The woman in dark-blue armor didn't stop walking until she was ten paces away.
Elowen held me up between them like a line drawn in steel.
"State your name," Elowen said, voice hard. "And your authority."
The woman's gaze didn't flicker. Calm. Controlled. The kind of calm that only comes from surviving too many battles to waste energy on fear.
"Captain Maera Voss," she said. "Dawnwatch Inquisitor. I oversee relic awakenings and covenant weapons."
"Inquisitor," Elowen repeated, like the word tasted bitter.
Maera's eyes dropped to my runes again. "Lumenward."
My blade shivered.
Not physically—because I was metal—but spiritually, like a bell struck too close to my ear.
She knows my true name, I warned through the bond.
Elowen didn't answer out loud, but her grip tightened so hard I could feel it in my hilt.
Maera lifted both hands, empty, palms outward. "I didn't come to confiscate you. If I wanted the sword, you wouldn't have seen me enter through the front door."
Elowen didn't relax.
"Then why are you here?"
Maera's voice lowered. "Because awakened legendary weapons attract the same thing every time."
She glanced at the high windows.
"Hunger."
The rune-pillars around the hall pulsed faintly, reacting to the word like it was a threat.
Elowen's eyes narrowed. "Explain."
Maera's gaze returned to me—direct, assessing, almost clinical.
"Does it remember what it was forged to seal?" she asked again.
The moment she said seal, a pressure swelled behind my awareness—like a door trying to open with a thousand hands pushing from the other side.
A flash: black water. Chains. A screaming light.
Then it slammed shut.
No, I answered, voice sharp. And I don't like the way you're asking.
Elowen's eyes widened. She hadn't expected me to speak aloud to someone else.
Maera's eyebrows lifted—just a fraction. "Good. It's coherent."
"Stop talking about me like I'm an object," I snapped.
Elowen's mouth twitched once, like she approved.
Maera gave a small nod, as if she'd just confirmed a theory. "Then I'll speak plainly."
She took a single step back, turning her head slightly as if listening to something only she could hear.
"Elowen," Maera said, "your training hall is warded. Strongly. Yet something fired at you in here."
Elowen's eyes cut to the dummy emitters.
"They weren't supposed to be active," Elowen said.
Maera's voice turned colder. "Correct. Which means someone is already probing you."
The air in the hall shifted.
Not a breeze.
A wrongness, like the space near the ceiling had been scraped thinner.
My runes flared without my permission.
Elowen—down.
Elowen dropped on instinct, cloak snapping.
A thin black bolt—silent, fast—shot through the space where her throat had been.
It wasn't a training bolt.
It was a needle of condensed shadow, aimed to kill.
The bolt slammed into the far wall and didn't stick. It sank into the stone like poison into flesh, leaving a stain that made the rune pillars sputter.
Elowen's breath caught.
Maera didn't flinch.
"Told you," she said.
Another bolt came—this one aimed at Elowen's heart.
I didn't think.
I moved.
Not my blade—my will.
Aegis.
A golden barrier snapped into place, tight and flat like a shield plate.
The black bolt hit it—
—and squealed, like something alive being forced into sunlight.
The bolt bounced off, skittered across the floor, and evaporated into smoke.
Elowen rose into guard in one smooth motion. "Where?!"
I searched with sword-sense—feeling pressure changes in the wards, listening to the way the hall's runes complained.
There.
A warped shimmer just outside the highest window.
Not inside the room.
Outside.
A sniper.
High window, third pillar left. Outside the ward line, I sent to Elowen.
Elowen set her feet and raised me—then hesitated.
"You can't reach that far," she muttered.
Maybe you can't, I replied. But I can protect you until you close the distance.
Maera drew her own weapon—not a sword, but a short, crescent-edged blade that caught light like moon ice.
"Assassin," she said. "They're using ward-splitting bolts. Whoever hired them knows exactly what awakened."
Elowen's eyes flashed. "Then why did you come here now?"
Maera's answer was simple. "Because if Lumenward woke, the enemy is already moving."
A third bolt fired—faster.
I threw another barrier, but this one wasn't flat.
It curved.
A half-dome that caught the bolt and guided it, redirecting it away from Elowen's body like water around a rock.
The bolt slammed into a wooden dummy and the dummy's chest blackened, cracking.
Elowen's jaw tightened. "That would've—"
Yes, I said. It would've.
Elowen lunged toward the doors.
The bolts kept coming, one every heartbeat.
I kept casting.
Plate. Dome. Plate. Dome.
Each barrier formed cleaner than the last, but I felt the drain immediately—like my reservoir was being poured out with every defense.
A fourth bolt struck my barrier and tried to cling to it, spreading shadow across the golden surface like ink.
My runes burned hotter.
It's trying to corrode the ward! I warned.
Elowen pivoted, using my edge to slice through the clinging shadow—not to cut it, but to sever its connection.
The shadow recoiled as if stung.
Maera's eyes narrowed. "It can sever tethered curses. That confirms it."
"CONFIRMS WHAT?" Elowen snapped, sprinting.
Maera moved with her, staying just behind, scanning angles. "That the sword isn't just a shield. It's a lock."
We burst into the corridor beyond the hall.
Knights turned in surprise—then froze as a black bolt streaked through the open doorway.
I flared a barrier wide enough to cover three of them.
The bolt hit it and shattered into smoke.
One knight stumbled back, pale. "What in the—"
"Elowen!" another shouted, reaching for his weapon.
Elowen didn't stop. "Clear the corridor! Someone is firing from above!"
I cast again—wider—creating a moving shield that traveled with Elowen like a bubble of light.
It wasn't elegant.
It was necessary.
My awareness stretched thin, trying to track each threat vector.
And then I felt it—subtle, dangerous.
A bolt wasn't aimed at Elowen.
It was aimed at the crowd.
At the knights.
At the servants in the hall who hadn't even seen the attacker.
A distraction shot.
A massacre shot.
Elowen—behind us!
Elowen spun, but she couldn't reach everyone in time.
So I did the only thing I could.
I stopped defending one person.
And defended all of them.
My runes blazed like a sunrise.
A wall of light erupted outward—broad, tall, spanning the corridor from stone to stone.
BULWARK.
The black bolt hit the wall and died, leaving only a harmless smear of smoke that drifted down like ash.
Everyone stared.
A servant dropped a tray with a crash.
One knight whispered, "Saints…"
Elowen's breathing hitched.
I felt her relief like a wave through the bond.
Then I felt something worse.
A sudden hollowness.
Like I'd reached too deep and pulled too much.
My runes flickered.
My sword-body felt heavy—wrong—like metal trying to fall asleep.
Elowen… I'm—
My voice cut out.
The world tilted.
Light swallowed me.
And then—
I was back in the hallway as a kid again, knees hitting stone, palms catching me before I faceplanted.
My head spun.
My chest hurt in a way that didn't make sense for a child body that hadn't been alive five minutes ago.
Elowen dropped instantly, scooping me up with one arm while still gripping my sword form—because the sword form wasn't in her hand anymore.
Which meant—
I wasn't a sword right now.
I was only me.
Small. Tired. Too exposed.
Elowen's eyes went sharp with panic. "Rin!"
"I'm—fine," I lied, which came out as a weak squeak.
Maera stepped in front of us, blade raised, scanning the upper windows.
"The sniper saw the bulwark," Maera said. "They'll relocate."
Elowen bared her teeth. "Then we hunt them."
I grabbed Elowen's sleeve with both hands.
"Don't chase," I whispered. "Not yet. That assassin… wasn't testing you."
Elowen swallowed. "What were they doing?"
I stared down the corridor, trying to steady my breathing.
"They were testing me."
Maera's gaze sharpened. "Correct."
Elowen looked between us, anger and fear twisting together. "Then tell me what's happening."
Maera sheathed her crescent blade slowly. "You just witnessed your sword's first true defense."
Her eyes settled on me—gentler, for the first time.
"And you nearly drained yourself to do it."
I glared at her weakly. "I saved people."
"You did," Maera agreed. "Which is why you're dangerous. Not because you can kill."
She pointed upward with two fingers. "Because you can refuse to let people die."
Elowen hugged me closer, protective. "No one touches her. Not you. Not the Dawnwatch. Not anyone."
Maera didn't argue. She only said, "Then you'll need to learn faster than prophecy intended."
Elowen stood.
I clung to her shoulder, still dizzy, still embarrassed, still furious at my own limits.
But beneath all that—
I felt something solid.
Something earned.
My first defense hadn't been perfect.
But it was real.
And now the enemy knew:
Lumenward had awakened.
And it would not let the Heroine fall.