From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 90: The Sixth

The sigil scarred the valley like a wound that wouldn’t close.

It stretched for miles, too deep to fill, too exact to be natural. The earth bore its shape like it had been seared in by something older than flame. And it hummed now, low and steady, like a drumbeat through stone.

Leon felt it in his bones.

They camped just past the edge, in a ridge of broken granite where the trees refused to grow. There was no wood to burn, no safe perimeter to draw. So they sat in the dark, sharing quiet glances and passing food they could barely taste.

No one suggested a watch.

There was no point.

If the sixth seal wanted them, it wouldn’t wait for a gap in their vigilance.

Elena sat with her back against the stone, arms crossed loosely over her knees. She wasn’t trembling anymore. But she wasn’t calm either. Not exactly. She looked like someone who’d stopped bracing for pain—because she knew it was already coming.

Leon sat beside her.

"The pattern’s repeating."

She didn’t answer.

He kept his voice low. "Every seal breaks something. Then shows us what we’ve hidden. This one... it feels different."

"Because it’s beneath us." Her eyes opened slowly. "Not just in the land. In us."

He nodded.

In the distance, the sigil pulsed.

Not light. Not sound. Just presence.

It had started last hour. A pulse every minute, like breath. Or heartbeat.

Alden had tried to chart it, but gave up after two pages. Mira claimed she could hear it whispering between pulses, but no one else could. Callen refused to speak at all since crossing the mark.

Leon reached into his satchel and pulled out a strip of torn parchment—a remnant from the fifth seal’s flame.

He passed it to Elena. "I kept this."

She frowned. "It’s burned."

"It shouldn’t have survived at all."

Elena turned it in her fingers. Symbols scorched faintly along its edge. Not letters. Not runes. But shapes.

And as she looked, they shifted.

Only slightly.

Like breathing.

Her grip tightened. "It’s a map."

Leon blinked. "What?"

"Look at the curve. Here. And here. It’s not decoration. It’s the fissure. This whole seal is drawn beneath us. And this is its centre."

She jabbed her finger at a point halfway across the page.

Leon leaned in. "Then that’s where we go."

Tomas rose at the edge of camp. "Go where?"

Elena didn’t flinch. "To the scar’s heart."

Callen finally spoke. Just one word. Flat. Hollow.

"Madness."

Leon stood. "Maybe. But every seal has called us forward. We don’t stop now."

Alden added, "If this one is alive... it already knows we’re coming. The worst thing we could do is delay."

Silence fell again.

Then Tomas nodded once. "I’ll ride at the front."

They left before the moons dipped.

And as they passed the sigil’s deepest point, Elena whispered one more name into the wind—one no one heard but the stone.

And the scar pulsed back.

Not in rejection.

In welcome.

The wind shifted.

Not with chill, nor heat—but pressure. A kind of weight that pressed against the skin and whispered just beneath the ribs, like something crawling too close to the soul. Mira stopped humming. Her fingers gripped her reins hard enough to turn the knuckles pale. Ahead, the earth buckled with jagged turns, sharp enough to stagger any cart or beast. But they walked now. No mounts. No metal. Just boot against stone and breath against silence.

The sigil deepened as they moved.

Not visibly. But they felt it. Each step further from the ridge was a step into something older than name. Older than kingdoms. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t curse. It was memory etched into dirt—made flesh.

Leon touched the ground once.

The pulse answered him. A slow, low hum that buzzed up through his palm and into his jaw.

"I don’t like this," Mira muttered.

Alden was scribbling again, though he didn’t look at the page anymore. His eyes were glazed, focused on nothing, lips moving without sound. Elena glanced at him, then at Callen—who walked like he hadn’t slept in days, his eyes sunken, steps too light, like he might float away if no one watched.

They kept walking.

Hour by hour, the sky refused to turn. Dusk never ended. Dawn never came. Just that grey veil of unending not-night.

And then they reached it.

The centre of the scar.

It wasn’t marked by a tree or flame. It wasn’t grand.

Just a circle.

Ten paces wide.

Carved into the stone like a brand.

It was filled with ash.

Not the white kind. Not from wood.

Black ash. Heavy. Old. Thick as grave dust.

Elena knelt by it.

The wind stopped.

And when she touched the centre—

The world bent.

Not broke.

Bent.

She was no longer kneeling. No longer touching ash.

She stood in a hall of glass.

Empty.

Endless.

Light came from above, but no sky was visible. The air shimmered with memory. And voices whispered just beyond reach.

Then she saw them.

Not people.

Reflections.

Of herself.

Not fire-Elena.

Not mage-Elena.

But all the in-betweens.

The girl who held her mother’s hand at dusk. The apprentice with ink-stained fingers. The soldier who burned a town for one child’s life.

They watched her.

And for the first time since the first seal, Elena stepped back.

A voice echoed—not aloud, but inside her ribs.

"You’ve remembered. But what have you learned?"

Leon reached forward in the real world, trying to touch her shoulder.

But his hand passed through her.

"Elena—"

A wall of heat surged outward, throwing them back.

The ash ring rose.

Not in flame.

In light.

The sixth seal was opening.

And this one was not here to weigh.

It was here to reflect.

To show them not what they feared.

But what they’d become.

Behind Leon, Tomas shouted, dragging Callen out of the light’s edge. Alden dropped his journal and covered his face. Mira began to cry—quietly, without sobs. Like her eyes had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready for.

Leon didn’t move.

He stepped forward.

Into the ring.

And the light swallowed him whole.

Inside, he found no mirrors.

Just a sword.

His first.

Broken.

Held by a boy who wore his face.

The seal waited.

And the scars remembered.

The boy looked up.

He couldn’t have been more than twelve—barely shoulder-high to the man before him. His hair hung loose, matted with sweat and dirt. His face wasn’t angry, or even sad. Just tired. Not the kind that comes from battle or grief. The kind born from carrying something far too long, far too alone.

Leon stared at him.

At himself.

The boy gripped the broken blade with two hands. Its edge was chipped, dull—clearly not meant for real combat. Just a trainer’s castoff. But he held it like a lifeline. Like the only thing keeping him from falling.

Leon took a step forward.

The boy flinched.

Not in fear—but defiance.

"You left me," the boy said.

Leon stopped.

"I tried to forget," he replied, after a pause.

"That’s the same thing."

Silence stretched between them, thick and bitter.

Leon lowered his head. "I didn’t know what else to do."

"You knew." The boy’s knuckles whitened around the hilt. "You knew what it cost. You chose to forget. The alley. The blood. The man with the silver rings—"

"Stop."

"Why? You carry his mark still."

Leon’s fingers twitched. Instinct pulled them to his belt, but his sword wasn’t there. Not here.

The boy stepped forward.

"You forged yourself into something sharp so no one could touch you again. You trained until your hands bled. You learned to kill before you learned to forgive. And every time someone got too close..."

Leon didn’t answer.

"...you pushed them away," the boy finished.

Leon looked up.

And saw not one child now, but two.

The second was smaller. Fragile. Crying in the dark of a cellar. His voice hoarse from screaming a name no one came to answer.

Then a third.

A teenager. Blood on his knuckles. Breathing hard over a corpse. His hands shaking not from guilt—but from the thrill.

Then more.

Ten, twenty, a hundred—shifting ages, shifting faces—but all him.

Every version of himself he’d buried.

The hall of glass pulsed.

Reflections everywhere now.

And in every one, a crack.

"I’m not that boy anymore," Leon whispered.

"No," said the child before him. "You’re worse."

Leon stepped back.

And the reflections stepped with him.

Hundreds of him—angry, scared, cold, brutal, kind.

Too many to hold.

Too many to fight.

He fell to his knees.

Then—

A hand.

Not his.

Not a child’s.

Elena’s.

Her voice didn’t echo. It just was.

"You don’t have to carry them alone."

Leon didn’t look up.

But he gripped her hand back.

And for the first time, the reflections paused.

Not vanished.

Just... watched.

Leon stood.

The boy with the broken sword was still there.

Still waiting.

Still watching.

Leon approached, knelt, and placed a palm over the boy’s heart.

"I’m sorry," he said. "Not because I forgot. But because I thought forgetting was the only way forward."

The boy stared.

Then slowly—slowly—let the blade fall.

It hit the glass without a sound.

And then all the others—every Leon—did the same.

Steel met silence.

And vanished.

The boy smiled once.

Then faded.

And the seal broke.

Not in fire.

Not in light.

But in forgiveness.

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