Chapter 45

The frost has thinned into mist, drifting softly across the scarred stone. Kalt stands with the spellcaster sword at his side, watching Berwick quietly close the lacquered weapon case.

Kalt XVIII
(staring at the case again)
Wait… one more.

Berwick raises an eyebrow as Kalt kneels, eyes drawn not to the gleaming energy rifle or the shifting morph weapon—but to the scythe.

It rests quietly in a fur-lined groove, its long haft wrapped in worn leather, its obsidian blade curving with eerie elegance. Etched into its shaft are ancestral runes of frost and fracture.

Berwick von Blutschwert
(curious)
The old kind of fear, huh?

Kalt grips the scythe. It’s heavy—unlike the songlight resonance of the spellcaster sword—but not unwieldy. He spins it once with both hands. The blade whistles through the air, kicking up snow in a crescent arc.

For a moment, his form seems to blur—not with speed, but with purpose. There’s instinct in the way he pivots. There’s history in the way the weapon responds.

Kalt XVIII
(breathing slowly)
It doesn’t sing.
But it remembers.

Berwick
(nods approvingly)
That one was forged at the beginning of the Second Northern War. It’s seen more death than the entire population of Minamo.

Kalt XVIII
(still holding the scythe)
Then it might be useful if we ever get dragged into a Third.

Berwick
(mutters)
Optimism’s overrated anyway.

Kalt plants the scythe into the ground beside him, standing between both weapons now—one forged of rhythm and thought, the other of fear and blood. He looks up at the Raureif banners, now fluttering again in the breeze.

Kalt XVIII
(quietly)
One for the world I’m rebuilding.
And one for the world that might try to burn it down again.