Chapter 12: Blades and Blood Oaths
The third year didn't so much arrive as slam into us. We’d barely caught our breath after the muted Solstice, celebrated Aria’s birthday with quiet cake in the barracks, and then the break was over. A switch flipped. The academy’s machinery, oiled and relentless, ground back into motion.
The class rankings were posted on the massive obsidian board outside the Commune on the first morning back. A crowd had already gathered, a low buzz of anxiety and competition hanging over them. Tsubaki grabbed my sleeve, pulling me through. Her name was there, clear as day: Tsubaki Haru – 26th out of 47. She let out a whoop, punching the air. “Middle of the pack! I’ll take it!”
My eyes scanned down, past names I recognized, past the middle cluster, down into the single digits at the bottom. A cold knot formed in my stomach. There it was, the last name on the list.
Arisa Kashikoi – 47th.
I stared at the number. It wasn’t a surprise, not really. Borros’s evaluations were brutal, and my control in group tactical exercises was… inconsistent. I’d hesitate. I’d overthink. I’d hold back that inferno in my chest so fiercely it left me sluggish, vulnerable. But seeing it carved in permanent-looking light on the board made it real. It was a brand.
“That’s bullshit,” Tsubaki hissed, her elgone. “Absolute bullshit. You took down that shadow-wolf in the simulacrum run last month single-handedly!”
“I lost my squad in the urban terrain exercise the week before,” I said flatly, my voice barely a murmur. “They ‘died’ because I circled the wrong building.”
Aria materialized beside us, her Guardian-in-Training greys making her look older, separated. She glanced at the board, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Borros weighs failure heavier than success,” she said, her tone low. “And he has a particular… distaste for latent power he can’t quantify. This ranking is his way of quantifying it. It’s not real. It’s fear.”
Her words were meant to soothe, but they just made the knot tighter. It was fear, yes. His fear of what I might be. And my fear of it, too.
The morning of the Choosing Ceremony dawned grey and silent, the mist so thick it felt like walking through cold, damp wool. Aria was in our barracks before first light, her movements precise and silent. She helped me into the formal leather armor all third-years wore for the ritual—stiff, dark hide embossed with the academy’s crest. Her fingers, strong and sure, tightened the straps across my back and shoulders.
“Breathe out,” she instructed, yanking a strap. I exhaled, and the leather cuirass tightened snugly against my ribs. I remembered those same hands, months ago, wrapped around the hilt of that glowing blue sword, the light painting her face in stark, terrified relief.
The door to the common room banged open without warning. Borros stood framed in the doorway, his bulk blocking the grey light from the hall. He wasn’t in his drill instructor gear, but in a severe, unadorned Warden’s uniform. It made him look even more like a carved cliff face.
He didn’t bellow. His voice was a low, grating rumble that was somehow worse. “Kashikoi.”
We all froze. Aria’s hands stilled on my shoulder strap.
His eyes, like chips of flint, locked onto mine. “Today, that pile of enchanted metal is going to judge you. You think it’s about honor? About glory?” He took a single step into the room, and the air pressure seemed to drop. “When a blade chooses you, girl, it’s not an honor. It’s a death sentence written in steel. You go out there with that hesitation, that fear in your gut, and you will get yourself killed. Or worse,” he leaned in, his breath smelling of strong coffee and cold steel, “you will get your squad killed. Every one of them. Because you were too busy being scared of your own shadow to watch theirs.”
The words hung in the silence, absolute and terrible. They weren’t an insult; they were a prophecy. My throat closed.
Aria’s hand came to rest firmly on my armored back. “Ignore him,” she said, her voice cutting through the cold dread he’d left in the room. She never took her eyes off him. “You won’t have to put up with him for much longer.”
Borros’s gaze flicked to her, a silent, vicious communication passing between them. He snorted, a sound of pure contempt, turned on his heel, and left. The door swung shut behind him, the echo of his warning clinging to the walls.
The Choosing Hall was not the Sparring Coliseum. It was older, deeper in the academy’s bedrock foundation. It was a cavernous, cylindrical space, the walls hewn from seamless, glossy black stone that reflected the light of a thousand floating, ghostly lumen-orbs. They drifted slowly overhead, casting shifting patterns on the floor. In the very center of the room stood a raised dais of white marble, stark against the darkness. Upon it lay the weapons.
They weren’t on racks. They were heaped, a glorious, chaotic mound of potential violence. Swords of every length and curvature, their blades etched with runes that swam in the low light. Axes with hafts wrapped in faded leather. Spears with tips that looked like frozen starlight. Daggers, maces, a brutal-looking flail, and at the very back, looming over the rest, a few polearms and a large, cruel-looking scythe with a blade like a shard of night.
The entire third-year class, all forty-seven of us, stood in a tense semicircle around the dais. The air hummed, not with sound, but with a deep, sub-audible vibration that made my teeth ache. High above, in shadowed balconies, the silhouettes of Wardens, senior Protectors, and a few robed Magistrates watched in silence.
The ceremony began without fanfare. A grey-haired Magistrate, her voice amplified by the chamber’s acoustics, called out the first name. “Soren Val.”
The top-ranked student, a tall boy with a perpetually arrogant tilt to his chin, stepped forward. He climbed the dais, standing before the pile. For a long minute, nothing happened. Then, a elegant, slender rapier near the front began to pulse with a soft, silver light. It grew brighter, humming. Soren reached for it, his confidence faltering for a split second before his fingers closed around the hilt. The light flared, then settled into a steady silver gleam along the blade. He held it aloft, a triumphant smile breaking across his face. The first choosing was done.
One by one, they were called. Kaelen Moss, ranked 4th, was chosen by a pair of heavy, single-edged hatchets that glowed a dull, earthy brown. Lyra Chen, 11th, approached and a beautifully crafted shortbow and a quiver of black-fletched arrows flared with a vibrant green. She slung it over her shoulder with a fierce grin.
Whispers slithered through the ranks of those still waiting. I caught fragments, my own name woven through them like a curse.
“…Kashikoi’s last…”
“…heard Borros failed her on every field assessment…”
“…if your affinity’s low, sometimes nothing chooses you… they become support, logistics…”
“…dead weight on a squad…”
The words were icy needles in my back. I kept my eyes fixed on the dais, my jaw clenched so tight it ached.
“Tsubaki Haru.”
My friend squeezed my arm quickly and moved forward. Her walk was all business, no-nonsense. She stood before the heap, her face a mask of concentration. For several heartbeats, nothing. A flicker of doubt crossed her features. Then, from within a cluster of close-quarter weapons, a soft, warm golden light emerged. It wasn’t a sword or an axe. As the light clarified, we saw it: a pair of compact, blocky pistols, their designs sleek and unfamiliar, resting on a bandolier of what looked like polished bone cartridges. The light coated them in a gentle aura. Tsubaki reached out, her hands steady as a surgeon’s. The moment her fingers brushed the grips, the light solidified, etching fine golden lines along the barrels. She picked them up, the bandolier settling across her chest. She looked at them, then back at me, her eyes wide with shock and a dawning, fierce joy. She hadn’t expected that. No one had.
The ceremony rolled on. Some choices were swift, a clear, bright connection. Others were slower, the weapons glowing dully as if reluctant. A boy named Jax, ranked 17th, an overachiever with a perpetual scowl, was called. He strode up, the picture of confidence. Before him, a handsome, one-handed longsword near the front burst into a brilliant, sun-like yellow, brighter than any we’d seen so far. The collective class inhaled. It was a strong, clear call.
Jax looked at the shining sword. Then his gaze drifted past it, to the very back of the pile, to the large, ominous shadow-steel scythe. Its blade absorbed the light, a void of potential. He hesitated, his ambition warring with the obvious choice. He took a step… toward the scythe.
A murmur rippled through the hall. The yellow glow of the sword dimmed, confused.
Jax’s hand closed around the scythe’s long, black pole.
A sound like a dying gasp hissed from the weapon. A inky, tendril-like darkness shot from the blade, wrapping around Jax’s arm. He screamed, a raw, agonized sound that echoed off the stone. His skin where the darkness touched visibly greyed, withering. He dropped the scythe as if it were white-hot, stumbling back and collapsing to his knees, clutching his now-aging, pain-seized arm.
Two Wardens descended from the shadows, moving quickly to help him away. His screams faded into whimpers.
The Magistrate’s voice, cold and clear, cut through the stunned silence. “Let this be a lesson to all. The weapons do not choose lightly. To force a bond where none exists is to invite rejection. And rejection from a soul-forged weapon does not merely harm. It consumes. It drains the very life force from the unworthy. The next aspirant to disregard a clear choosing may not survive the experience.”
The remaining students stood in petrified silence. The joyous tension was gone, replaced by a cold, surgical dread.
The names continued, each one a hammer fall in my chest. The pile of weapons dwindled. Forty. Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five.
Finally, the Magistrate looked down at her scroll, then directly at me. Her expression was unreadable.
“Arisa Kashikoi.”
Every eye in the colossal chamber turned to me. The silence was absolute, heavier than the mist outside. I was the last. The lowest. All easy weapons that remained on the white marble dais were a few scattered, inert pieces. A dented shield. A simple, unadorned dagger. The cruel, dark scythe that had already claimed its price.
And me.
The sound of my name echoed in the stillness, a death knell. All those eyes, from my ranked classmates to the faceless watchers in the shadows above, pinned me to the spot. My boots felt nailed to the polished stone floor. Every insult, every doubting whisper, Borros’s grim warning—they all condensed into a lead weight in my gut.
Aria, from the side of the chamber where the already-chosen stood, gave me a single, sharp nod. Her face was pale, her knuckles white where she gripped her blue sword. It was the only push I had.
I forced one foot forward. Then the other. The walk to the base of the dais stretched into a marathon under that crushing, silent scrutiny. My heart battered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a too-small cage. The air grew thick, resistant, as if I were wading through deep water.
As I placed my boot on the first white marble step, a humming started in my bones. It wasn’t the chamber’s energy. It was inside me, a vibration in my veins that sang of flight, of sprinting into the dark until my lungs burst. I didn’t know where. Just away.
I climbed.
The remaining weapons lay scattered like bones. I stepped past the simple dagger. Nothing. I moved through the space where the bows had been, my senses reaching out and finding only hollow silence. A few swords, the rejects, emitted faint, weary murmurs like sleeping dogs. One, a short blade with a wire-wrapped hilt, glimmered with a weak, grey light. It was an offer. A pitiful one.
I could take it, I thought. A sword is a sword. They’d accept me. Not respect me, but accept me.
Then my gaze drifted past it, pulled to the very back of the dais.
The dark scythe.
Up close, it was not just a weapon. It was artistry. The blade was folded upon itself, a twin crescent of shadowed grey and deepest black, the metal seeming to drink the lumen-light. The long haft wasn't simple wood or metal, but a polished, matte substance the color of charcoal. The exact deep, resonant grey of the sticks I used to sketch on smooth paper, back in a world that felt like a dream.
A deep, rhythmic drumming filled my ears, drowning out my heartbeat, drowning out the silence. The brilliant light of the chamber dimmed, fading at the edges of my vision like a tunnel closing in. Everything blurred into indistinct shapes and muted color. The only thing in perfect, terrifying focus was the scythe.
My body moved without my command.
I stepped toward it, my hand lifting. The humming in my veins tuned to the same frequency as the drumming in my skull. A call. A summoning. I reached down, my fingers closing around the cool, textured charcoal-gray haft.
Contact was a flash-fire up my arm.
It wasn't pain. It was a profound, shocking acceptance. A key sliding into a lock that had been rusted shut for twenty years. A homecoming I never knew I’d been waiting for.
I lifted the scythe. The weight was perfect, an extension of my own arm. As it cleared the ground, the folded blade snapped open with a precise, mechanical shunk. Twin arcs of shadow-steel unfolded, graceful and lethal, catching the light with a dull, hungry gleam.
A figure stood before me.
She was woven from the same shadows that clung to the blade, a woman-shaped void in the world. No face, no features, just a profound, sentient darkness. She reached a hand of condensed night toward me.
Her touch on my chest was ice and fire. "Someone has been suppressing you, my child," her voice echoed, not in the chamber, but in the cathedral of my own skull.
Her shadow-hand pushed through my skin, my ribs, with no resistance. It clasped something deep inside my core—and pulled.
The world exploded.
A torrent of raw, unfiltered sensation ripped through me. I felt the crowd, not as people, but as pulsing constellations of heat and light and whispering blood. I heard the hum of the angelic heritage in their veins, a discordant, layered choir. The stone beneath my feet sang a slow, geological song. The very air vibrated with hidden currents.
The light was blinding, every edge sharper, every color vibrating with impossible intensity. Sound was a crushing symphony of breaths, rustling fabric, grinding stone, distant heartbeats. I was a raw nerve exposed to the universe.
I blinked.
The shadow-woman was gone. The chamber’s light rushed back, normal and dim by comparison. A roaring cheer erupted from my classmates, a wave of surprised approval for the last-ranked girl who had claimed the most fearsome weapon. The scythe in my hand blazed with a pure, cold white light, etching the intricate patterns of its blade into the air.
My eyes found Aria across the dais. Her face was a frozen mask of horror, her eyes wide, her mouth a thin, bloodless line. She looked as if she’d seen a ghost. My ghost.
Our eyes met. In a flash, she smoothed her expression, replacing the horror with a strained, celebratory smile. She gave me a thumbs-up.
But I’d seen it. The truth of her reaction was etched into my new, hyper-sharp senses.
I looked down at the scythe, its light now fading to a gentle, persistent glow. My body thrummed with a power that felt both alien and intimately mine. The suppression, the barrier I’d felt every day of my life—it was gone. Scoured away.
I felt strong. Terrifyingly, uncontainably strong.
And I had no idea what to do with it.