Chapter 326

"All the ore you can carry," Luvian said. "As I promised."

Grid didn't need to be told twice.

He walked straight over to the pile of black ingots in the corner of the forge and started shoveling them into his inventory with both hands. One. Five. Twenty. The smiths watched in silence as the heap shrank. Forty. Sixty. Grid's hands moved faster and faster, his eyes shining.

[Your inventory is full.]

Grid stared at the window.

Then he opened his inventory, looked at everything inside it, and started pulling things out. Empty potion bottles. A stack of lizard meat. Spare beginner clothes. A bunch of spare weapons that he created that he'd been meaning to sell for months. He dumped all of it on the forge floor in a heap and went back to the ore.

[Your inventory is full.]

He threw out the lizard meat too.

"Master," Noe said slowly, "that was food, Nyang."

"It was cheap food. This is Legendary ore."

When the last slot was finally full of black metal, Grid stood up straight, patted his bulging inventory window like it was a well-fed pet, and let out a deep, satisfied sigh.

Then he remembered the other thing.

He turned to Luvian with his most charming smile. It didn't look very charming. It looked like a merchant about to raise his prices.

"So," Grid said. "About those glowing lines, those runes."

Luvian looked at him without expression.

"The ones on the sword. And the walls. And everything else around here." Grid gestured vaguely at the whole city. "You know how to make them, right? All of you?"

His mind was already racing ahead. They called me the Hero. Their chief knelt in front of me. The whole city knelt in front of me. So obviously they have to help the Hero, right? That's how heroes work. The village gives the hero whatever he needs. Which means...

"I was thinking," Grid went on, trying to sound casual, "since I'm the Hero and all, you could just... teach me. How to make those. You know. As a hero thing."

He waited.

Luvian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Not yet."

Grid's smile cracked. "Not yet?"

"The foremother's sword has been restored," Luvian said. "By our oldest law, a restored ancestral sword must be returned to the foremother's shrine before it may be touched by anyone again. It must be carried there by the one who restored it." He inclined his head toward Grid very slightly. "By the Hero."

Grid blinked. "So I just carry it somewhere and put it down?"

"Yes."

"And then you'll teach me?"

Luvian considered the question and replied. "After the sword is returned, there will be time to speak of many things."

Grid heard yes.

He grinned and picked up Arisha's Sword off the anvil, holding it carefully in both hands. "Great. Let's go. Where's this shrine?"

The shrine was at the very heart of the city, at the bottom of a long spiral stair that wound down through solid rock, past the deepest streets and the oldest houses, down to where the air turned cool and still. The glowing lines on the walls grew thicker and more complicated the deeper they went, until every surface was covered in them, layer over layer, so dense that the whole stairwell glowed violet.

Luvian walked ahead. Two of the white-haired elders followed behind, chanting softly under their breath in their own language, which the rune still translated for Grid. It was a song about a woman who had walked into the dark so that her people would have somewhere to live.

Grid wasn't listening. He was imagining all the things he could make once he learned to carve those lines into his own weapons.

"Master is smiling in a scary way again, Nyang," Noe whispered to Randy.

Randy, hiding behind Grid as a little girl, nodded seriously.

At the bottom of the stairs, there was a door. Unlike the great gate Grid had broken, this one stood open. Luvian stopped in front of it and didn't go any further.

"Only the one who carries the sword may enter," he said. "We will wait here."

"Sure." Grid looked down at Randy and gently patted her head. "Stay with Noe for a bit, okay?"

Randy pouted, but stayed.

Grid walked through the door alone.

The shrine was smaller than he expected.

It was a round stone chamber, not much bigger than his smithy back in Reidan, with a low domed ceiling. The glowing lines covered every inch of it, floor, walls and ceiling, flowing into each other in circles and spirals that all seemed to lead toward the center of the room. And in the center stood a single stone altar.

On the altar sat a crown.

It was simple. A thin band of the same dark metal as the sword, with a few small, uncut stones set into the front. No jewels, no gold. It looked old. Older than anything else in the city. A thin layer of dust lay over it, as if nobody had dared to touch it in a very long time.

In front of the crown, carved into the altar's surface, was an empty groove. Long and narrow. Exactly the shape of a sword.

"Oh," Grid said. "So it goes there."

The room was very quiet. His footsteps echoed strangely, too loud, as if the stone was listening to them. Grid felt a small, cold prickle at the back of his neck that he decided to ignore.

It's just a ceremony, he told himself. Put it down. Walk out. Learn the runes. Make a lot of money.

He stepped up to the altar and laid Arisha's Sword carefully into the groove.

It fit perfectly.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then the runes along the blade flared, the same clear violet light that had burst from them when he finished the repair. The light didn't stay in the sword. It ran out of the blade and into the altar, into the lines carved in the stone, racing outward across the floor in every direction like water poured into dry channels.

Grid stepped back fast.

The light reached the walls. It climbed them. It spread across the ceiling, line by line, spiral by spiral, until every single carved mark in the room was blazing, and the whole chamber was so bright that Grid had to throw his arm up over his eyes.

[The ancestral sword has returned to the shrine.]

[The conditions have been met.]

[The Sacred Hero's Trial has begun.]

Grid lowered his arm.

"...The what?"

Behind him, the shrine door slammed shut by itself.

Grid spun around and grabbed the handle. It didn't move. He pulled. He shoved it with his shoulder. He kicked it.

"Hey! Luvian! The door closed! Luvian!"

No answer. No sound at all from the other side. Even the chanting of the elders had stopped, or he couldn't hear it anymore.

Grid's heart started to pound.

He turned back toward the altar, very slowly.

The crown was glowing.

A faint, pale light was rising off it, the way mist rises off water in the early morning. It drifted upward, gathering above the altar, swirling slowly in the air. Thicker. Brighter. It began to take a shape.

A head. Shoulders. Long hair floating as if in water. A slender figure in a long robe, pale and translucent, with the walls of the shrine faintly visible right through her body. Her face was calm and tired and very old, even though it looked young. Her eyes opened slowly, and they were the same faint red as the eyes of the Dark Elves.

She looked straight at Grid.

Grid stopped breathing.

The blood drained out of his face all at once. His knees locked. His mouth opened, and no sound came out. Every hair on his body stood up at the same time.

Of all the monsters in Satisfy, of all the dragons and demons and drakes he had fought without blinking, there was one thing in the world Grid had never been able to handle.

"G-g-g-"

The pale woman tilted her head slightly.

"GHOOOOOOOOOST!"