Lord Henrik of House Sterling was a man on an evangelical mission, and his religion was functional knee cartilage.
“I’m telling you, Garrett, thirty seconds!” Henrik was booming before he even cleared the front porch steps, holding open the heavy oak door for six other hulking third-year combat cadets. “One swallow, tasted like wintergreen, and I could drop into a full Low-Earth Guard without my patella grinding like gravel!”
The brass doorbell jingled frantically as seven pairs of muddy leather riding boots crowded into my small storefront.
The cramped room immediately filled with the overwhelming scent of damp wool, horse leather, and bruised teenage ego. Most of these boys were eighteen or nineteen, broad-shouldered scions of minor martial houses who spent four hours every morning bashing each other with dull steel in the Vanguard Courtyard in hopes of catching the Imperial Knight Commander’s eye.
Currently, at least four of them were nursing visibly swollen wrists, one had a bruised cheekbone the colour of an overripe plum, and the tallest of the bunch—a barrel-chested boy with cropped red hair and the arrogant posture of an Earl’s heir—was holding his right forearm stiffly against his ribs.
The red-haired boy stopped in the middle of the floorboards, wrinkling his nose as he took in the peeling plaster, the empty herb drawers, and me standing behind the scarred oak counter in a commoner’s canvas apron.
“This is a joke, Henrik,” the redhead scoffed, his voice carrying the booming volume of someone used to shouting across a parade ground. “You dragged us all the way down to the outer slums to buy ditch-water from Julian’s discarded fiancée? My family physician is a Certified Silver-Rank Alchemist from the Capital Guild. If Lady Vance knew how to brew a real meridian restorative, she wouldn’t be living in a glorified tool shed.”
I kept my face arranged in a pleasant, professional smile, resting my hands lightly on the edge of the counter next to the velvet tray holding twenty amber bottles of Velvet-Numb Field Liniment.
“Lord Garrett of House Redgrave, isn’t it?” I asked smoothly. In Crown of Thorns, Garrett was a hot-headed Fire-Vanguard who served as a mid-tier boss during the autumn tournament—mostly memorable because his signature heavy-cleave attack left his right ulnar nerve chronically inflamed. “Your family physician is Master Corvus, correct? The one who prescribes boiled salamander liver and three days of immobilization for a simple Flame-Rebound sprain?”
Garrett’s jaw tightened, his right hand twitching slightly against his tunic. “What do you know about Flame-Rebound?”
“I know you’ve got a textbook case of it cooking in your right forearm right now,” I said, nodding toward his stiff wrist. “You tried to force a Tier-Two Crimson Slash through a standard iron training broadsword during the nine-o'clock drill. The metal couldn't conduct the thermal spike, so the excess fire mana vented backward through your palm and scorched the tendon sheath along your ulna. Every time you close your fist, it feels like someone is sliding a hot sewing needle under your fingernails.”
The three cadets standing behind Garrett exchanged startled glances. One of them—a lanky boy with a purple bruise across his jaw—whispered, “Wait, she got that just from looking at his sleeve?”
Garrett flushed an angry shade of brick red, stepping up to the counter until his chest bumped the wood. “Lucky guess. Everyone in the third-year courtyard saw me drop my sword during the third bout.”
“They saw you drop your sword,” I agreed pleasantly. “They didn't see the two blistered meridian nodes on the underside of your wrist that you’re currently hiding under your leather bracer. If you leave that untreated until the afternoon sparring evaluation at two o’clock, the tendon will lock completely on your first parry, and Instructor Kael will bump you down to the reserve squad for the rest of September.”
That hit the bullseye. Garrett’s arrogance vanished, replaced by a flash of genuine panic. In the Academy’s cutthroat martial rankings, getting bumped to the reserve squad in week one meant losing access to the high-purity mana stones in the inner training halls.
“And I suppose you have a miracle cure for forty gold crowns?” Garrett sneered defensively, though his eyes were already darting down to the neat rows of wax-sealed amber bottles.
“Sold out of the forty-gold internal draughts—Lord Henrik bought the last two,” I said, tapping the closest amber bottle with my fingernail. “What I have right now is twenty bottles of Velvet-Numb Field Liniment. External use only. Five gold crowns per bottle, limit two per customer. Rub ten drops into your forearm, wait ten seconds, and the nerve inflammation and bone-shock will drop by seventy percent for the next two hours. Enough to get you through afternoon evaluations with a grip like a steel vice.”
“Five gold?” The lanky boy with the bruised jaw stepped forward eagerly, already reaching for his belt pouch. “Wait, that’s cheaper than the low-grade bruising paste at the student commissary!”
“Hold on, Thomas,” Garrett barked, throwing an arm out to block the younger cadet. He leaned over the counter, glaring down at me with narrowed eyes. “Five gold is still five gold. What happens if I pay you, rub this purple grease on my arm, and it’s nothing but scented olive oil? We’re supposed to just take the word of a disgraced viscount’s daughter?”
Before I could open my mouth to offer him a test drop, a quiet, cold shadow shifted beside my cash box.
Seraphina hadn't moved an inch since the cadets walked in. Standing half in the shade of the tall apothecary cabinet with her arms crossed and a chipped mug of chamomile tea resting beside her elbow, the boisterous third-years had completely overlooked her in their rush to crowd the counter.
Now, she uncrossed her arms and stepped forward into the shaft of morning sunlight.
Clack.
She didn't draw her cracked iron sword. Instead, she rested her left hand on the oak counter right in front of Garrett’s nose and dropped a single, fist-sized object onto the wood with a heavy thud.
It was the dried, razor-sharp chitin horn of the adult Spined Rift-Stalker I had sawed off the carcass at two in the morning. Even dead and drained of fluids, the black horn radiated a faint, unmistakable aura of Grade-3 abyssal malice that made the hair on the back of the neck stand up.
The seven combat cadets froze. Two of the boys in the back instinctively reached for their training swords.
“A mature Rift-Stalker horn?” Henrik breathed, stumbling back half a step. “Where the hell did that come from? Those things don't spawn anywhere near the outer boundary!”
Seraphina looked up at Garrett. Despite being a full head shorter than the barrel-chested third-year, her slate-gray eyes were so utterly devoid of warmth or fear that Garrett physically leaned backward away from her.
“I took three four-inch claws from that Stalker straight into my left deltoid at midnight,” Seraphina said, her voice flat and resonant in the sudden silence. “Full neurotoxic palsy. Zero mana in my channels. Lady Vance’s potions cleared the venom in thirty seconds and sealed the muscle before morning.”
To prove her point, Seraphina reached out with her injured left arm, gripped the solid oak edge of my three-inch-thick counter between her thumb and forefinger, and squeezed.
With a sharp, terrifying crunch, a walnut-sized chunk of seasoned oak splintered right off the corner of the counter under her bare fingers, crumbling into sawdust as she opened her palm.
My eye twitched. My freshly polished counter.
Garrett stared at the crushed oak dust on the floorboards, then up at the white linen bandage peeking out from the collar of Seraphina’s first-year tunic. Everyone on campus had heard rumours about the terrifying commoner girl who had scored a perfect hundred on the combat entrance exam by beating an animated stone golem to pieces with an unenchanted club. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“The liniment works,” Seraphina told Garrett, dusting the woodchips off her palm. “Buy it in silence, or get out and go lose your rank at two o’clock. You’re letting the heat out of the shop.”
For about two seconds, nobody breathed.
Then, Garrett swallowed hard, reached into his leather coin pouch with his stiff left hand, and slapped ten gold crowns onto the counter with a frantic clatter.
“Two bottles,” Garrett said stiffly, refusing to meet Seraphina’s eyes. “Please.”
“I’ll take two as well!” Thomas shoved his way past Garrett’s elbow, slamming his own coins down on the scarred wood. “And—do you have anything for a bruised jaw, Lady Vance? Same liniment?”
“Two drops along the jawline—keep it away from your lips unless you want to drool through your afternoon lectures,” I said briskly, sweeping Garrett’s ten gold crowns into my brass cash box and sliding two amber bottles across the wood.
Once the dam broke, it wasn't a transaction; it was a feeding frenzy.
Word among combat students travelled faster than wildfire, and no one was more desperate for an edge than teenage nobles terrified of failing their first-week ranking bouts. Within eight minutes, all twenty bottles of Velvet-Numb Field Liniment had vanished into leather belt pouches, and my brass cash box was so full of gold and silver crowns that the lid wouldn't latch properly.
“Wait, that was the last one?!” the seventh cadet—a stocky boy at the back of the line who had been too slow with his purse—groaned in despair, staring at the empty velvet tray. “Lady Vance, I have a heavy-shield match against a fourth-year tomorrow morning! When’s the next batch ready?”
“Tomorrow at noon,” I said firmly, shutting the cash box lid and resting both palms on top of it. “And starting tomorrow, if you bring back your empty amber glass bottle clean and unchipped, you get two silver crowns off your next purchase. Now out, all of you—I have a cauldron simmering in the back and you’re tracking mud everywhere.”
Grumbling, clutching their purple bottles like holy relics, the squad of third-years filed back out onto Bramble Lane. Outside the window, I could already see Garrett uncorking his bottle on the cobblestone path and rubbing the amethyst oil furiously into his right wrist, followed two seconds later by a loud, stunned exclamation of “By the Gods, I can’t feel the burn at all!”
I walked over to the front door, flipped the wooden sign back to CLOSED—BREWING IN PROGRESS, and leaned my forehead against the cool glass pane with a long exhale.
One hundred gold crowns in fifteen minutes. Combined with Henrik’s sixty from earlier, I had just made one hundred and sixty gold in a single morning using a dead monster head, some pig-feed mushrooms, and half a gallon of almond oil.
“You broke my counter,” I informed the room without turning around.
Behind me, Seraphina took a slow, unbothered sip of her now-lukewarm chamomile tea. “Only the corner. It was already chipped.”
“Pip spent twenty minutes buffing that corner with his stomach,” I said, turning back around and folding my arms. “Though I have to admit, the dramatic wood-crushing routine was very effective marketing. Where did you learn to intimidate noble heirs like that?”
“Border garrison,” Seraphina said simply, setting her empty mug down. “When drunken mercenaries argue over the price of grain rations, words take too long. Breaking something heavy right in front of them saves twenty minutes of shouting.”
“Pragmatic. I approve,” I said, walking past her into the back workshop. “Come on. Your forty-five minutes are up.”
Inside the glasshouse workshop, the air was thick with the rich, toasted scent of boiling linseed oil, charred pine resin, and spicy Cinder-Berry.
Beneath the long iron trough, Pip had banked the furnace flames down to a low, glowing bed of crimson coals. Inside the trough, the half-gallon of oil had vanished almost entirely.
It hadn't evaporated. The dormant wood had drunk it dry.
Using a pair of heavy leather crucible tongs, I reached into the warm iron trough and lifted the blade out onto a bed of clean canvas rags.
It didn't look like dry, bleached driftwood anymore.
Having absorbed the mana-rich oil and crushed Cinder-Berry seeds, the wood grain had darkened into a smooth, polished charcoal-silver, swirled with faint, shimmering veins of deep crimson that pulsed softly like embers under ash. The twisted root-guard around the hilt had hardened into a seamless, ergonomic cage of dark ironwood that looked as though it had been poured from liquid obsidian.
[Alchemical Transmutation Complete!]
[Item Awakened: The Ashen Bough (Living Mythril-Grain Blade)]
[Grade: Gold-Tier Unique Weapon (Growth-Type)]
[Durability: Indestructible by conventional steel.]
[Properties:
98% Aura Conductivity. Zero internal mana resistance.
Disguised Appearance: Registers to standard inspection wards as an unenchanted wooden training sword. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Special Effect [Root-Drink]: Gradually absorbs ambient mana from defeated Rift beasts to sharpen its own natural edge over time.]
[Skill Level Up! Alchemist’s Appraisal (Lv. 2 ->Lv. 3)]
Even without my appraisal window, the sheer density of the weapon’s presence filled the quiet workshop. Up on the rafter, the marmalade cat’s fur stood slightly on end as he stared down at the dark, shimmering wood.
Seraphina stepped up beside the stone workbench. Her breathing stopped completely.
For a born swordswoman with the [Heavenly Martial Vessel] constitution, standing next to a weapon with ninety-eight percent aura conductivity must have felt like a starving man smelling fresh bread for the first time in ten years.
“Go on,” I said softly, stripping off my thick leather tongs and stepping back to give her room. “Pick it up. It’s cool to the touch.”
Slowly, almost reverently, Seraphina reached out with her right hand and wrapped her fingers around the smooth, dark root-hilt.
The moment her calloused palm closed around the grip, the air in the glasshouse hummed.
A faint, razor-thin halo of silver-white kinetic aura—Seraphina’s natural, suppressed power—flowed effortlessly from her wrist straight down the length of the dark wood. Unlike her old iron sword, which had rattled and groaned under the strain, the Ashen Bough drank her aura in without a whisper of friction, the crimson veins along the grain flaring briefly with a quiet, lethal brilliance.
In a blur of motion so fast my eyes barely registered the arc, Seraphina stepped back into the open space between the workbench and the conservatory door and executed a single, one-handed horizontal slash through the empty air.
There was no clumsy whistle of heavy metal. Just a sharp, vacuum-like whip-crack as the wooden edge parted the air so cleanly that a stray leaf floating down from the ceiling ivy was sheared neatly in two before it even touched the blade.
Seraphina lowered the sword, her chest rising and falling as she stared down at the dark silver wood grain in her hand. The perpetual exhaustion in her slate-gray eyes was completely gone, replaced by a fierce, luminous intensity that made it suddenly very obvious why the game designers had put her on the cover art.
“It weighs nothing,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “When I push my aura into the spine, there’s no rebound at all. It feels like... like an extension of my own bone.”
“Living Mythril-Grain,” I said, leaning back against the stone table and trying to ignore the way my own pulse had sped up slightly at that display of speed. “Harder than dwarf-forged steel, lighter than pine, and completely legal to carry into first-year duelling classes since there isn't an ounce of metal in it.”
Seraphina turned her head slowly to look at me. Her grip on the hilt was tight, protective, and slightly bewildered.
“Evelyn,” she said quietly. “The Royal Armoury doesn't have a blade with conductivity like this outside the Imperial Vault. If the Grandmaster of the Sword Saint faction knew this existed, he would pay ten thousand gold crowns for it on the spot.”
“Probably,” I agreed cheerfully. “Good thing he thinks this building is a condemned herb shed full of stray cats.”
“Why give this to me?” She took a step closer, her gaze searching mine with the same fierce concentration she had used to hold the tin funnel earlier. “Don't say company safety equipment. A five-gold iron mace from the market would keep rowdy cadets out of your shop. A weapon like this can topple a noble house.”
I looked at her—at the frayed hem of her clean uniform tunic, the white bandage peeking above her collarbone, and the dark circles that were finally starting to fade beneath her eyes.
If I told her Because in three months the Demon Cult is going to breach the catacombs under the Academy and you’re the only person strong enough to keep them from burning down my tax haven, she would think I was insane.
So I gave her the smaller, simpler truth instead.
“Because that pig-iron piece of trash on my workbench was insulting to look at,” I said lightly, reaching out to tap the flat of the dark wooden blade with one finger. “And because if I’m going to build the richest, most exclusive apothecary in the Empire while the rest of this school plays politics, I need a partner whose sword won't snap in the middle of a shift.”
Partner.
The word hung in the warm, spice-scented air between us for a beat longer than I intended.
Seraphina’s gaze dropped from my eyes down to my finger resting against her blade, then back up. The fierce, untouchable intensity in her expression softened into something extraordinarily quiet and fiercely loyal.
Slowly, she untied the frayed leather belt holding her old, cracked iron longsword, set the metal sheath down on the corner of the workbench, and slid the Ashen Bough through her belt loop in its place.
“Fifty gold crowns,” Seraphina said, resting her hand comfortably on the dark wooden hilt.
I blinked. “What?”
“Add fifty gold crowns to my ledger tab for the oil and the berries,” she said, turning toward the back door of the conservatory as the noon bell began to chime across the distant spires of the Academy. “And write down that I’m taking Friday evenings too. If Garrett and his squad are telling the rest of the third-years about the liniment, you’re going to run out of Ghost-Cap mushrooms by tomorrow night.”
She paused with her hand on the iron latch of the back door, glancing back over her shoulder at me.
“I know a hollow down by the Sector Four creek where the big ones grow,” Seraphina added softly. “Wait for me tomorrow after four-o'clock drills. Don't go into the woods alone.”
Before I could remind her that I was technically the boss here, the future Sword Saint of the Empire slipped out the back door into the sunlit garden, leaving me alone with a fat orange cat, a clay owl, and a very warm chest.