Even in unconsciousness, Gaël wanted to scream. To scream his denial, to howl his grief, but only darkness answered, thick, unmoving, absolute.
His thoughts spun wildly, torn between the judgment he had just faced and the brutal disappearance of his mentor. He wanted to cling to the moment, to freeze this fall into darkness, just long enough to catch a sign, anything. A tremor, a breath, a crack in the shadow that might say: Brann is still here.
But deep inside, an unyielding truth was already taking hold. What falls into the depths of the Umbra... never comes back.
And yet, within that void, something stirred, as if to wash away the pain threatening to consume him.
A message, not spoken, not written, but etched directly into his mind, each word searing into him like a brand, carving itself into his soul:
_ _ _
[The Path of the Severance]
Awakened Blade : (Disciple) – "The One Who Hears the Blade"
"Steel cuts steel, but will guides the edge."
Find the Fracture in Matter : "The world is woven with fibers. Find the weakness, and it shall fall beneath your blade."
[Legacy of Kael of the Thousand Cuts]
"He split the same air a thousand times before realizing the first cut would have been enough."
The Severance That Learns :"Kael was a prodigy of the Severance, but his obsession with perfection nearly drove him mad."
"His legend that the perfect cut lies not in repetition, but in the moment."
_ _ _
A new legacy. Similar to the first, yet undeniably different.
The words repeated themselves over and over.
They were now etched within him, inescapable. He had to embrace them, make them his, or be devoured by their echo. And so he did, slowly, painfully. It felt as though a knife was slicing through his thoughts without rest, forcing him to absorb the teaching fully. But once he surrendered, truly surrendered, he felt peace.
_ _ _
His body was tossed around like a weightless burden.
When consciousness finally returned, his eyelids cracked open with effort, revealing a broad back, bare-chested, smeared with grime and exhaustion. A deep voice rumbled in his ears, familiar:
"Finally awake? About time."
Then his body tilted and was unceremoniously dropped onto solid ground. As if he were too heavy, or simply a nuisance.
"We had to take turns hauling you up, you know? Wasn't exactly easy. Two days in a coma, you really slowed us down, and forced us to take some detours too. But hey... we're almost out."
Kaien stretched with a grimace, his shoulders cracking under the strain of accumulated effort. Nearby, Nono's face hovered above Gaël's, eyes wide with worried curiosity. He watched Gaël's every twitch like an animal guarding an injured packmate.
Further off, Gaël spotted Rai.
"Maera… she…?"
"She fell," Rai said flatly. "Same with Brann." He hesitated, then added, "I don't know what you saw… or what that blade did to you. But the aftermath wasn't pretty."
Kaien nodded. "Here, drink this. Then get up, we've probably got Altered on our trail. Can't afford to stick around."
With a superhuman effort, Gaël tilted his head in a slow nod. His chest felt like it was filled with lead, each step toward the surface peeling away a part of his soul. And yet, he forced himself forward alone, feet dragging through the gloom, the weight of his pack gone, but his hand clenched tightly around the crude sword Kaien had carried for him while he slept.
"There was this too," Kaien said, holding out the lumiphage. "No idea what it is, but it belonged to your master."
Gaël reached for the object. Its straps had been torn, shredded by the dying convulsions of the HollowBorn. He stared at it a moment, its surface still smooth, unblemished. Then, without a word, he tied it to his belt as best he could.
Their ascent was silent, sometimes grueling, sometimes more forgiving, but each of them was lost in thought, haunted by what had just passed. Everyone carried something now. Something that didn't need to be shared.
As the trio made their way through a narrow corridor, its rough walls stained with the splatters of shadowy battles, Gaël felt the echo of the lessons carved into him by the legacy. The image of the blade rose in his mind, not to evoke pain, but to shape his resolve. He remembered the words burned into his being, the teachings of the Severance, etched in him like red-hot brands.
'Steel cuts steel, but will guides the edge. Find the weakness, and the world shall fall beneath your blade.'
Each syllable split a crack through the storm in his mind, forcing him forward despite the weight of doubt.
But what does it really mean?
He gripped the hilt of the sword dragging at his side, clumsy, unbalanced, yet the only gift Brann had left him. And in the worn metal, he felt a strange resonance, as if the blade carried the imprint… of an inescapable fate.
As they moved away from the place of awakening, the group entered a maze of forgotten tunnels, relics from a time when light and shadow danced together in a cruel, endless waltz.
The silence of their ascent was broken only by the distant crack of falling debris… or the muffled breath of some abomination stalking the dark.
He had crossed a threshold.
He had absorbed the teaching of Irel the Inconstant: that a blade carries no weight in its metal, but in the intent behind it.
He had understood that striking without purpose was just wasted effort. But now, a new doubt gnawed at him.
What if everything Brann taught me… everything I've repeated thousands of times… was just the foundation? What if the cut I thought was perfect was only a sketch?
He had sharpened the motion, polished the gesture. Day after day, he'd hammered stone with unwavering discipline, convinced that mastery was born of repetition, that perfection came from the endurance of the body, the discipline of the arm. And yet, now the Severance, through Kael's silent legacy, whispered a harsher truth, one that demanded far more:
Repetition dulls, it misleads, it drives one mad…
But the true cut, the one that breaks chains, exists only once. It is a total act, a decision without return.
He clenched his jaw, furrowed his brow. His gaze bored into the darkness ahead, as if searching for a crack, a hidden meaning, a confirmation.
What if I'm misunderstanding it all?
Then, like a blade slipping beneath the skin of his thoughts, the idea returned: Find the weakness.
It wasn't a technique, nether a sequence to memorize. It was a way of being, a compass. And so, for a moment, he wondered how to follow it.
'How do you find a weakness that refuses to show itself? How do you perceive what does not want to be seen? Is it even possible?'
He had no answer, but somehow, deep within, he knew this was the direction he had to follow.
Gradually, the darkness gave way to a faint glow, barely perceptible in the distance. The Altered, manifestations of corruption, seemed to lurk in the corners of the shadowed labyrinth, but the presence of his companions lent him a quiet strength.
And when they finally reached the Lutech elevator, bathed in the light of a dawning world, Gaël felt something shift inside him.
Every grueling step, every breath torn from desolation, every cut given and received had sharpened his resolve.
Pain had become will, and the blade in his hand, no longer just a tool, was now a symbol.
A symbol of the path ahead.
The path shaping the man he sought to becomen heir to Brann, and to every swordbrothers who came before.