Chương 133: Chapter 106: The Crimson Crescent Returns

The applause was slow and too quiet to belong after something that large had fallen. The Crimson Elf stood between two white birches. A black crescent clasp rested at his throat, small enough to miss and impossible to mistake once memory placed it there. One boot remained on the burned fence line, while the other turned slightly outwards around the old damage that changed how he carried weight.

Time had not altered the narrow face, pale hair, or the expression of someone inspecting work completed by a tool he had not expected to survive. Talia forced herself between us despite the blood on her face and the bruising around her throat. The elf's attention passed over her sword, the damaged Grapevine stance, and the exhaustion she could no longer hide. Then he looked at the veins still visible beneath my arms.

"You have no doe this time to spill herself and save your blood from me, human." The Blackpine returned in pieces: white hide against dark soil, the albino doe opened where she fell, blood running into roots, and the elf watching while the ritual selected what it would take first.

"What did you put inside me?" I asked. His gaze lowered to the Heartwood Bird.

"Very little. You carried most of it there yourself." Talia raised her blade. The arm remained steady, although the shoulder behind it shook once before settling.

"Come closer and explain."

"You remain willing to borrow courage from your rank, Lady Kirra." Her expression did not change, but the name struck more cleanly than an insult. The point of her sword lowered by less than an inch before anger returned it to line.

"And you remain outside reach," she said. The elf looked towards the dead demon. His eyes passed over the split vessel, the opened chambers, and the wine-dark pressure cooling inside them. Something like amusement moved across his face.

"It was instructed to retrieve a heart. It appears to have found several poor imitations."

"You sent it," I said.

"I pointed hunger towards an old scent. Others gave the hunger shape." Talia's grip changed. The movement was small, but the knuckles went white around the hilt. Her attention dropped to the demon's chest before returning to the Elf. Recognition had already connected the blood-wine endurance to her grandfather; the Elf's answer turned that recognition into anger sharpened by guilt.

"Others," she repeated. The elf inclined his head towards her as though she had completed a lesson correctly.

"Inherited craft has a way of travelling beyond the intentions of its custodians."

"Do not speak to me about intention." Her voice had lost every trace of polish. She took one step towards the ridge, and the Elf's smile widened by almost nothing.

"No," he said.

"That would be unkind." Talia's blade moved, but the distance remained too great. The Elf looked past her towards the dark veins ending in my ring fingers. His interest made the pain feel exposed.

"You call yourself human because no better word has claimed you," he said.

"That convenience will not remain."

"Then give me the word."

"Words given too early become cages. Your own blood appears eager to instruct you."

"My blood does not speak."

"It thinks." The Heartwood Bird pulsed beneath my shirt. Talia stepped forwards, no longer testing the distance. The ridge was empty before her foot finished settling. No branch shifted, no print formed, and Veinfinder found only old sap, shallow ore, and fading warmth where the Elf's boots had rested. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Talia reached the birches in three strides and cut through the space he had occupied as if speed could force absence to answer. The blade entered the trunk behind him and opened pale wood beneath the bark. She tore it free and searched the slope without waiting for me. Grapevine Footwork carried her between trees, but the earlier grace had disappeared. Each change of direction struck the ground harder than required, driven by anger rather than concealment, and twice she checked empty ground she had already cleared.

I followed more slowly with Veinfinder open. The Elf had left no blood, fibre, print, or pressure trail beyond two shallow disturbances in the ash. One ended beside the birch. The other never began. Whether he had stood there physically or projected himself through something nearby mattered less than the fact that he had seen the veins, recognised them, and spoken to Talia as though both her name and her family's work belonged inside the same account.

She returned only after the demon's outer plates had begun cooling. Blood still marked her temple, and one hand remained closed around the hilt tightly enough to prevent the fingers shaking.

"He knew my name," she said. I looked at the dead demon and the dark channels taught to keep a ruined body functioning beyond the point where wounds should have ended it.

"He knew mine before I did." Talia did not laugh. She stood over the opened chest, and her gaze stopped at every place wine-dark tissue had contracted around damage. Whatever her grandfather had traded, promised, or permitted remained outside the words she would give me. The demon's body had brought part of it into the clearing.

"When you said purchased endurance," I began.

"I know what I said."

"You recognised the chambers."

"I recognised a principle."

"And your grandfather." Her jaw tightened.

"I recognised arrogance."

"That is not the same answer."

"It is the one I can give without turning a dead creature into a family confession." She crouched beside the demon and used her sword to separate one damaged plate. The movement remained controlled, but the blade entered farther than the tissue required.

"The thing had his work inside it?" I asked.

"I do not know."

"You sound angry enough to know."

"I am angry enough to understand what the resemblance costs." She left the answer there. The demon's black vessel had collapsed around the Cinderline cut. Beastcraft showed constructed anatomy rather than a natural organ: smaller chambers grown or assembled around a central receptacle, each reinforced to accept pressure from somewhere beyond the body's ordinary supply. Veinfinder traced the channels towards the missing centre. One piece beneath the sternum continued carrying organised pressure.

It was small enough to fit inside my palm and shaped too deliberately to be an accidental growth. I opened the surrounding plates with the cold Cinderline while Talia watched. The falchion served well enough as a cutting tool, although every movement reminded me it expected another style. Its longer edge separated connective tissue cleanly where the axe would have forced the body apart. The fragment lay behind the ruptured vessel.

Dark crystal had grown through red bone, curved along one side and cut flat along the other. A narrow socket waited at its centre. The Heartwood Bird became hot when I lifted it. Talia's hand moved and stopped short of my wrist.

"Do not attach that here."

"I am holding it away."

"Put it down." The pressure bypassed my grip before I could obey. The shard pulled through my fingers and struck the Heartwood Bird beneath my shirt with a hard click. Heat folded through the relic. The Demon-Vessel Shard locked beside the Crimson Setting Fragment as though both had been broken from the same larger design.

EQUIPMENT UPDATED Trinket: Heartwood Bird with Crimson Setting Fragment and Demon-Vessel Shard Rank: Unknown Quality: Relic, incomplete Effects: +1 SPI +4 INT -1 CON -2 WIL The additional Intelligence entered without clarity.

Every structure in the clearing became easier to understand and harder to ignore: the demon's false chambers, the supports severed during the fight, the routes the Elf might have used, Talia's damaged stance, and the precise distance between each answer she had given and the knowledge she still guarded. Then the Will penalty settled. The world did not become louder. Refusal became quieter.

STAT UPDATE Name: Cael Vey Rank: Copper (mid), Iron (late) provisionally recognised STR: 21 (+7) DEX: 12 (+2) CON: 21 (+2) INT: 19 (+4) SPI: 16 (+1) WIL: 5 (-2) The Cinderline supplied three points of Strength now that I could equip it. The new shard added two more Intelligence and removed another point of Will. The numbers presented the exchange cleanly enough to resemble consent. Talia reached towards the relic, then stopped before touching it.

"Can you remove the shard?" I pulled at the curved piece. The skin beneath it tightened as though my chest objected to the attempt, and pain travelled into both ring fingers. I released it.

"No." She looked towards the place where the Crimson Elf had stood.

"Of course not."

"You expected this?"

"I expected him to leave something behind. I hoped the demon had already been enough." The Woodsman's Axe remained embedded in the ruined chest with its haft broken. The Cinderline rested cold in my hand, unlocked through a skill it had not been purchased to serve. The demon lay dead, but its constructed vessel had joined the relic more readily than it had obeyed death. Talia stood with one hand against a birch.

Her breathing remained uneven, and the blood-wine chambers cooled behind her while the anger towards her grandfather had nowhere useful to go. For the first time since I had known her, no joke arrived to cover the cost.