Return of the Mythic Bloodline

Chapter 492: Celestia

Outside the cave revealed a sparse forest of widely spaced trees. They were at the bottom of a valley, with towering hills rising around them from every direction. Although the trees were scarce, each one stretched tall into the sky, their dense canopies catching what little sunlight managed to filter down to the ground. Those same leaves likely explained how she and Tristan had survived the fall from such a height.

Perhaps because they were so deep in the ravine, the land here remained untouched by the corruption that the monsters had spread across the world above.

It took Ezekiel six hours to find her way out of the ravine, even with her superhuman speed and senses working in full.

Once she cleared the hills, she sprinted across the vast wasteland beyond, running on physical strength alone. Every last drop of her Soulforce was committed to a single task, holding the veil around Tristan’s body, keeping his wounds from worsening with each jolt and stride. He was unconscious for most of the journey, but in the intervals when he surfaced back into awareness, he would murmur against her shoulder in a thin, broken voice.

"Le-leave me b-behind, Sir Ezekiel."

"I-I’m not worthy..."

Each time, without breaking her stride, she snapped back at him with the same words.

"Shut your mouth if you aren’t going to be useful."

After an unbroken sprint of several hours, she reached the border of Valtorian. She passed through the main gate without slowing and ran straight for the infirmary.

At the threshold of the entrance, her legs gave out beneath her.

"S-save him," she murmured, her damp cyan hair plastered to her skin with sweat.

Several figures rushed toward the entrance. Their outlines blurred and swam as Ezekiel’s vision began to close at the edges, and then the darkness took her.

When the vision returned, I found myself in a dimly lit room with white walls. Ezekiel lay on a narrow bed, her blue eyes fixed on the ceiling, her expression distant and turned inward. Beside her stood a woman in a long plain robe, her hands covered in white gloves. A nurse.

"You are a strong woman, miss," the nurse said in a polite tone. "It shocked me how you carried an injured man of his size with such a slight frame."

Ezekiel shifted slightly, uncomfortable. Her hand moved slowly to her face.

It was bare.

The realization settled over her all at once. She had run through the entire city with her face open for anyone to see.

"I heard the man you saved was a knight who went on the expedition with Twilight Sword," the nurse continued, adjusting something at the bedside. "He fell from the cliff while trying to save Twilight Sword." She released a quiet sigh of relief. "Now that he has returned, Twilight Sword must be safe as well. We have been praying day and night for his safe return."

She leaned a little closer and lowered her voice.

"You saved someone of very high standing. The officials from the court are already speaking with the knight. You might receive a considerable rew—"

Ezekiel was off the bed before the sentence could finish. She hit the door at a run, her bare feet slapping against the stone floor of the room.

’Damn it. My identity will be revealed. I need to stop Tristan,’ she muttered to herself as she shouldered open the door and broke into a sprint down the corridor. She followed the hallway to its far end, homing in on the dense cluster of Soulforce signatures she could sense gathered in the room beyond.

"I already told you it’s the truth." Tristan’s voice bled through the door, heavy with shock and something that sounded like grief. "At first I couldn’t believe it either. But it’s the truth that Sir Ezekiel is—"

"You bastard!"

Ezekiel threw the door open hard enough for it to crack against the wall.

The room held Tristan upright in a bed, his entire torso wrapped thickly in bandages. Around him stood four knights and one man in formal attire whose face Ezekiel recognized the instant her eyes landed on him. Investigation unit of the empire.

"How dare you barge in like that?" one of the knights muttered, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. The blade edged fractionally out of its scabbard.

"Stand down, Sir Ned." Tristan’s voice was firm. "She is the woman who carried me from the border of Monster Land."

The knight named Ned lifted his hand from the hilt and began to speak, but the investigator turned first.

"Is that so..." He studied Ezekiel for a moment with careful, measuring eyes. "Thank you for saving our knight, Miss. How should I address you?"

"Her name is Celestia," Tristan said, cutting cleanly across whatever expression had started forming on Ezekiel’s face. He turned his gaze to the investigator and held it there. "Please refrain from investigating the person who saved my life, Mr. Kite."

"I am only doing my job, Sir Tristan. What you have just revealed cannot be taken lightly. If it is true, the entire Valtorian Empire will be thrown into uproar."

A frown settled over Tristan’s face, his eyes narrowing.

"I don’t know how many times I have to say it to make myself clear. You don’t understand how heavily it weighs on me as a knight to keep repeating it. Still, I will say it one more time."

He drew a slow breath. His fists closed at his sides, bearing the weight of what he was about to speak.

"Sir Ezekiel Silverhart, the Twilight Sword, died after falling from the edge of the cliff."

"Eh? I didn’t see that coming," I said with an amused smile, hovering above the room in my translucent form.

Tristan explained how he had grabbed Ezekiel at the last moment inside the cave, just as the structure was on the verge of collapse. But while making their way out, the ground beneath them gave way and they plunged together into the deep ravine below.

Midway through the fall, Ezekiel had wrapped the last remnant of his Soulforce around Tristan, shielding him from the force of the drop. In doing so, his own body absorbed the full impact of thousands of metres of freefall. He could not survive it.

Tristan had wanted to bring the body back, but the monsters gathered at the bottom of the ravine had forced him to flee. By now, the body had most likely been devoured. What he had managed to bring back was only Ezekiel’s sword.

Tristan finished his account and held the sword out toward Kite.

The story was so seamless, so internally consistent, that even I might have believed it had I not witnessed with my own eyes what had actually taken place in that ravine.

Ezekiel wore a blank expression of genuine confusion through most of it. But the moment she saw Tristan present the sword, something shifted behind her eyes. The confusion settled into quiet understanding.

He was protecting her identity. And more than that, he was drawing a clean line beneath the Chapter of Ezekiel’s life as Twilight Sword that had haunted her for ten years, closing it off as though it had ended with that fall, so that whatever came next could begin without the weight of it.

It was remarkable how thoroughly he had already come to understand her, given that she had barely spoken to him across the eight days they spent in that cave. For most of it, Tristan had been having a conversation with the wall.

"H-how could it have happened?" Ned murmured, pressing his fingers hard against his forehead. "The Twilight Sword is no longer with us. We had finally won the war against the monsters and brought down their king, and this is the price we paid for it."

The other knights reacted in kind, the grief moving through the room in a slow, heavy wave. It was difficult for any of them to accept that the absolute shield and sword of the empire had fallen. Not to a monster. Not to a great knight from a rival empire. But to the indifferent pull of gravity.

Kite offered his condolences, then led the squad of knights out of the room. The door closed behind them, leaving Ezekiel and Tristan alone in the quiet.

"Why did you say that the Twilight Sword died?" Ezekiel demanded. Her face carried an expression that gave nothing away.

"Well, if I had said that the Twilight Sword was the one who carried me on her back all the way from Monster Land to the empire while crying buckets like a small girl, I imagine that would have been considerably harder for them to believe."

She crossed the room without a word, pressed one finger firmly into his chest, and muttered, "Don’t be delusional. I never cried."

"Aghh... I-I’m still a patient, please... mercy," Tristan groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Hmph." She withdrew her hand. "And why named me Celestia?"

"You don’t like it? I chose it because your hair and your eyes remind me of the beautiful blue sky."

"Who said that you can give me name?"

Ezekiel gave him a sharp murderous stare as she continued, "Just you wait. As soon as you heal, I will kill you."

With that she shut the door behind her.