Chapter 14: Blade at the Throat
Ren’s grip tightened on my wrist as he dragged me from the cliff’s edge, his eyes flashing with something darker than anger—recognition. The wind ripped at us, howling up from the violet-veined abyss below, carrying the scent of ozone and cold stone. His fingers were like iron bands, unyielding.
‘They wore off,’ he growled, his voice low and rough against the gale. He released my wrist only to press a gloved hand flat against my sternum, right where my heart hammered a frantic, trapped rhythm. The contact was startling, intimate in its intensity. I could feel the heat of his palm through the layers of my hoodie. ‘I can feel it.’
A current, subtle and deep, seemed to pass from his hand into my chest. It wasn’t aggression. It was a probe, a search. My skin prickled. The scythe at my back hummed in response, a resonant vibration that traveled up my spine.
‘You knew?’ I breathed, the words barely a whisper snatched by the wind.
His other hand came up, a single finger pressed to his lips. Shh. The gesture was swift, absolute. His eyes, holding mine, held a warning that shut down any further question. In one fluid motion, his hand dropped from my chest to my waist, his fingers deftly finding the small device clipped to my belt. He pulled out my pager, its screen a tiny square of sickly green light in the dark. With practiced ease, he powered it off. Then he did the same to his own, pulling it from an inner pocket of his leather jacket, thumb sliding across the surface until its light died.
Only then did he step back, putting a foot of cold, charged air between us. He reached into another pocket and withdrew a rune marker, a sleek cylinder of polished obsidian. He knelt on the rocky ground, ignoring the damp grit, and began to etch. The marker didn't scratch; it burned, leaving a searing, silver line in the black stone. The symbol he drew was intricate, all spiraling loops and sharp, intersecting angles. It was utterly unfamiliar. Rune studies started this year for us. This was something else. Something advanced, and clearly, something meant to be hidden.
The final stroke glowed briefly, then dimmed to a faint, persistent shimmer. The howl of the wind faded, not in our ears, but in a bubble around us. The world became muffled, distant. The only sounds were our breathing and the slow, tectonic groan of the chasm far below.
“It’s a silencing rune,” he said, his voice now flat and clear in the sudden pocket of quiet. “So anything we say here can’t be overheard.”
The confirmation, the sheer clandestine nature of the act, broke the dam inside me. The betrayal I’d felt listening to Aria and Mark curdled into a sharper, more immediate fury. This man, my brutal, unyielding mentor—he had known.
“You knew,” I said again, my voice rising, hard and sharp. “You knew that Aria was suppressing my abilities?”
He straightened up, his posture rigid. He didn’t deny it. He just looked at me, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “She never told me,” he said, each word precise, as if carved from ice. “But I can sense when an ability is lessened. It’s… a particular skill of mine. At first, I thought it was from you being too weak to handle your own power. It fit. You were clumsy. Unfocused. A liability.” He said it without malice, a simple recitation of fact that stung more than any insult. “But over time, I realized you were being suppressed. Especially with my extra training, you should have had far more improvement than you have. The math didn’t add up. The potential was there, buried, but it wasn’t growing. It was being capped.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The question tore out of me, raw and accusing.
He looked down at me, his expression one of profound, weary impatience. It was the look you’d give a child throwing a tantrum over a truth they were too naive to grasp. “Hasn’t Santoro explained to you,” he said, his tone dangerously calm, “what happens to people with too much power here?”
I stared at him, the anger in me cooling into a brittle, confused fear. “No,” I whispered. “She hasn’t.”
Ren sighed, a long, frustrated sound that seemed to carry the weight of years. “The Shadow Realm leaders,” he said, enunciating every word, “don’t take too kindly to those who are born with extraordinary talents. Talents like those of a Guardian.”
Guardian. The word landed in the silence of the rune-circle with the weight of a tombstone. It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.
I blinked. The pieces, jagged and nonsensical, began to tilt and align in my mind. The scythe’s whispering bond. The sensory overload. The way Aria had looked at me with such terror in the weapon hall. The shadow-woman’s knowing gaze. Someone has been suppressing you, my child.
“A Guardian,” I repeated, the title foreign and terrifying on my tongue.
“Of course,” Ren said, his voice dropping lower, almost conspiratorial, yet laced with a biting edge. “Don’t you feel it, Arisa? In your bones? In the way the world bends when you get upset?” He took a step closer, invading the space he’d just created. “You are a Guardian. That’s why Aria has been suppressing your ability. So you don’t end up like her.”
A cold dread dripped down my spine. “What do you mean,” I asked, my voice hollow, “like her?”
Ren’s patience snapped. His anger wasn't hot; it was cold, a glacial fury that made the air feel thinner. “Are you blind, Kashikoi?” he hissed, the name a lash. “I thought I trained you to be more observant than that. To see what people try to hide.” He leaned in, his intense eyes searching mine, demanding I see it. “Haven’t you seen her scars?”
I thought of Aria. Her kind smile, her gentle hands, the way she always wore high-collared shirts or jackets, even in the training halls. The way she flinched, just for a split second, at sudden, loud noises.
“God,” Ren continued, his voice a scornful whisper, “even I have, and I’ve only seen her in passing a few times. The latticework on her forearms when her sleeves ride up. The faint, precise lines behind her ears. She’s a caged animal to her handlers. She’s been tortured ever since her Guardian nature was discovered. For experimentation. For detainment. For control.”
The images formed in my mind, unwanted, horrifyingly clear. Aria, not in a lab coat, but strapped to a chair. Mark, not kissing her temple in a gentle lab, but adjusting a dial on a machine, his face a mask of conflicted duty. The scars weren’t from battles with shadow demons. They were from a government that revered Guardians in public and dissected them in private.
The rage that had sustained me evaporated, leaving behind a vast, hollow shame. It flooded in, cold and sickening, filling the space where my anger had been. I had been so wrapped up in my own feeling of betrayal, in my own wounded pride, that I had never once truly looked at the woman who had pulled me from my mundane world. I had never asked why she was so afraid. I had only seen the barrier, not the prison she was trying to build around me.
I looked down at the ground, at the intricate, glowing rune that kept our secrets from the hungry dark. My cheeks burned. The tears that came now were not of self-pity, but of a profound, ugly remorse. I had run to this cliff edge like a scared child, while the woman who had risked everything to keep me safe was living a nightmare, every single day, for my sake.
The shame was so complete, so heavy, it felt like it would drive me to my knees.
The shame was so complete, so heavy, it felt like it would drive me to my knees. I stared at the glowing lines of the rune, my own pathetic reflection shimmering in its silver light. I had been a screaming storm of hurt feelings, while Aria had lived for years in silent, scarred terror to keep me from the same fate.
I looked up at Ren. In the stark monochrome of the moonlight, I could see the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the set of his jaw that spoke of burdens I couldn’t imagine. He wasn’t just a squad leader in his late twenties. He was a veteran of this hidden war, bearing a history in the slight downturn of his mouth, a wisdom in his gaze that my twenty years of chaotic life couldn’t touch. My outburst felt childish. Petty.
A resolution cooled the heat in my veins, settling into something hard and determined. From now on, I would try to understand before I erupted. I would be slower to react, to let the anger take the wheel. I would not be the liability he thought I was.
Ren’s gloved hand shot out and grabbed my arms, his grip firm but not harsh, steadying me as I swayed on the edge of my own emotions. “Come on,” he said, his voice losing its razor edge, replaced by a flat, operational tone. “We should head back. It’s going to take a while.”
He released one arm to kneel and swipe his palm over the glowing rune on the ground. The silver light smeared and died under his touch, leaving only scorched black stone. The muffled silence popped, and the full force of the wind and distant forest sounds rushed back in.
“Why will it take so long?” I asked, confusion cutting through my remorse. “We’re not that far out, are we?”
Ren stood, brushing grit from his knees. He gave me a look that was pure, unadulterated disbelief. “Kashikoi, you ran almost thirty miles from the Academy grounds. In under an hour.” He stated it like a weather report, but the implication sank in, cold and leaden. “It took three scout teams to even pick up your trail after Haru reported you’d bolted. Your signature… it’s different now. Stronger. But chaotic.”
Thirty miles. The number didn’t connect to any feeling in my body. I hadn’t felt the distance, only the consuming need to flee. Now, as if his words had thrown a switch, the sudden, crushing weight of exhaustion landed on me all at once. My legs trembled. A deep ache settled into my bones.
“We can make it to the half-mark,” he said, already turning to scan the tree line, his posture tense. “Then I can call in a squad drone for extraction. But we need to move. Now.” His eyes, sharp and assessing, locked onto mine. “This is active shadow beast territory. The rune hid us. Now we’re a beacon.”
He pulled my academy-issued phone from his pocket and tossed it to me. I fumbled but caught it, the sleek device feeling alien in my sweaty palm. I shoved it into the pocket of my hoodie dress, the action feeling stupidly normal.
“Move,” he said, and then he was running.
I followed, my body protesting with a chorus of new aches. The sprint was nothing like my earlier, power-fueled flight. This was pure, grinding exertion. The burning in my lungs started within minutes, a searing pain that stole my breath. The numbness in my legs gave way to a hot, rubbery weakness that threatened to buckle my knees with every footfall.
The forest was a dark blur. My world narrowed to the pounding of my heart, the rasp of my breath, and Ren’s back, a constant, relentless silhouette ahead of me. After what felt like an eternity, a strangled sound tore from my throat. “Ren… please… stop.”
He skidded to a halt, turning with a flash of genuine annoyance. But he saw me doubling over, hands on my knees, gasping. He didn’t speak, just pulled a canteen from his belt and tossed it to me. I caught it, my hands shaking.
I unscrewed the cap and drank, gulping the cool water down like I’d been crawling through a desert. It spilled down my chin, mixing with the sweat and dirt.
“Easy,” he said, his voice tight. “Save some for the rest of the run. This is exactly what I mean. You wasted everything getting out here. Didn’t conserve a single ounce for the return trip.” He took the canteen back as I straightened up, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “When you’re in a squad, Kashikoi, you don’t get to burn your fuel on tantrums. You think. You assess. Your life, and the lives of your team, depend on it.”
The scolding was deserved. I didn’t let the old, defensive heat rise. I just nodded, still catching my breath. “Me and Tsubaki,” I managed between pants, “we were planning on joining the Military Police after externship. It’s safer.”
Ren snorted, a short, derisive sound. He took a swig from the canteen himself. “You mean the stuck-up assholes who’ve never seen a day in real combat?” He capped the canteen and clipped it back to his belt, his eyes scanning the darkened woods around us. “Come on, Kashikoi. You can do better than that. That scythe certainly thinks so.”
I didn’t let myself get angry at the comment. That was just how he was. Brutally honest. He saw potential, even when it was buried under my own stupidity. I was about to say something, to ask what he thought I should do, when the feeling hit me.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a pressure, a sudden, dense quiet that swallowed the night insects and the rustle of leaves. The air grew thick, heavy, and cold. The hairs on my arms stood on end. Ren went absolutely still, his hand drifting slowly to the hilt of the sword at his hip. His eyes met mine, all irritation gone, replaced by a lethal focus.
Suddenly, I felt a heavy presence around us.