked at me in disbelief, then at the sword. He slowly stood up, grabbed the weapon with a trembling hand, and backed out of the room, never taking his terrified eyes off me.

  The door closed behind him, but opened again a second later. Alexia walked in. She looked tired, but that familiar sarcasm was shining in her eyes again.

  "Thank you, Alexia," I said genuinely. She snorted, walking over to the window and pulling back the curtains. "Yeah. Don't mention it. Seems I didn't waste all that time on psycho-magic textbooks for nothing. The practical application turned out to be... specific, but effective."

  She turned to face me, and her gaze turned serious. "What was that, Greg? What came over you in that shop? You looked like you were going to eat him alive."

  I fell silent, staring down at my palms. "Just... something from the past flashed by. Too bright. Too painful. I didn't expect it to hit me that hard myself."

  Alexia walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. "The past is a dangerous thing, Greg."