The Shard-Bearer

Chapter 9- The Hunter’s Blade

The blade whispered from its sheath, shards of broken light dripping off its edge. Veynar didn’t posture, he didn’t threaten. He simply stepped forward and swung.

I barely saw it. A streak of glasslight cutting through the smoke faster than I thought.

The shard screamed inside me, my arm snapping up of its own accord. Crimson fire flared across my palm. Steel met flame. The impact rattled every bone in my body, sparks cascading down the stones.

I staggered back, breath ripped from my lungs. He hadn’t even put his weight into it.

Veynar advanced, calm as a man walking through a garden. Another strike came, precise, elegant, a butcher slicing meat. My feet moved before I could think, the shard jerking me sideways. The blade carved through the air where my neck had been, slicing a hanging sign in two. The wood hissed, its cut edge glowing faintly as if burned.

“Good,” Veynar said evenly. “You are fast. But not fast enough.”

His third strike was a blur. My body screamed. I threw fire to meet him, a crimson lash snapping out, searing the cobbles. He slipped through it, his armor reflecting the blaze back into my eyes, and the hilt of his blade slammed into my chest.

The world spun. My back hit stone. I choked, blood in my mouth, ribs burning.

He didn’t press the blade to my throat. He didn’t need to. He simply stood there, still as death, and waited for me to get up.

“You carry the shard,” he said, his voice leveled and unhurried. “But you do not command it. It commands you.”

The shard growled in my skull, furious and humiliated. Strike him. Burn him. Tear him open.

I forced myself to stand, legs shaking, chest screaming with each breath. My hand glowed again, light spilling between my fingers.

Veynar smiled, a faint curve on his lips behind the glass slit.

“Show me.”

Veynar didn’t rush me. He circled, his steps measured, the blade at his side glimmering with fractured light. His gaze never wavered. like a hawk’s patience or a wolf’s hunger.

“You are no thief anymore,” he said quietly. “No rat in the alleys. You are prey in the open field.”

Then he moved.

A blur of glasslight. I flung my hand up, fire roaring to meet him. He slipped through, his blade carving an arc that split the flame apart. The heat seared my face, and still his strike came, clean and merciless.

I barely ducked. The tip of his blade sheared a lock of hair, embedding in the stone behind me. With a flick, he freed it, showering sparks.

The shard roared in my head, furious at my weakness. You crawl before him! Strike! Unleash!

I lashed out, fire whipping wide. He stepped aside, effortless, and the lash tore into the ranks of soldiers behind him. Screams cut through the night as men fell, their armor melting, skin sloughing off in red sheets.

Veynar didn’t even look back. He advanced again, calm and precise, his blade dripping with reflected firelight.

“You see?” he murmured. “It is not I who kills them. It is you.”

My stomach turned, bile rising at the smell of charred flesh. The shard only laughed. Yes. More. Feed until nothing stands.

Another strike came. This one I caught with fire, a wall of searing crimson between us. His blade slid through it like water, cleaving the flame in two, and the flat slammed into my shoulder. My bones cracked. I stumbled, crying out.

Veynar leaned close, voice low, almost gentle. “The Emperor does not want you broken. He wants you alive. That is the only reason you still draw breath.”

Then he pushed me back with a contemptuous kick, sending me sprawling in the ash of the men I’d burned.

Every instinct screamed to run. The shard screamed to kill.

And Veynar just waited, blade resting at his side, daring me to choose.

“Enough.”

The word cut through the haze of pain.

Fennric stepped into the light, his hands raised, face slick with sweat. The look in his eyes wasn’t fear. It was rapture.

“You want the shard?” he shouted, voice echoing off the ruined walls. “Then take it, Hunter. See what it truly is.”

Veynar’s helm turned slightly, that cold slit fixing on him. “You should not interfere, scholar.”

Fennric smiled, teeth red with blood. “Oh, I think I should.”

He dragged a knife from his belt and cut a quick, savage circle in the air, his blood spattering on the ground. Symbols burned where it touched, lines of fire crawling outwards like veins. The shard inside me reacted instantly, a deep vibration thrumming in my bones.

The air thickened.

Fennric’s chant rose. Old, harsh words that scraped against the ear. “Ael’sharath en verim. Blood to bind, flesh to open. Let the vessel drink!”

The shard screamed. My chest lit from within, light bursting through my skin. I gasped, clutching at my ribs, but it wasn’t pain, it was release.

Fennric’s laughter went wild. “Yes! Feed on it! Show him what the Emperor fears!”

The ground split beneath me, red light surging out, swirling into a storm of ash and fire. Veynar raised his blade, stepping back, his calm finally cracking into something wary.

“Fennric, stop!” I choked, voice raw. “You’ll…”

But the shard’s roar drowned me out. The fire coiled upward, twisting around my body, pulling the blood from Fennric’s outstretched hand into the air like threads. His scream was half agony, half ecstasy.

Then the light exploded.

Everything went white.

When the world snapped back, I was standing, barely, in the center of a crater, heat rolling off my skin in waves. Fennric was on his knees trembling, eyes wide with awe. The shard’s voice was no longer a whisper. It was me.

And Veynar, for the first time, looked uncertain.

My pulse vanished.

For one raw heartbeat, I was empty, hollow and still. Then the shard filled the void.

It wasn’t heat that surged through me this time. It was motion. My body moved before I thought, before I could even breathe. The air bent around me, the cobblestones beneath my boots cracked, and when I lifted my head, the world bled red.

The shard had taken my eyes.

Veynar’s armor glowed faintly in the haze, his blade raised, his voice distant, “Containment breach…” before the roar of fire swallowed him whole.

Flame didn’t flow out from me; it ripped from the ground, from the stone, from the men themselves. The very air turned to glass underfoot. Soldiers screamed as the heat twisted their shapes, armor fusing to skin.

Fennric stood laughing in the maelstrom, robes whipping around him, his words nearly lost. “Behold the true vessel! The heir of the shard!”

The shard’s voice came through me, no longer separate, but mine.

“I was buried. I was bound. Now I burn again.”

I felt my mouth shape the words, though I hadn’t spoken. The fire flared higher, forming wings of ash behind me that reached across the street, shadowing the walls.

Veynar leapt through it. The glasslight blade cut through the inferno, shearing flame from flame, leaving a trail of molten glass in his wake. He struck once, twice, sparks scattering and his voice cut through the chaos, hard and certain.

“You are not its master, Malrik. You are its host.”

His blade pierced the wall beside my head, inches from my throat. I turned to him, face half-shadowed by the red glow, and for the first time he stepped back.

The fire pulsed outward like a heartbeat, shattering his armor’s mirrored plates. He staggered, shards of glass spraying the ground.

And the shard whispered, Finish him.

My hand rose, fire swirling.

…but Veynar was gone. Vanished into the smoke, leaving only a trail of blood and fractured glass.

The street was silent again.

The fire slowly receded, crawling back into my skin. When I looked down, the stones were melted smooth, and Fennric was kneeling, head bowed, as though before a god.

“You’ve done it,” he whispered. “You’ve broken the Hunter.”

I stared at my hands, at the faint shimmer of flame still clinging to them and for the first time, I wasn’t sure if I could ever put it back.

The silence was heavier than the flames had ever been.

Smoke crawled low through the streets, turning everything into a gray blur. The air tasted of iron and ash and beneath it, the faint, sickly sweetness of burned flesh.

I took one step forward. The ground sagged like cooling tar, black and glossy where the fire had melted stone into glass. My reflection stared up at me from the warped surface, my eyes faintly glowing, veins laced with emberlight.

Fennric was still kneeling. His voice came out hoarse, trembling with awe.

“You channeled it. Gods above, you did it. I didn’t think…”

“Stop.” My voice cracked like flint. “Don’t say that word.”

He froze, lips still parted.

I turned away from him, toward what was left of Drakemire’s south quarter. A line of once-crowded shops, the baker’s stand, the rag-seller’s stoop, the old ironwork balcony where Corin and I used to hide, all gone. Nothing but cinders.

A child’s toy lay half-buried in the soot. A wooden horse. One wheel still turning in the wind.

The shard purred faintly inside me, satisfied. They would have betrayed you. They would have called for the Emperor’s guard. You did what had to be done.

I clenched my fists. “I did what you made me do.”

Fennric rose slowly, eyes fever-bright. “You saved us. The Hunter’s gone. The Emperor will fear you now. Don’t you understand, Malrik? You’ve become the weapon we needed.”

I spun on him, heat flaring in my chest. “A weapon? Look around you!” I gestured at the blackened street, the corpses half-buried in slag. “Does this look like salvation to you?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. The look in his eyes said enough, worship, obsession, and somewhere beneath it, terror.

A sound echoed in the distance, the low toll of a bell. One. Two. Three. Warning tones.

Drakemire’s watch was rallying.

Fennric turned toward the sound. “They’ll come for you now.”

The shard stirred, warm and hungry. Let them come.

I drew a shuddering breath, forcing the heat down. “No. We leave. Now.”

We moved through the smoke, down the melted street, past the husks of buildings that had once been home. Faces appeared in doorways, eyes wide and hollow. Those who had survived, too afraid to move, too afraid to scream.

They didn’t shout thief this time.

They didn’t call my name.

They just watched me pass, the firelight dancing in their eyes, as though I were something less than human.

Maybe they were right.