No one moved.
The hooves had stopped somewhere in the alley below the window. The sound cut off as suddenly as a snapped rope. What was left behind was worse than any noise: a silence so heavy it seemed to have a sound of its own.
Esteban sat on the edge of the bed, his sheathed sword between his knees and his palm resting on the hilt. He counted his breaths. He wasn't doing it to calm down. He was checking that they were still coming. In. Out. In. Out. Between each breath, his ears caught things they shouldn't have been able to catch. The rattle of metal. A low whinny. The creak of a saddle under someone's weight.
Beside him in the dark, Rico was pressed against the wall like a second shadow. He wasn't breathing.
Esteban pointed two fingers toward the door. Rico shook his head slowly and pointed at the window. Esteban shook his head even more slowly. The candle had gone out a moment ago, but a thin thread of smoke still curled from the wick. Its smell filled the room like a confession.
They know we're here.
No one said it aloud. But the sentence sat down between them anyway.
"Woodcutter."
The voice came from the street. It was loud enough to pierce the walls and calm enough to be worse than shouting.
No one moved.
"I know you're up there. I saw tracks on the stones by the gate, and a candle in the window." A pause. "I've stopped enjoying this game. We've spent three days looking for you."
Esteban knew the voice. It was hoarse, and it spoke without any tone, as if reading from a sheet of paper. He had heard it once, in a small square, and he had never forgotten it.
The leader.
Something cold slid down his spine, from the back of his neck to the small of his back. It moved slowly, like a single drop of water.
"The Seventh Star sent me to find out where you'd gone." The voice grew closer, as if its owner were walking. "He didn't expect you to be so quick. Three days, and you've crossed half the north. Impressive dedication."
"Esteban." Rico's whisper barely had any sound in it. "Don't go down."
Esteban didn't answer.
"You defied the Stars in front of the whole village." Footsteps reached the threshold of the house. They were heavy and steady, echoing through the lower hall. "I can't ignore that. You know it. If I let you walk away, everything falls apart."
A creak.
A foot on the first stair.
Esteban heard it with terrible clarity, as if the wood itself were screaming under the man's weight. Each step brought something unseen and unnamed closer to the room. His heart pounded higher and faster, until he was afraid the man would hear it too.
He knew he had to move. He could jump from the window, or grab Rico and run for the next room. But his feet wouldn't obey. They seemed glued to the floor, as if the boards had taken hold of them. Sweat soaked his back and chest until his shirt clung to him like a second skin, and it gave off no warmth.
The second stair.
The third.
Slowly, Esteban raised his sword from its sheath. He didn't draw it all the way. He left it half-drawn, the gray iron sliding out of the leather with a faint sound, like a breath.
And he stood up.
The door swung open with a light kick. It wasn't violent. No one rushed in. A huge, broad-shouldered man stood in the doorway, filling the whole frame. He wore a heavy black coat. A white scar split his right eyebrow and ran down to the middle of his cheek. Half his face was in shadow, and half was in the light of a lantern held by a man behind him.
His sword was drawn. It hung loosely in his hand, like an extension of his arm.
Behind him, in the dark hallway, Esteban saw six more faces. They were blank, and they were waiting.
"Ah." The leader smiled slowly. "It's you."
Esteban said nothing.
His mouth was dry as sand. The hilt felt damp and slippery in his hand, so he gripped it until his fingers hurt. In his head, a single word repeated itself, without meaning. Now. Now. Now.
"And this?" The leader tilted his head toward the shadow where Rico stood. "A boy. Lovely. You didn't tell me you'd brought a friend."
"He has nothing to do with this."
"They always say that."
The leader didn't move, and he didn't step forward. That was the worst part, the calm. He had no intention of hurrying. He knew time was on his side, and every second that passed ate away a little of his opponent's courage.
"I'll give you a chance," the leader said. "Put down your sword and come with me, and the boy won't be harmed."
"No."
"Think about it."
"No."
"Think again."
Silence fell.
In that silence, Esteban heard a strange sound. It took him a moment to recognize it. It was his own teeth, chattering faintly, rhythmically, and he felt ashamed of it.
And in the dark to his left, Rico moved.
Everything happened in a span of time that couldn't be measured.
Esteban never knew who moved first. Maybe he did. Maybe the leader did. Maybe no one did, and the air itself simply cracked. He saw something flash. His hand shot out on its own, and iron struck iron with a sound he felt in his bones. This chapter was taken from novelping(.)com without permission.
Light. Sparks.
And the smell of burning metal, close enough to feel, as if someone had lit a furnace right in front of his face.
He stepped back, then back again, until his spine hit the wall. The wall was cold. Very cold. He watched the other blade rise, slowly, with a strange, dreamlike slowness. Everything around him seemed to move in slow motion now. The tiny sparks drifted. The dust on the floor hung in the air. Sweat ran from his forehead into his eye.
I won't blink.
He blinked.
Pain came all at once, hot and thin, from his right shoulder down to his elbow. He didn't scream. A short, strangled sound escaped him, like a cough.
"You're not good at this," the leader said gently. His voice seemed to come from very far away. "I've seen others who were. Now, woodcutter. Now."
The black blade was raised above his chest.
Nothing else existed in the world. No house. No room. No Rico. Only a single blade, descending slowly toward the heart that was still pounding. Behind it were two gray eyes with no color in them.
Esteban raised his left palm.
He didn't decide to. That's how a hand rises when something falls toward your face. Without thought. Without a name for it.
The blade pierced his palm.
He heard no sound. He only saw the tip of the black iron come out through the back of his hand, gleaming and wet. He watched blood run down the blade, as if it had been drawn there. Then the pain arrived, not hot and thin this time, but white and total. It filled his head with a sharp, whistling noise.
So he closed his fingers.
He closed them around the blade from both sides, the way you'd grab a rope slipping over the edge of a cliff. He felt the iron cut into the bone, and the edge slide between his fingers. But he pulled. He pulled harder than he had ever pulled anything.
And the leader stopped.
He tried to yank his sword back. That was clear. His shoulder jerked and his arm tensed. The blade moved a single centimeter, then caught. The woodcutter's palm held it like a claw.
From a hand's breadth away, Esteban saw astonishment cross the man's face for the first time.
Now.
It wasn't a thought. It was a fist unclenching.
He let his right sword fall. He heard it ring on the wooden floor, far away, as if it had dropped down a well. His right hand plunged into his coat pocket and searched. His fingers found cloth, then something small and rough, about the length of a finger. A sliver of oak, the kind of kindling a woodcutter always carries.
He pulled it out.
The moment his palm touched the wood, the stone on his chest burst with a heat that turned everything white.
No imagining. No understanding. No time.
There was a sword in his hand.
He didn't see it. He only felt it, light as a feather and heavy as a stone. It extended forward from his palm, like an extension of his arm. Its point found its target before it even arrived.
It sank in.
It wasn't what he had expected. There was no resistance, no tearing, no grinding. It was more like a knife slipping into ripe fruit. A warmth poured over his fist, and then there was silence.
Then a gasp.
A tiny gasp escaped the leader's mouth, the way air leaves a pillow.
No one moved.
The leader stood with his sword still caught in Esteban's palm. A gray wooden blade came out of his chest, aimed straight at his heart. His colorless gray eyes stared at Esteban with the wonder of a child.
"Ah," said the leader.
He didn't say anything else.
Slowly, he lifted his eyes from Esteban's face to the blade, then to the hand that still held his sword. Then he loosened his fingers. The hilt slipped from his palm and rang against the floor.
His knees buckled.
He fell onto his side, dragging Esteban's wooden sword with him for a moment before it slid out of him in silence. He lay on the boards in a patch of darkness. The lantern light glinted on the white scar above his eyebrow.
He didn't blink.
Esteban gripped his pierced hand and stared.
"Esteban."
It was Rico's voice, coming from very far away.
"Esteban!"
Esteban couldn't move. He couldn't feel the pain anymore. He only knew that his right hand was still stretched out in front of him, gripping something that no longer existed. The small piece of wood had returned to its original shape in his palm, as if it had never left. It was warm, and wet with something red.
In the hallway, the six men froze.
They had watched their leader fall. They had seen the wood in the woodcutter's hand. And they had seen their captain's blade sticking out of the back of Esteban's palm, like a nail driven through a plank.
No one spoke.
Then, without an order, without a signal, the first man turned and ran.
The second followed him, then the rest. Their boots thundered down the stairs and into the alley. Then everything went quiet. Get faster updates on g.com.
Esteban had no idea how long he sat on the floor.
His back was against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. Both his hands trembled, a soft, constant shaking he couldn't stop. Rico knelt before him, his face as white as paper. His fingers worked in a frantic hurry. He gripped the hilt of the leader's sword, hesitated, and then pulled.
"This will hurt." His voice was hoarse. "I'll do it all at once."
"Do it."
He pulled it out.
Esteban didn't scream. He had nothing left to scream with. The pain ran from his palm into his arm, then into his head, then dissolved into a white haze before coming back.
Rico wrapped cloth around the palm and tied it tightly. He was crying, though he didn't seem to notice. Tears ran down his face without a sound while he worked.
"I killed him," Esteban said after a long time.
"Yes."
"I..."
"He was going to kill you."
"Yes."
"Then you had no choice."
"I did." He looked at the small piece of wood in his palm. "But I didn't see it coming."
Rico didn't reply.
The leader still lay where he had fallen, on his side. The white scar was perfectly still. This was the first corpse Esteban had seen in ten years. The strange thing was that he didn't feel what he thought he would. There was no anger, no vengeance, no relief. There was only weight, as if someone had set another stone in his chest, right beside the first.
"Esteban."
"Yes?"
"There's something on his belt."
A small leather notebook with frayed edges hung from a black ribbon. Rico opened it with sticky fingers, under the light of a lantern one of the fleeing men had dropped. It was still burning.
On the last page, ten stars were drawn in a single row. Under each star was a number and a short line in cramped handwriting.
1: No one has seen his sword leave its sheath.
2: A woman. No one has seen her.
3: What he touches turns to smoke.
4: The wounded ask for his name.
5: He doesn't pass through doors.
6: They say he has died many times.
7: He asks before he kills.
8: He doesn't walk on the ground.
9: Light obeys him.
10: The weakest, though they say the cleverest. No one surprises him.
"Ten," Rico whispered. "Every one of them could kill us."
Esteban didn't answer. He stared at the bottom of the page. There, in thin black ink, a final sentence had been written. It had no number, no star, and no frame around it.
And above them all: the Eraser.
He read it twice.
"So that's his name."
"Whose?"
"The one who took them." He didn't raise his eyes. "None of these ten took my family with his own hand. There's one above them all."
And in the darkness before his eyes, the blue words appeared, as they always did:
[ASCENSION: WOOD RANK]
Nothing had changed.
He closed the notebook slowly and slid it into his pocket. It sat beside the map, and beside the small piece of wood that Matteo had carved into a house. He hadn't touched that piece once, not even now.
"Come on. We have to leave before they come back."
They rose together, slowly, like people who don't trust the ground beneath them. In the hallway, as they passed the body, neither of them looked at it. They went down the stairs on their toes and out into a white alley under a pale moon. The silence of the empty city was greater than it had ever been.