Sunlight glinted off the canopy, raining the earth with a dancing pattern that reminded Hazahnahkah very much of a sea surface. He’d spent the morning in bewilderment. Once again Hazahnahkah found himself without a clue of where he was, but this girl—Hwayoung—his new wielder had already combed through the woods and dug up the ruin. In this alien realm, she was thriving.

  Not only did this girl know who he was, but her unremarkable life until this point did not explain her incredible characteristics. She was nothing short of a prodigy:

  Health (source of vitality and abilities): 3,000

  Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 3,200

  Agility (speed of actions): 5,755

  Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 50

  Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 175

  Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 80

  [Hwayoung’s Abilities]

  Second Spirit: Upon potential death, regains 20% of Health immediately.

  Prodigious Vibrancy: When above 50% Health, gains +100 Strength, Tenacity, and Agility. When less than 50% Health, gains +100% Regeneration.

  Blade Expertise: Agility +200% when wielding any weapon with an edge.

  Sleeper Skills: This person has a profound ability to manipulate their circadian rhythm.

  [Hwayoung’s Equipment]

  Hazahnahkah: Imbues wearer with the title [Wielder of Seven Seasons] bestowing attributes equal to or less than Hazahnahkah’s. May or may not trigger the following skills at any time for any reason: [First Terror], [Second Terror] and [Third Terror]. Hazahnahkah may also choose to [Reraise], [Attune], or [Cherish] them.

  Gifts from Yulisca: Clothing from Hwayoung’s adoptive mother. Tenacity +10.

  Hwayoung’s shelter had been scrambled up between a sandstone outcrop and the wreck’s upturned hull, covered with the ferry’s sails. She’d lashed planks to keep out water, packed the gaps with seaweed and sand. Last night’s wind had tested it, clawing at the seams, but the structure held. Inside, the air smelled of smoke and damp wool.

  The fire flickered like victory. She must have nursed it for days, feeding it splinters, then driftwood, then the bones of other ferries—shattered crates, splintered benches, and hollowed gourds. At dusk, she banked the coals with ash; at dawn, she blew them back to life.

  Food was a rhythm. Dawn for bamboo shoots when the monkeys were asleep, dusk for the lotus sharp-eyed crabs and carried, low tide for the distant little isles speckled with bright oranges.

  Drink was the gamble. She’d dug a pit near her shelter, lined it with a scrap of tarred canvas. When the rain came, it pooled there, murky but drinkable after boiling. The ferry’s last gift: a rusted pot to cook in.

  She’d walked the island’s spine on the second day, counting her steps. No fresh water, no footprints but her own. The bodies Hazahnahkah counted were less than those that fought, so there was a good chance that a lucky few survived—including Nazaki, Knife, Lahahm’s wielder, and Lahahm himself. Hwayoung also seemed to realize this, but they had no evidence to track how far they’d been thrown or gone. At high tide, she climbed the bluff and watched the horizon beneath Clest’s great green form. Nothing.

  The wreck groaned in the wind. At night, she dreamed of its timbers coming apart, plank by plank, until nothing remained but the sea. Hazahnahkah only knew this because she spoke in her sleep. She woke up gripping her knife.

  Hazahnahkah wondered if the nightmares were her own, or if they were given to her by someone else—by Knife. However, the blade seemed quiet now, if she had even been carried here. No trouble seemed to stew besides occasional hunger and drinking anxiety. Hwayoung began looking for protein sources like sea lettuce and potato maple, but had been unable to find any. The last batch of it had been sun dried into crisp sheets on a hot stone and eaten in a minute. The girl’s stomach growled.

  At this, Hazahnahkah used his Second Terror to create apples from air, but this did not work. However, it was not that his Second Terror did not work as it had before—it was only maladjusted—capable of making what he wanted, but imprecisely. When Hazahnahkah imagined fruit, he made stones instead. Where he imagined stones, only microscopic spatial distortions opened.

  Wherever Hazahnahkah was, his powers weren’t working as they should have—but then again he couldn’t recall ever trying to make food. He turned his sheen to the canopy. He adjusted the molecular structure of each leaf, increasing the caloric density by adding starches and fats with modified chloroplasts. He boosted the protein by transforming their gene structure to mirror those of soybeans. Once this process was finally complete, he increased the burden of gravity on the leaves. They rained down. They smelled like baked potatoes. They glimmered and danced on Hwayoung’s home until she took a bite. She looked at the sword, and once again called his name.

  “Hazahnahkah.”

  Hazahnahkah had thought it had been some kind of fluke before. Nobody had ever called him by his name, and this girl was far too young to be his maker.

  “Hwayoung,” the blade said back.

  Of course, the girl couldn’t hear him at all. She lifted the blade into the air with a grin. She suddenly seemed somber in its reflection—yes—Hazahnahkah was too. After every single person had died, after her failure to save Nazaki, after Hazahnahkah’s failure to do what he was supposed to do best. To be godly. It seemed he’d been failing a lot at doing this as of late, but now this time he was the one who was saved.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “You don’t know how to talk? Do you? Talking isn’t often useful anyway.” She cocked her head to one side before aiming the sword toward the sand. “Write instead.”

  Hazahnahkah was speechless, both figuratively and literally.

  Could he truly be so stupid?

  All this time, Hazahnahkah could write using his Third Terror?

  There’s no way, Hazahnahkah thought, preparing to use his Third Terror. He managed to muster enough precision to control gravity, to play the game of tug of war with Clest, the sun, the moon, and the rest of the spheres in the sky. He pulled the sea over the shoreline, and adjusted the pressure in certain areas and not others…

  … what was left was one word…

  HELLO.

  “Hello!” Hwayoung said back.

  Hazahnahkah: Thankful 30/100 → Friendly 50/100

  Hwayoung: Hopeful 99/100 → Wonderstruck 100/100 (an unknown ability has developed)

  Ysan: Lamented 100/100

  [Hwayoung-Developed Writer Ramble] → [Writer]

  Writer: Hazahnahkah may use [Third Terror] with extreme precision, caution, and softness to communicate visually through the environment without obliterating it. Consumes 1,000,000,000 Energy per second while active. Energy cannot be recovered for three hours after [Writer] deactivates.

  A surge of excitement overflowed from Hazahnahkah at this. This was very different from speaking with another object. Speaking with humans, with any race that once wielded him, was something he had always dreamed of doing. It was a feeling he’d never experienced before. Like being looked at by something divine, like finally being acknowledged—just as the sky, sea, and earth so often were—for the first time in all his history, the sword felt seen, heard, felt, known, safe. He etched his next message with the waves with grace of a toddler and the restraint of a falling hippo.

  YOU HAVE TAUGHT ME SOMETHING. I OWE YOU MUCH.

  “That’s alright!”

  Hazahnahkah had wanted to add a “thank you” to that but grew suddenly weary. Writing with sea waves was so much more difficult that opening chasms or growing food. The level of precision was entirely unlike anything he’d had to do before.

  Communication was hard.

  Hazahnahkah then managed one final message.

  SLEEPY.

  The girl laughed. She strapped Hazahnahkah to her side and returned her attention to surviving. She collected excess food she had left out to dry, stored ember into a hollow gourd, and found two sandals that didn’t match to wear. It seemed Hwayoung was much more concerned with going somewhere, rather than surviving. She rested that evening, ate before dawn, and embarked to the song of owls and crickets. A red dragon flickered across the sky. A real one. Not the kites the kids in The Fawn Cities always flew.

  “Shit,” the girl said.

  It was the first time Hwayoung’s gaze had ever turned so dark. Hazahnahkah was not worried. While this alien environment did make things a bit harder for him to control with his Third Terror, he was still more than powerful enough to battle any living creature. It was the weather, the world that he was concerned about.

  “Hazahnahkah, are you awake?”

  The sword immediately focused his attention on his wielder. He looked for something to write with, but they were far from any body of water now. There was however, coconuts. He utilized his Third Terror and made them fall, precisely, perfectly.

  The fluid formed the pattern that would be his first message this morning.

  YES.

  “You don’t say much. You seemed friendly before. I imagine it’s hard for you to write. Is it?”

  A second word then appeared before the first. Hazahnahkah wanted to communicate as much as possible so he kept his messages as short as possible.

  TIRING.

  “Is this your Third Terror?”

  HOW DID YOU KNOW?

  “You were once kept in my village. We worshipped you for a time, as well as your Three Terrors. Your Ramble.”

  Finally! Someone who could explain to him what the heck a Ramble was! Hazahnahkah leapt at the chance and asked, but there were no more coconuts. He instead unearthed tree roots, forming the words like thick strong ribbons, hanging in the air. It was very tiring. He didn’t want to disturb the family of trees living here.

  WHAT IS A RAMBLE?

  Hwayoung shouted and stopped. She let everything she carried sag. “You don’t know what a Ramble is? But you’re a Rapscallion!”

  Hazahnahkah barely knew what a Rapscallion was either. He formed what would be his final message for the day. He needed to reserve himself in the case an emergency came and Hwayoung needed him.

  RAPSCALLION?

  The girl deflated with a sigh. She sat down, gathering herself for nearly an hour. As if learning that Hazahnahkah was clueless was discovering the color red. The blade felt bad. If her entire village worshipped him then they saw him as a god. Now one of them was learning their god didn’t know his feet from his hands. To be fair, Hazahnahkah didn’t remember her village at all, and certainly never claimed to know anything divine.

  Eventually, the girl got up, and began walking again, hiking up steep hills and hopping across creeks.

  “Everyone has something that gives them pleasure, right? Rambles allow people to protect what gives them the most pleasure. The more pleasure something gives you, the greater the power to protect it is.”

  This was extraordinarily interesting. Hazahnahkah had never heard anything like this before. He wasn’t quite sure what gave him “pleasure”. He’d never thought about it.

  “Your Three Terrors are based on the pleasure that you receive when someone who wields you seizes what they desire, is it not? Your Third Terror, the manipulation of realities, your Second Terror, the creation of realities, and your First and Final Terror… the ability to give people dreams.”

  What? Hazahnahkah was startled by the misinformation on his First Terror. It was utterly wrong… however he could not yet address this. He needed to reserve himself still in case of an emergency. He had so many more questions, but Hwayoung answered none of them, already moving on to the next topic.

  “Rapscallions… well… They are the things in this world you should most avoid.”

  Hazahnahkah felt a grim shadow over him. His initial assumption of the title “Rapscallion” was that it meant those who were renowned or powerful. Had all the wielders that once held him truly suffered tragedies so infamous? He did not want to take ownership of such a legacy, and yet he had no choice.

  Still he could hear Knife’s laughter.

  “There is no such thing as freedom.”