Chapter 15: The Sword Beneath the Dust
The air still smelled of rain when Ravi and Waker returned to the Guild after offering the Maghrib prayer. The clouds hadn't lifted—dark and swollen. They still murmured overhead with quiet thunder.
Guildmaster Bayer met them at the entrance, arms crossed as usual. "You two. A request just came in—urgent."
He handed over a parchment. "A storm wrecked a home near the south district. They're asking for a few Guild members to help rebuild before night gets worse."
Ravi and Waker exchanged a glance. "Let's go," Waker said with a shrug, already pulling up the hood of his cloak.
And so, once again, they stepped into the storm.
The wreckage was worse than expected. Nearly three-quarters of the house had collapsed—roof beams cracked like ribs, the walls sunken under their own weight.
Thankfully, those with Earth and Wood-related aspects had already started reconstruction. Roots twisted up from the soil like obedient snakes, forming a new foundation. Planks reshaped themselves mid-air as essence-wielders whispered them into obedience.
Waker stood before a large wooden pillar and raised his hand. Yellow-green grass sprouted from his palm, wrapping around the base of the timber. With a grunt, he lifted the pillar overhead and slammed it onto the half-finished frame of the roof.
"Just like that, huh?" someone nearby whistled.
Meanwhile, Ravi stood silently at the centre of the ruins, one hand raised high. A soft yellow glow radiated from his palm, casting warm light over the site. The workers moved faster under its gentle luminance.
No one questioned the storm's cause, nor why the house had collapsed.
Such disasters were common in Antiarena—especially when old houses had been built with bones of cursed wood.
During a break, a guild member with an uneven beard handed out slices of cake.
"It looks like coal," Waker whispered as he accepted his piece.
"First one I've ever baked," the man said happily.
To everyone's surprise, the taste was quite good. Ravi chuckled softly, remembering the one time he had tried baking—it had ended in smoke, coughing, and something vaguely resembling leather.
Then, something caught his eye.
Near a pile of charred furniture, half-buried under rubble, was a small wooden sword.
He moved toward it, crouching, brushing off the dust with his left hand. His right hand casts light across the scene.
The sword was carefully carved, weathered by age. Etched along its side were words:
"At the age of three."
Ravi narrowed his eyes. There were scratch marks—too deep, too uniform to be from play. Long grooves, curved like claws.
Then … he heard distant laughter.
Children in fields, clanging metal from a blacksmith's forge, songs sung in a mother's voice.
But the people behind him were silent.
He blinked and the wooden sword in his hand began to tremble.
Suddenly, the scratches opened like eyes, tiny slits glaring at him with unnatural awareness.
Dozens of them.
He didn't flinch.
A whisper surged in his ear: "We remember you."
A swirl of shadow gathered around his palm followed by bled through offaint white light.
With a quiet hiss, the wooden sword crumbled into ash.
"What just happened?" Waker asked, arriving behind him with dust on his sleeves.
Ravi stood, brushing his hand. "Nothing serious. Just felt like someone was watching me."
Waker yawned. "Probably a rat or a curious spirit. Let's go—there's still more to fix."
They moved to another collapsed room, the storm still whispering beyond broken walls.
But Ravi knew better.
This wasn't just another haunting.
The wooden sword had been carved from a cursed creature's corpse—or worse, something ancient infused with grief and memory.
Ravi's thoughts turned grim.
These anomalies were becoming more frequent.
Hallucinations. Voices. Visions.
Sometimes even phantoms that only he could see.
And worst of all:
He was starting to lose the ability to tell them apart from reality.
Just last week, a teacup had whispered to him in a child's voice. The day before, he'd seen blood pouring from cracks in the guild's stone floor—only for it to vanish a second later.
The Burst-Eye Mark—his Dark Sigil—was not just a curse.
It was a disease as well as a beacon, drawing the unclean, the mad, and the forgotten toward him.
He looked up from his thoughts.
Seven guild members worked quietly, repairing the walls with wood and stone. Their faces were calm. Focused.
But to Ravi?
He saw blood-red roses growing out of their corpse like bodies, each blooming with tiny mouths—gurgling and chewing.
He shut his eyes. Breathed deeply and opened them again.
The roses were gone.
Just people. Just work. Just silence.
He had to get to Aqua Hospice quickly.
He needed treatment before his sanity cracked and before his curse hurt someone else.
This mission—just like the others—had ended successfully.
But every day …
He was losing a little more of himself.