“Hey, uh… is it just me, or is it getting dark already?” X finally said, his voice painfully cheerful.
Silence. Noll trailed behind, head down, already lost in his notepad. Mizuki stalked ahead, arms crossed so tightly they ached, her boots punishing the dirt.
X let out a long, weary sigh.
“Great energy, team,” he muttered to himself.
The cave was a jagged mouth in the mountainside, breathing cold air that smelled of wet rock and decay. A crude wooden sign was bolted into the stone beside it: DO NOT ENTER. DANGER AHEAD.
To Mizuki, the sign wasn't a warning—but a filter. The world sets them; the weak obey them. The strong, by definition, did not need to heed such things. Walking past it was a declaration of her own worth.
“So we go now?” she asked, fists tight.
X eased up beside her. “Mizuki,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Take a breath. Look at it. Is a frontal assault really our best move?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Her frown sharpened. “We’re strong enough. You two supposedly wiped out an entire town full of those things.”
“That,” a flat voice cut in, “is precisely why people like you die young.”
Noll had caught up, his eyes still on his notepad. Her glare was hot enough to boil stone; he didn't seem to notice.
“Yes, we cleared the city,” he continued, his tone like a knife’s edge. “Because we planned. Because we don’t walk into jaws asking to be chewed.”
Mizuki’s arms crossed over her chest, a familiar shield. “So what’s your brilliant plan, then?” she growled.
Noll finally looked up, his gaze sweeping over the cliff face. “We find another way in. One where we aren’t announcing our arrival to every single thing waiting in the dark.”
“And if there isn’t one?” she challenged.
“Then we make one…” A slow, cold smile spread across his lips. It didn't engage with her argument; it simply erased it. The lull that followed was the crushing weight of a verdict.
Make one?
Since when is that an option?
After a tense search, they found it: a thin wound in the earth, barely wide enough to squeeze through, breathing damp soil, rust, and something sharp and metallic.
And lying next to it, a body.
Weakling. Made it out just to die bleeding. Her lip curled.
Noll was beside it in an instant. The irritated rival vanished, replaced by someone cold and unnervingly focused. He didn't treat the corpse with reverence—just like a broken tool. His fingers on the man's neck weren't for respect, but for information.
“No pulse. Hours old. Bled out.” Autopsy, not eulogy.
“That’s the artifact he used to send the signal,” X said, pointing to a small brass disk, cool to the touch in the corpse’s hand, its surface worn smooth from use. “Recognize the sigil?” he asked, indicating an emblem on the artifact.
Mizuki knelt. “No.” She didn’t bother pretending. A figure before a crystal spire—clean lines, unfamiliar cut.
Heraldry was Genichiro’s hobby, not hers.
“He was here on purpose,” Noll muttered, searching the pouches. “He knew what he was walking into.”
“So what now?” Mizuki asked. “Is this the one who sent the signal?”
“He looks like a bodyguard,” X said, his voice grim as he pointed toward the dark hole. “Which means the person he was protecting is still down there.”
Noll stood, brushing dirt from his knees. "Then our mission isn't over." Without another moment of hesitation, he swung his legs over the edge and slid into the darkness.
Mizuki followed him into the tight wound in the earth. The darkness was absolute. The walls of damp soil pressed in on her shoulders, stealing the air. And Noll… he was moving at a maddeningly slow pace. Not caution—counting. Hand on the wall, steps measured. It only looked like leisure.
Her fists clenched at her sides, teeth grinding. Of course he'd be insufferable underground, too. Every slow, deliberate step he took in the suffocating darkness felt like a personal insult.
A faint clink—stone on crystal. Her hand flew to the bat. Noll didn’t even pause; his head tilted, counting echoes she couldn’t hear.
After an eternity, the tunnel widened. A flickering glow promised more space. Noll raised a knuckle in a silent command to halt. He reached into his coat and produced a handful of small, metallic blue spheres, rolling them gently across the floor. They skittered like beetles, blinking, and then vanished around the bends.
A low hum from his gloved wrist; light webbed over his left palm. Blue lines took the shape of the cave walls. Red points moved. The oppressive darkness suddenly had a shape. A map.
“Far fewer than expected,” Noll murmured. “This route’s clear.”
Mizuki stared, forgetting to be annoyed. “An artifact, huh?”
He glanced at her, and for a second, the analytical mask melted. His expression was unguarded, almost boyish, a spark of pure passion in his eyes. “Mapping beads. Tiny pulses. The echoes trace lines. Everything that moves is painted red.”
“Map…ping?” The word felt alien on her tongue. It wasn't the language of spells or incantations. She crossed her arms, a familiar shield against her own ignorance. I don't understand a word of it. But I would be damned if I let him know that. “Where did you get something like that?”
“I didn’t get it,” he said simply. “I made it.”
“You… you can make artifacts?”
“They’re not artifacts.” His voice lowered, the passion replaced by a new intensity. “They’re magi-tech.”
“Tech?” The word came out as a choked whisper. It was a dirty word. Heresy. The Council spoke of it as a disease that would rot the world. Her eyes flicked from his face to the impossible map. Her hand instinctively went to her side, where a clan emblem would be stitched on a formal uniform. “Isn’t that… heresy?”
Noll met her gaze, his own cool and steady. “'Heresy' is a word people use when they're scared of something they don’t understand. This device doesn't care what your Council calls it.” He gestured to the map. “It helps me save lives. That’s all that matters.” He tapped his wrist, and the ghostly image vanished.
“You can cling to your dogma if it makes you feel safe,” he added, turning to move forward. “I’d rather survive.”
Mizuki stood her ground. “I don’t care what it’s called,” she said, the conviction in her voice surprising her. “Useful… and a gallows rope if the wrong eyes see it.”
“Yeah,” Noll said, his back to her. “I figured.”
She heard the breath X let out behind her—not a casual sigh, but the sound of a noose loosening. She shot him a look, but he wasn’t watching her. He was watching Noll’s back. A silent glance passed between them, a shared history she was not a part of.
Not yet, anyway, she thought, a new resolve hardening inside her. I’ll figure out your secrets soon enough.
They emerged into a passage wide enough to be a road. Torches at neat, regular intervals cast a steady, flickering glow. The sight was so jarringly civilized it made her skin crawl.
“Torches? How did they learn to set them?” Mizuki whispered, not hearing her own words.
“They’re not just beasts,” Noll replied from behind her, his voice devoid of surprise. “They’re survivors. They adapt.”
A knot of ice formed in her gut. If they had mastered fire, what other human tricks had they stolen?
The passage split into three yawning mouths. One angled up, tasting of fresher air. Another stretched straight ahead. The third plunged steeply down into a pit of black.
Noll gestured forward. “That way feels too obvious—a trap.”
X pointed down. “If I were holding someone captive, I’d stick them in the deepest, darkest hole I could find.”
A beat of quiet passed. Then they both looked at her—X with a simple, expectant trust; Noll with a look that was coolly analytical, a challenge in his eyes.
Mizuki blinked, the sudden weight of their gaze a physical pressure. “Wait—you’re asking me?”
“You’re the tiebreaker,” X said simply.
A stone dropped in her gut. This isn't a training exercise. This is a choice that could get someone killed. She stared at the three paths, her mind racing through a cold, brutal calculus. Up was retreat. Forward was a gamble. Down was a promise of violence. She hated that she was hesitating.
“…Deeper,” she said at last, forcing the word out. “You don’t keep a hostage next to the back door.”
X gave a single, grim nod. “My thinking too.”
“Down we go, then.” Noll clapped his hands together once. The sound wasn't a normal clap; it was a sharp, flat crack, like a chisel splitting iron, that echoed for a moment too long. It made the hairs on Mizuki’s arms stand up. He didn't even seem to notice.
The downward path was a descent into cold and a new kind of quiet. A silence that was listening.
Noll reacted first, stopping dead, tilting his head up.
“There,” he breathed—calm, certain.
Mizuki and X followed his gaze up into the darkness above the next torch. Four shapes clung to the ceiling like gargoyles, waiting.
“The torches weren’t for them to see,” Noll murmured, a faint, mean curl to his lips. “They were for us—bait. They hadn’t moved—just waited for someone to pass. Clever.”
They dropped, landing without a sound. In the torchlight, they resolved into a grotesque collage of man, wolf, and fox.
“Finally, some action!” The words burst from Mizuki, a reckless roar to break the tension as she swung her bat in a wide arc. Electricity rattled her arms.
The monsters flinched, confused by the sound, then lunged.
“Not very ladylike,” Noll muttered from behind her.
“If you’re not fighting, get out of the way!” she snapped, batting the first beast aside.
The cavern filled with the brutal rhythm of combat—claws on steel, the thud of her bat on hardened flesh. She and X fought back-to-back, a desperate defense against a relentless war of attrition.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Noll simply watched, absently biting a fingernail. “Fascinating,” he said to no one. “They’re using pack tactics.”
“A little help would be appreciated!” Mizuki snarled, shoving a beast back.
Noll offered a faint, infuriating smile. “You seem to have it handled.”
The fifth beast, the one that had remained in the shadows, out of anyone’s sight, dropped like a silent blade of darkness, its dagger-long claws aimed to rip Noll apart.
“Noll!” Mizuki screamed, but it was too late.
He didn’t flinch. Didn't even turn.
A pink disk snapped into existence behind him. The beast’s claws crashed against it with a wet hiss, as sticky tendrils wrapped around its arm, tightening with every thrash. The shield flexed, bent inward, and then contracted with a sickening CRUNCH.
A scream of pure agony tore through the cavern as the monster's limb was twisted and folded backward, bone ripping through flesh.
Only then did Noll rise, unhurried, inevitable. He drew a crude tube of scarred metal from his holster. It wasn't an elegant weapon; it was a forge-born contrivance. He leveled it at the screaming beast’s head.
Click.
A flash of blinding blue light devoured the darkness. A shock wave of sound and pressure split the stone, slamming into Mizuki like an invisible wall and sucking the air from her lungs. A high-pitched whine keened in her ears, drowning out all other sound.
When her vision cleared, the beast was gone. Where it had stood, a circle of stone smoldered, reduced to a blackened, smoking crater.
A new quiet fell—one of shock and terror.
Mizuki’s breath caught. That blue light… it felt wrong. Unnatural. Heretical. Something not of this world. It didn’t look like any ability she’d seen.
The other four monsters felt it too. Their attack stopped. Slowly, they began to back away. Mizuki gripped her bat, ready to finish them.
“Don’t,” X said quietly, his arm barring her path. “They’re thinking.”
And they were. The four beasts stared, not at the crater, but directly at Noll. He stood there, the barrel of his strange, terrible weapon held steady.
They understood the new hierarchy. They had met a bigger monster.
Without another sound, they turned and fled into the darkness.
Noll lowered the weapon and reattached it to his leg as if he’d done nothing more strenuous than swatting a fly.
Mizuki stormed up to him, the smoldering crater still radiating heat at her back. Her fists were clenched so tightly her knuckles ached.
“You’re just letting them go?” Her voice was raw, shaking with a rage braided with grief. “Do you have any idea what those things are? How many people they’ve slaughtered? Families. Soldiers. Children.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “My friends. And you—” she jabbed a trembling finger at his chest. “—you just let them run. Why?”
Noll didn’t even look at the finger. He brushed a speck of dust from his coat. “They’re beasts,” he said, as if explaining the weather. “Once you demonstrate overwhelming superiority, their instinct for self-preservation takes over. They won’t be back.” He finally met her gaze, his eyes cold. “You, of all people, Yumaki, should understand that.”
The condescension, the use of her family name like an accusation, was a spark on dry tinder. “Oh, don’t you dare lecture me—”
“Enough.”
X’s voice was a flat, hard wall. He moved between them. “There is someone still alive in this cave waiting for us. Save the philosophy debate for later.” His eyes met Mizuki’s, a heavy, unarguable order: Stand. Down.
She clenched her jaw, the furious retort dying in her throat. She gave a stiff, resentful nod. Her eyes kept drifting to the strange, ugly weapon on Noll’s leg.
That effortless destruction… a power born from heresy and scrap metal. If he could build that, what else is he hiding?
She needed to understand. Direct confrontation had failed. Time for a new tactic. She fell into step beside him, her voice low and neutral, the tone of a commander assessing an unknown asset.
“That power,” she began, nodding toward the weapon. “It’s not drawn from natural magic. What fuels it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said without looking at her.
“Try me.” The challenge was quiet, but sharp. “It felt… similar to the beasts. That same unnatural energy, that wrongness. Is that what you did? Did you find a way to bottle a monster’s rage and put a trigger on it?” It was a calculated insult, a way to test his principles.
Noll stopped walking. When he finally turned, the cold mask was gone. His eyes burned with a fierce, protective fury that startled her. The words cut like glass.
“Don’t you ever compare my work to them.”
He didn’t shout. He didn't have to. The force behind the whisper slammed into her, leaving her breathless. It was the sound of a creator’s pride, of a sacred line being crossed.
“They are chaos,” he continued, his voice low and raw. “They exist only to unmake things. I create order. A tool for a better future.” He held her gaze, his eyes burning with conviction. "We are not the same."
Mizuki stood rooted to the spot… She had probed with a tactical insult, and instead of a weakness, she had found his fanatical core. He wasn't just a heretic who broke the rules.
He was a zealot with his own. Her hand clenched into a fist.
She looked at two men: a heretic from Krinden and the one who sheltered him—enemy and sinner. Her blood screamed for a purge and for glory.
Her hand twitched toward the bat, then stilled. This was not the grand battlefield she’d trained for. Two on one. One with a weapon that had just unmade a thing; the other, an immovable, patient stone. Odds settled like cold iron.
She would not die here—not for a scrap of honor no one would see. Her life, the Nexus-Blade she craved, the Yumaki name to restore; those were all future fights, better chosen.
There will be another time, she vowed, and when it came she’d make it a battle worthy of the Yumaki Name.
As they pushed deeper, the smooth cave walls gave way to something more violent. Mizuki ran her hand over deep, jagged gouges in the stone, clawed out with a desperate force. A sound from the darkness ahead cut through her thoughts.
A roar with no challenge in it. It was a broken, wretched sound of pure, unending pain.
Two beasts lurched from the shadows, and Mizuki’s breath caught. Their bodies were a canvas of torture. Jagged, glowing crystal shards jutted from their muscle and bone, as if they’d been impaled from the inside out. Every step was a fresh wound in motion.
“What in the hells happened to them?” Mizuki breathed. This was a perversion.
From beside her, Noll whispered two words, his voice shadowed with a strange, almost tender compassion. “Poor girls…”
Girls? They were razors wearing fur.
“Snap out of it!” she hissed. “They’re monsters, not maidens in need of pity!”
But the tortured things had seen them. With that same agonized roar, they charged.
X met the first, his sword clashing against a crystalline claw with a deafening ring. Mizuki swung her bat at the second, pouring all her revulsion into the blow. The creatures were unnaturally strong, their movements jerky and desperate.
“They’re stronger than the last ones!” X grunted, giving ground.
Mizuki backed away, summoning a crackle of lightning. The bolt struck her target—and vanished. Sucked away, like water down a drain. A hiss of static vanishing. The crystals in the creature’s body pulsed, glowing brighter as they drank her power. A low hum vibrated through the floor.
“It’s absorbing magic! Physical attacks only!” Noll’s voice was a sharp command from the rear.
“Understood!” X shot back.
Just then, Noll raised his weapon. He fired a single, contained blast into the hide of the beast hammering X. The crystals in its body flared, supercharged. Blinding streaks of light raced along its veins toward its jaw.
“Fall back—now!” Noll barked.
X obeyed instantly. Mizuki’s hand sprang up, an angry reflex, then dropped. Pride is not armor today.
The beast’s mouth gaped and unleashed a torrent of pure, white-hot energy. A shimmering pink barrier appeared in place just in time, taking on the full force of the blast.
When the light faded, the first beast collapsed, smoke curling from its body. Lifeless. The second, caught in the beam, had been almost obliterated. The crystals shattered. The smell of burnt ozone and cooked flesh hung heavy in the air.
“What the hell was that?!” Mizuki shouted, her ears ringing.
No time for an explanation. The echo had woken the hive. From the deeper darkness, more shapes stirred, their glowing crystals blinking to life.
“How do we fight them?” X demanded, stepping to Noll’s side.
“Two ways,” Noll said quickly, his eyes scanning the approaching dark. “Overload or brute force.”
Mizuki glanced at the weapon on his leg. “Or you could just shoot them all.”
Noll’s glare was ice. “If I fire this thing more than a few times in quick succession, it’ll overheat and explode. Do you want to be buried alive?”
Before she could retort, the new wave was upon them.
The monsters surged forward, a tide of mismatched limbs and glowing crystal. No time left.
Mizuki’s breath hitched. Her knuckles were white on her bat. “So many…” The words were a choked whisper, all her bravado swallowed by the sheer impossibility of the odds. They had barely survived two; now six more were bearing down on them.
"Mizuki."
Noll’s voice was low and intense, an anchor in the noise. He locked eyes with her, his expression deadly serious. "I have a plan. I need you to trust me. Now."
Her fear warred with her pride. For a split second, she wanted to spit in his face, to die on her own terms rather than follow his. Then a six-hundred-pound beast charged them, and the decision was made for her.
"Fine," she snapped, the word sharp with desperation. "Get us out of this."
X grunted, deflecting a claw that gouged a deep scar in the cavern floor. The pack was closing in.
"I’ll isolate one,” Noll commanded, his voice carrying with absolute authority she had never heard from him before. "You keep the others off me.”
"Could've used a few more details, but hell, it's a start!" X roared back, planting his feet beside her.
The world dissolved into a blur. Noll was a shadow, darting left.
Hold the line. Simple. But the "line" was a wall of muscle and crystal fury. A roar rattled her teeth. The stench of ozone filled her lungs. She saw the feral hunger in a dozen glowing red eyes, and a primal, cold dread seized her.
This is insane. This isn't a plan; it's a suicide pact.
X was a rock. He met the first charge, a grunt ripping from his throat as he deflected a killer blow. Another beast slammed into him from the side, and he staggered.
He was holding. He trusted the plan. But he was overwhelmed. A third beast was flanking him, its jaw unhinging.
They're going to swarm us. They're going to tear us apart.
The anchor of Noll's command vanished, replaced by the rising tide of her own terror.
No. I won't die here.
The thought wasn't a decision; it was a detonation. The trust she'd promised evaporated in a flash of pure survival instinct. A dam of control she hadn’t known was cracking finally burst.
She didn't cast a spell—but screamed one.
A wave of raw, untamed power ripped from her, a guttural cry given physical form. The air flash-froze. The ground erupted in a brutal wave of jagged ice—crude, massive spears born of pure panic.
It was the same cold that had lashed from her at Keiko—only now it had teeth.
For a heartbeat, it was magnificent. The wave caught the charging beasts in a deafening CRACK of shattering crystal and frozen flesh. The pack's momentum stopped dead, impaled, encased in a tomb of frost.
Silence. A ringing silence.
A triumphant gasp escaped her lips, fogging the frigid air. It worked. I saved us.
Then she heard it. A low, strangled sound to her right. Not a monster.
Her head snapped toward the noise. The chaotic wave hadn't just gone forward; it had exploded outward. X was on one knee, his shield arm hanging limp. A thick, cruel spear of her own ice jutted from his shoulder, pinning him to the cavern wall. The metal of his pauldron twisted like cheap paper.
X’s teeth were bared in a silent snarl, breath hissing through them.
Before she could process it, Noll was a blur. He shot forward, propelled by a shimmering pink disk beneath his boots. The look on his face wasn't analysis or irritation. It was raw, visceral horror, as if he’d seen this exact scene before, in another tunnel, with another teammate.
The disk vanished. Noll stumbled the last step and dropped to his knees. His precise movements gone, replaced by frantic, clumsy urgency as he ripped into his pouches, pulling out cloths and vials of crimson liquid. Whatever he was saying, Mizuki either couldn’t or didn’t care enough to hear. Even she didn’t know which was true.
Mizuki could only stand there, a statue in the center of the carnage she’d created. Watching but not comprehending. The world had narrowed to a tight, roaring tunnel of stillness.
When Noll was done, a temporary, bloody patch staunched the wound. He limped, favoring his left leg, and walked up to her. The frantic fear in his eyes had cooled into something far more dangerous. There was no rage, not yet.
Just a profound, weighty disappointment that felt like a physical blow. Her stomach dropped as if kicked; the clan drum in her chest stuttered to a stop.
“Why did you do it?”
Noll’s voice was shaky, a tremor running through the words. It was the first time she had ever heard anything but a flat, steady tone from him. The sound was alien. Unsettling.
“Did what?” The question was a pathetic whisper. The only defense she could find.
Noll’s voice steadied into a terrifying dead calm. “Don’t play stupid. You know exactly what I mean!”
“Me?” The accusation finally broke her paralysis. She fell back on her only shield: aggression. “I saved you! Your stupid plan would have gotten us all killed!”
“I’m not talking about the plan!” he roared, the sound echoing in the dead quiet. “X could have died!”
“If he died from that,” she spat, the words tasting like ash, “that only means he was weak.”
Noll’s face twitched, a violent spasm of fury he fought to control. He took a sharp breath, and when he spoke again, the rage had been compressed into something colder, sharper, and a thousand times more lethal. His voice was a blade.
“Yeah?” he asked quietly. “What about your friends? Were they also weak? Or is it only a weakness when it’s an insignificant life on the line?”
The question was a perfect trap. A blade with no handle.
If you say they were weak, you damn their memory. If you say they weren't, you're a hypocrite.
Her mind snagged on Genichiro’s laugh, on a name carved in stone—then on nothing at all, searching for an answer, a rebuttal, anything. There was nothing. Words had failed. Her logic had been turned against her, twisted into a weapon she couldn't fight. She fell back on the only real defense she had ever known.
She lunged.
The pink disk appeared just in time to block the lightning-wreathed strike. Her power flared, useless against the impassive shield.
“Of course you would,” Noll chuckled, a low, bitter sound. “All you Named are the same. When words don't work, violence is the answer. Two can play at that game.”
“You know nothing!” she roared, hammering her bat in a furious, desperate rhythm. Each heavy strike met the same high-pitched shing as the pink disk blinked into place just before impact, intercepting every blow with infuriating ease.
Noll didn't say a word. Then, with a slow, deliberate grace, his hand drifted toward the weapon at his hip.
The moment she saw the motion, a spike of pure, cold adrenaline shot through her. In a blur, she was gone, retreating ten feet in a single bound. A thick, crenellated wall of ice erupted from the cavern floor in front of her, a fortress born of sheer terror.
Noll’s hand stopped, hovering an inch above the weapon. He shook his head slowly, a look of profound pity on his face. “Funny,” he said, his voice chillingly calm. “You seem to be more afraid of my tool than you are of me.”
He let the observation hang in the air, a quiet, damning truth. “Let me put it in a language you can understand,” he continued, his tone shifting to that of a teacher. “Are you more afraid of the blade or the swordsman who wields it?”
The ice wall shattered, exploding into a thousand glittering shards as she strode through it. “Don’t act so mighty, you heretic!” she spat, her voice a low, furious growl. “Hiding behind your unnatural tools! At least I use my natural powers. The strength I was born with. Not these handmade abominations.”
She leaned in, her voice a venomous hiss. “Remove them—and what are you?”
Noll’s expression was unchanged. He let the challenge hang in the dead air for a heartbeat, then gave his answer. A simple, two-word statement of fact, delivered with the flat, emotionless finality of a closing door.
“A corpse.”
"A corpse."
I need your help settling a debate:
Incident:
-
Defense for Mizuki: She panicked, sure, but she stopped the swarm. If she hadn't used that ice, they might have been overrun. X is hurt, but alive.
-
Prosecution for Noll: She ignored orders, broke formation, and impaled her own teammate because of her ego. She’s a liability.
Whose side are you on? Let me know in the comments below. Even a simple "Team Mizuki" or "Team Noll" helps me out massively!
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