From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 51: The Unbound

The chamber had not gone still.

Even with the mirror fractured, even with the creature impaled and writhing beneath Vaerin’s blade, the chant continued. Faint. Distant. The voices, now reducing. Each voice dying like a candle snuffed in a storm.

But the light that remained did not fade.

It twisted.

Marien pressed her back to the broken wall, breath heaving. Blood dripped from a gash along her ribs. "It’s not dying!."

Leon stepped between her and the creature as its limbs cracked again, reforming from smoke. His blade trembled in his grip—not from fear, but from the resonance still threading through the floor.

Ashveil pulsed with every heartbeat.

Vaerin staggered back. The First Lord’s armour peeled like old bark. His form faltered, flickering with each breath. He did not fall, but neither did he rise again.

"You must destroy it," Vaerin rasped. "Before it forms again."

Leon looked to the shattered mirror—and the fracture lines now spidering across the chamber walls. The reflection was gone. But the memories it stole had not dispersed. They hung in the air like ash, whispering truths Leon had buried.

He saw his father’s face. His own hands, bloodied. The night he swore he would not repeat the legacy he’d inherited.

Now that legacy demanded action.

"Help her," Leon told Vaerin.

Then he ran.

Not away. Down.

Toward the mouth still yawning at the edge of the crypt—the path the creature had crawled from. With each step, the stone shifted beneath him. Not unstable. Alive.

As if it recognised him.

The stairwell was narrow and slick with time. The air below churned like breath in a sealed chamber. No torches lit the descent—only the pulse of Ashveil, and the faint glow of runes that lit up as he passed. freewebnøvel.coɱ

At the bottom, the world widened.

A great vault stretched out, circular and vast, like the underside of the world’s spine. Pillars of bound obsidian rose like fangs. In the centre stood a dais, upon which floated a sphere of shifting crystal—the true seal.

It was cracked.

And beneath it, chained to the floor by rings of magic-script and iron, lay something vast. Not a creature. But a prison made flesh.

It lifted its head as Leon approached.

It looked like him.

"Blood of Thorne," it said, with the voices of all who came before him. "We are unbound."

And the chains began to break.

Leon didn’t slow.

Ashveil vibrated in his grip, the blade nearly singing from the pressure in the vault. The word—unbound—had weight. It was not just prophecy. It was a warning.

He stepped closer to the dais. The chained thing—his reflection’s echo, the culmination of everything sealed—watched him with eyes that shimmered like shattered glass. No malice. No warmth. Only certainty.

"You were made from us," the chained being said. "Not to lead. To remember our suffering. To carry our burden."

"And now?" Leon’s voice echoed into the chamber. "You want me to surrender?"

"No," it answered with a snarl. "To choose."

The runes beneath Leon’s boots flared. He looked down—each one was from the Vault’s trial. His pain. His loss. His triumphs. A circle of memory and magic, binding him in place.

He struggled but stepped forward anyway.

The crystal above the dais spun faster, fractured light casting flickers of history across the vault walls—battles long erased, the rise of the Thorne bloodline, the truth Vaerin had buried. A lineage built on sacrifice. On sealed horrors.

The chained figure stirred again. "This prison was not made to contain us. It was only made to delay the next bearer from facing us."

Leon stared at it, then took a stance. "Then I’ll face you now."

Ashveil erupted in light. The chained being did not flinch.

"Then take the blade," it said. "And finish what the First Lord failed to do."

Leon froze. "What blade?"

Behind the figure, the shadows parted—revealing a second sword, floating above a plinth of molten glass. It was dark, coiled in bands of silver and threads of light. It hummed—not like Ashveil. Darker. Hungrier.

"The Blade of Binding," said the voices. "Forged with the first oaths. Fed by every heir’s silence. You cannot end the chain without it."

Leon moved slowly, the vault reacting to every step. Ashveil dimmed as he reached the new sword. When he reached out, both blades pulsed.

They didn’t fight.

They harmonized instead.

And then he understood.

Ashveil was the sword of memory.

This.... this was the sword of truth.

Leon gripped both—and the vault screamed.

The chained being rose, It walked toward Leon, and Leon met it halfway. They stood face to face, not as enemies, but as halves.

"You are Thorne," it said.

"And I’m done running from that," Leon replied.

He drove both swords forward—into the creature, into himself, into the echo of every buried voice.

Light swallowed the vault.

Above, in the crypt, the sigils burned gold.

And for a moment, all was still.

The vault did not stay silent for long.

The moment stretched—light still curling through the cracks, Ashveil and the Blade of Binding buried deep in the shared chest of the unbound form. But silence was never peace. Not here. Not in a place built on remembrance and betrayal.

A slow breath echoed through the chamber, not Leon’s, nor the chained one’s—but the vault itself. The crystal seal pulsed once. Then again. The pillars groaned.

And the body slumped.

Not forward.

Upward.

The shape Leon had pierced began to unfurl—peeling back memories upon memories, shedding identity. Its skin became smoke, its bones threads of glowing white script. And from that haze, something else began to form.

A third shape.

Smaller. Undefined. A child, barely older than Leon had been when he first picked up a sword. It had no face or features—only a voice.

"I don’t want to be forgotten."

Leon stepped back, his blades were dripping not with blood, but words. Whole phrases fell from them, phrases he’d spoken in anger, promises whispered at night, regrets too sharp to bury. They had taken form now, they hit the floor and burned releasing white smoke.

"You are the sorrow and pain of those before me," Leon said, barely above a whisper. "But you are not my own."

The child-figure hesitated. "Then what am I?"

Leon raised both blades.

"Deadweight."

He swept the swords outward—not in violence, but in a crossing arc, a seal of his own. The light surged—not from the crystal, but from the wounds left behind.

And the child screamed.

Not in pain.

In release.

The vault cracked once more—and this time, the air rushed inward. The pressure reversed. The chamber inhaled its own weight, sucking the memories, the voices, the fear—all of it—back into the seal.

Leon stood alone on the dais.

The swords gone.

His hands empty.

The chains lay broken at his feet, the runes dimmed to ash.

Above, the crypt ceiling shuddered.

Dust rained down.

It was time to return.

The air shifted—no longer heavy, but uncertain. Footsteps echoed faintly above, the sounds of cadets regrouping, calls rising as ward-sigils pulsed in fresh cadence. The citadel hadn’t fallen, not entirely.

But it had changed.

Leon ascended slowly, each step up from the vault like a breath drawn from deep within the soul. He emerged into the broken chamber, where Marien stood, sword still in hand, blood smeared across her cheek.

She turned, eyes wide—then narrowed with disbelief. "You—?"

"I’m fine," Leon said.

Behind her, Vaerin’s form had crumbled fully. Nothing left but a hollow shell of dust and memory-bound armor. The First Lord had given his last strength for this.

Marien stepped forward, placing her palm over Leon’s heart. "Is it done?"

He didn’t answer.

Because he knew this wasn’t the end.