Ashborn: The Hunter Who Returned Before the End

Chapter 32 — The First Relic

The first vessel called herself Anja.

She was older than Greywall, older than the kingdom, and trapped inside the body of a child because the Crown had never allowed her to finish growing.

Queen Mara brought her into the palace under guard. Anja did not resist. She watched Kael with patient curiosity while Pella examined the cuts on her arms.

“Why did the gates answer you?” Elia asked.

Anja touched the black bell. “Because I was the first voice they heard.”

“You opened them.”

“I closed them for a thousand years.”

Kael studied the bell. It was made from the same black glass as the bead in his palm. Seven lines circled its base, but one had been scratched away.

“Where is the first relic?” he asked.

Anja pointed through the palace wall.

“Under the old station.”

Vey’s abandoned train station lay below the palace, buried beneath layers of rust and stone. Mara gave them a key to the underground rail line and sent six engineers to help. The city had stopped fighting, but the mirrors still showed black skies.

The station contained a train that had never arrived.

Its doors opened when Anja approached.

Inside, the seats were covered in dust. A conductor’s skeleton sat behind the wheel, one hand wrapped around a silver ticket.

Nessa took the ticket. “A passage token.”

The train began moving without tracks.

It carried them through darkness filled with other stations. Kael saw Greywall’s first gate, the salt marsh, the ice fortress, and a city beneath the sea. At each station, a shadow waited on the platform.

“Those are the remaining gates,” Soren said.

“No,” Anja replied. “Those are the memories of the gates.”

The train stopped at a station marked with seven broken crowns.

Beyond the doors lay a vault.

At its center rested a weapon made from white metal. It had no handle, only a hollow grip shaped for a marked palm.

Kael approached it.

Anja caught his sleeve. “The relic does not make hunters strong. It removes what prevents them from obeying.”

“Then I will use it without obeying.”

He placed his hand in the grip.

The weapon entered his body as light.

Kael saw every possible version of himself. The weak boy in Greywall. The S-rank hunter in the burning capital. The man who abandoned Elia. The monster who opened the final gate. The corpse who begged the Crown.

One version stepped forward.

“You returned because you wanted to save her,” it said.

“Yes.”

“You returned because you wanted to punish the world.”

“Yes.”

“You returned because you could not accept being powerless.”

Kael’s answer took longer.

“Yes.”

The white weapon accepted him.

When he withdrew his hand, the Ash Mark had become a pale crown around his wrist.

The vault doors opened.

Outside waited a man wearing Rook’s face.

He held a bloodied sword and smiled.

“You found the relic,” the false Rook said. “Now tell me which memory you are willing to lose next.”

The false commander stepped into the vault and closed the door behind him. His bloodied sword dripped no blood. Each drop became a tiny silver eye that rolled across the floor and watched the hunters.

Kael lifted the white relic. “You are not Rook.”

“You keep saying that as if his face belongs to him.”

Anja rang the bell once. The false Rook’s outline blurred, revealing layers of other faces beneath it.

“It is made from rejected memories,” she said. “Do not let it make you doubt the living.”

The creature lunged.

Kael met the first strike with the white relic. The impact sent a pulse through the vault, knocking dust from the ceiling and extinguishing half the blue lamps. The false commander moved with no wasted motion, but his reflection arrived a fraction of a second before his body.

Kael noticed the delay.

“It is borrowing movement from the mirrors,” he said.

Nessa threw a stone at the nearest glass. The reflection shattered, and the false Rook staggered as if struck.

“Break the room,” Kael ordered.

The hunters attacked the mirrors instead of the creature. Jora’s arrows split the upper panes. Halen drove his shield into a pillar. Soren cut through the silver frame around the door.

The false Rook’s face lost its calm.

“You are destroying evidence.”

“We are destroying your audience.”