Chapter 10: Worthy.

The square was silent, the kind of silence I had once commanded with a thought.

The boy’s mother held him against her chest. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. His breathing came in thin, shallow gasps. The black veins had left no visible marks on his skin, but whatever they had touched beneath it was not the same.

I looked at the Inker. He stood over his instruments with perfect composure. He had watched this before, would watch this again many times. The soldiers flanked him with the same indifference. The Inker’s smile had not changed.

“Next,” he said.

The crowd stirred -nobody moved forward. The children had all received their marks. The ones who watched no longer bounced on their feet. They stayed back, horrified. One girl was crying. It wasn’t Sara. The Inker’s gaze found us. It settled on me first, then Ash. “The adults, then.” His voice carried across the square. “Unless they’ve reconsidered.”

It was a challenge. One he perhaps wished we’d take him up on. Ash’s hand found my wrist. “Are you still going through with this?” she whispered.

I did not pull away. “Are you?”

She looked at the boy and then at his mother. She looked at the needle the Inker was already cleaning with a cloth. “Yes,” Ash said. I said nothing. She took that for what it was.

Ash stepped forward and the crowd parted for her. I watched her walk, back straight, stride steady. It was not the walk of a Hero towards death -there was a grace in that, unearned or not. This was the walk of men toward the hangman’s noose. She knelt before the Inker without being asked. Something inside me clenched as I watched her.

I did not pray, but I did hope.

“Arm,” he said. She extended it -the man didn’t take it gently. The needle dipped into the vial and the ink shifted. The Inker pressed it to her skin.

The needle was cold against Ash’s skin. Then it wasn’t anything at all.

The world went away, the way it had when she’d used the Hero’s Requiem. One moment she was kneeling in the square, and the next she was somewhere else. There was complete darkness, all around her, stretching in every direction unto infinity. Ash had been here before, not this place, but places like it. The space between one breath and the next, when the Gods reached in and measured your worth. Where the [System] saw you. She wasn’t surprised, not after what she had felt just moments prior.

Ash had given her life once already. That was the thought that came first, unbidden. She had given it in the throne room of the Demon Queen, had burned what she was and had called it victory. All of her had been fed to a spell carved into her soul. And then Orvyn had knelt beside her in the rubble, with tears on her face, and had taken what little was left.

Ash had died once. She had not feared it then. She feared it now, and she did not know what to make of that.

The Hero’s bone deep bravado was gone, or nearly so. Something in these last few days had loosened its grip. Was it the river or the fire? Perhaps it was a demon sitting across from her in the dark, asking questions she’d never thought to hear. Perhaps it was as simple as the sting of betrayal being sharper than the death itself.

Still, the willingness to be consumed, to step into something that might destroy her so that the one behind her would have the chance to run -that was still there. It lived in a part of her that no betrayal could reach. A hero doesn’t choose who needs saving.

She thought of Lysanthia, standing at the edge of the crowd, watching her walk forward. She thought of the way Lysanthia’s jaw had tightened -just barely. If the Ink killed Ash, Lysanthia would know. Lysanthia could run. Ash hoped she wouldn’t. For what it might mean for this village, and all the people in it, yet she didn’t want Lysanthia to die either.

How strange, that she wished Lysanthia live, when she had killed her in the first place. Ash did not understand the contradiction herself.

The darkness shifted, and something appeared. It was a screen -blue and transparent. The way a System screen should be. The way it had been, and yet not. It flickered before her like an ember in the wind.

Ash knew this. She had seen it every day of her life for twenty three years. The System had been as constant as the sky. So, it was here after all, and now it used this Ink, for some reason.

The screen was wrong. The edges were frayed, as if something had been tearing at them for a very long time. The blue was dimmer than she remembered -black lines cut across it, covering some of it. Text appeared on the screen, crawling across its surface slowly, slower than Ash remembered.

[Assessing…]

[Calculating Potential…]

There was a pause as the entire screen flickered.

[Gaining Insight…]

Then the errors came.

[WARNING: Mana signature predates current index by 984 years.]

[WARNING: Residual connection to Fate detected. Status: SEVERED. Echo strength: EXTREME.]

[WARNING: Soul level modification detected. Origin: Hero’s Requiem. Classification: UNKNOWN.]

[ERROR: Potential exceeds assessment parameters.]

[ERROR: Recalibrating…]

[ERROR: Recalibration failed.]

The screen shuddered and for a moment Ash thought it would shatter. It held, barely, and new text scrolled past. There were no errors now. Instead, there were titles, each slowly scrolling from the bottom of the screen to its zenith.

[The People’s Champion]

[The Selfless Blade]

[Winner Of The Endless Fight]

[She Who Walked Willingly Into The Dark]

……………….

Ash watched them scroll past. She did not need to think of what the titles meant or why she had them. She’d sooner have to think of her own name. The screen went still. Then, one final line came.

[The Last Hero]

The words sat in the dark for a long time. Ash stared at them. The Last. Not the greatest, or the mightiest. Her throat tightened and her hands clenched.

The screen flickered again, and new text formed. The assessment was done.

[Marks: 2]

Two. The Inker had been rather confident everyone would only receive one.

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[Sovereign Mark: SEVER]

Ash felt it settle into her left arm. It was a point of heat, like a blade pressing against her skin from the inside out.

Sever: a simple word that meant cutting and separation.She understood this one immediately. It was what she had always done. She had cut through hordes…cut through generals, cut through the Demon Queen herself.

And in the end, something had cut through her. It was honest. She could accept honest.

[Cipher Mark: VEIL]

The second mark settled into her right arm. This one was softer, almost gentle. Veil: this one meant illusion, or concealment.

The sadness came so quickly she had no defense for it. It rose from somewhere deep and pressed against the back of her eyes.

It finds. That’s what the Inker had said. Ash had not believed it then and she refused to believe it now. The screen flickered one last time and went dark. The world came back.

There was lanternlight. She was back in the square, back with the crowd. The Inker was standing over her, and his face had gone white. His hands were trembling. The instrument he held was shaking so finely she could hear it rattle. He had felt it.

Ash doubted he’d felt the true weight of it, of the System, but perhaps the man had felt its echo. That was enough to rattle him so.

Ash looked down at her arms, and there was a single dot on each wrist. No, the word had been Spark, right? The Sever was black, and the Veil was purple. They were so small she might have missed them, but she could feel them, warm beneath her skin. It was likely suddenly getting new fingers. Feeble fingers, but still.

She looked up at the Inker. He stared back at her. Ash smiled, and it was not a Hero’s smile. Just a tired woman’s.

“It seems I was found worthy after all.”

“Sovereign!” The Inker’s voice cracked on the word. He had to say it twice before the crowd understood. “And Cipher!”

The silence that followed was more than just reverence, there was fear there in equal measure. Only the Gods could say which of the two was stronger. I watched the silence move through them in the form of widened eyes and open mouths. The soldiers shifted their weight.

The Inker steadied himself and I watched the effort it took. His hands were still trembling when he turned to me. “You,” he said. “The half-demon.”

He had regained his composure, or most of it. It might have been an act, and if it was, the man was quite the performer. The sneer was back. Ash had shaken him, but he was recovering.Ash passed me on her way back and our eyes met for just a moment. She didn’t speak and her arm lightly brushed mine, though she could have easily walked without touching me at all.

I stepped forward. The crowd watched me the way crowds had always watched me. With fear and with fascination. This tasted different, though I did not understand why.

I knelt. It was easy to bend this time and not because I had grown accustomed to it, but because what came next would either kill me or make me something more than what I was now. Either outcome was acceptable. Either was better than being weak. I told myself that was why.

I extended my left arm and the Inker took it -his grip was rough. “If the Ink rejects you,” he said quietly, low enough that only I could hear, “I will not mourn.”