His guard was lowered, both hands holding a surreal sword.
It was a long, slightly curved blade — narrow and clean-edged, tapering to a sharp, precise point. Its surface bore faint, flowing patterns like frozen currents locked beneath the metal. Color shifted along its length: pale ice-blue at the core, deepening toward a colder, darker azure near the edge.
A thin frost haze clung to it, barely visible — mist-like, trailing off in slow, cold wisps as though the air around the blade were being slowly drained of warmth.
Near the base, the glow dulled where it met the guard.
The hilt was dark, almost black, with an organic, claw-like structure in place of a traditional guard. It spread outward in uneven, pointed ridges — like hardened bone or chitin gripping the base of the blade.
The handle was wrapped tight and minimal, ending in a sharp, tapered pommel.
'I can't survive without killing it.'
He turned without wasting a breath — and in the same instant the fiend had turned too, already parting its maw to release that paralysing screech.
Before it could, Casimir hurled the sword. It spun through the air and struck the creature's beak with a sharp, glancing spark before veering off.
Before the blade could hit the ground, Casimir was already there — snatching it mid-fall without breaking stride. In one continuous motion he drove forward, shearing off the creature's right leg clean. The wound froze over instantly, ice crawling from the stump all the way up toward its abdomen.
'Have I ascended? Or no — maybe this sword is inexplicably bizarre. I can cut through its bones.'
As Casimir severed its right leg and slid behind it, the creature lost its balance — its other leg already wounded. It pitched sideways, tilting hard to the right, on the verge of toppling. But it caught itself, one massive limb shooting out to seize the trunk of a nearby tree.
Casimir could barely see straight — dizziness pulling at the edges of everything — yet he kept pushing, most of his focus and Qi poured into holding his grave wound shut.
He lurched forward. 'But why...' The creature still gripped the lower trunk. Without blinking, he drove the ice-blue blade all the way through — piercing clean through the palm of its claw and into the wood. The freeze radiated instantly, climbing from root to crown, locking the claw, the trunk, and everything between in glacial stillness. 'Why am I pushing myself this hard.'
A ragged cough tore through him. He threw himself sideways — toward the already-embedded White Coffin — just before the beak could send him flying again, and this time likely finish it. He seized the hilt and hauled himself up onto the creature's shoulder, wrenching White Coffin free as he landed and dragging it upward with him.
Its left arm was clawless, its right claw frozen and pinned by the embedded sword, and its severely mangled legs left it barely able to move as it willed. Its beak couldn't reach its own shoulder — so rather than wasting motion on Casimir, it craned downward instead, trying to wrench the blade free from its claw.
However, it never got the chance. The moment Casimir reached its shoulder he drove White Coffin through its left eye and dragged the blade across to the right, leaving the creature completely blind.
A harsh, terrifying screech was about to tear loose — but Casimir dropped onto its beak before it could, driving White Coffin down in an attempt to plunge through. As unexpectedly expected — it didn't. It only grazed the surface. But that wasn't the end of it. He hauled himself down, dangling by one hand gripping the beak, the other clutching White Coffin, and—
CRACK—STAB!
He drove the blade through the lower mandible, punching all the way up through the upper — pinning the maw shut. The screech died before it was born. Its beak was effectively immobilised, that raspy, pestering screech silenced, at least for now — and with it, the creature lost its last means of prying its frozen arm free anytime soon.
In the same motion he vaulted upward, hauling himself onto the hunchback of its head — broad and fused, crowned with two unnaturally large horns rising above its blinded eyes
"Now that I think about it... you never used your ridged horns to ram at me. I wonder if that was a preference — or something you're trying to protect."
He muttered it under a ragged, staggering breath as he drove both hands into the base of the horn, then wrapped his arms around it.
He was attempting to wrench it free — that seemingly invincible, rigid horn — but the moment his arms locked around it, an impulse rippled through his body. A sharp, disorienting convulsion seized his head for a single blink and vanished.
"Unfortunately for you, I'm immune to mind attacks. I guess know your weakness..."
Casimir was losing consciousness without even registering it — muttering words without thought, as if his sanity were slipping out from under him. He had locked all four limbs around the horn and was hauling back with every last scrap of strength and weight he had left, attempting to uproot it entirely. The creature thrashed in turn, straining against its frozen arm and pinned beak, desperate to break free.
Meanwhile, Casimir's grotesque wound had begun gushing again — heavily and relentlessly — yet he paid it no attention. Not the blood, not the pain. It was as though even the capacity to feel had abandoned him. His mind had gone blank, hollowed out by the singular, grinding force of the pull.
At the same time, the fiend was struggling to wrench the frozen tree from the ground — but it didn't take even half a minute before it abandoned that and instead closed its claws around the trunk, crushing inward, gradually splintering the wood under its grip.
'Why... why am I doing this? Why am I going this far to kill this thing? Why am I sacrificing myself? Ahh... Haaa... Curse it! Why am I so desperate to survive? Is it because of Мама? But why — why do I have to suffer because of her? Why is she so important to me? Why do I have to fight my whole life? Why am I obliged to live for her? Why can't I just die? Why was I even born in the first place? To survive? To protect my mother? What am I doing? What do I have to do with someone else's life? So what if she's my mother? That doesn't mean I deserved to be abandoned — to fight my whole life just to protect her and survive. When she herself tried to kill me. So many times. Why... why, why—!'
He tried to scream with everything he had, pouring every last ounce into the pull — but his throat was flooded with blood all the way to his mouth, leaving him struggling to even breathe.
Veins had surfaced like branches across his arms, up his neck, and onto his forehead and temples. Yet beneath it all, his skin was quietly, subtly going pale. The creature's head had been slicked in Casimir's blood down to its maw. His nails had begun bleeding from the roots — and still, not even a fraction of movement in the horn.
Until Casimir drove his fingernails — his claws — deep into the creature's skull, burying them further down into the base of the horn itself.
"Yeahhh... I'm not desperate to survive. I'm only desperate to kill. Killing is the reason I've lived and survived this far. I've always been selfish. I never cared about anyone. I struggled because I found it enthralling — pathetically thrilling, doing everything and anything whether it was within my limits or not, just to make it to the next day. I survived because I loved this struggle. I loved this painful life. And... I loved killing those who got in my way. Let's die together, hideous ape. It was fun."
He chuckled as he spoke, his voice wobbling — so low and fraying at the edges that even if someone had been standing right beside him, only he could have understood what he was saying.
CRACK!!!
Finally — the horn fractured at its base. Just barely, just a hairline — but it was enough. On that cue Casimir leaned into it, throwing all his remaining body weight behind the pull, letting himself fall with it.
CREAK—SHATTER!!!
The creature had splintered the trunk with its claw — the freeze still clinging to its arm, the sword still embedded, splinters of wood still jutting from its palm — and swung at Casimir. But it hadn't aimed for the horn. The blow struck his arms with savage, fatal force, yet in doing so it also wrenched the horn's root further from its socket. His arms gave out entirely. But it didn't matter anymore. His body weight was enough to finish it. And...
RRRIP... THUD!
The horn sheared clean off. Casimir and it fell together onto the snow-covered earth. And before he could see what became of the creature, he had blacked out.
BLINK—FLAP!
Casimir's eyes opened to nothing but dark. He blinked once, twice — then sat up, astonished, brow furrowed. He was on a woolen mat. He ran his hands across his body — abdomen, chest, back — methodically, as if confirming he was still whole.
'That was a dream?'
He felt no excruciating pain, no fatigue, no grotesque laceration anywhere on his body.
'That crap was actually a dream? For real? I typically don't have dreams. Curse it... that almost gave me a trauma.'
In the dark he rose from the mat, flung his ragged blanket aside, and walked forward, hand closing around a dangling wooden doorknob by instinct.
He opened it and stepped into the main interior of the wooden shack. Weak daylight bled through the wall cracks, dimly washing one end of the room, while the other was warmed by the yellow-red flames crackling in the fire mantle. His mother was there, crouched by the hearth feeding sticks into it, wrapped in a stitched coverlet. Her shadow wavered across the patchy wall behind her.
"You're awake early. Do you have something significant today as well?"
"Uh, no... is it evening?" he asked.
She raised an eyebrow, a soft smile following. "No, Casimir. Seems like you're still half-asleep. It's morning."
"Sorry, I just... I think I relived the entire exam day in a dream, so I'm a bit perplexed. I can't even remember when I fell asleep or when I got back." He walked toward the mantle, rubbing his forehead and scratching his back.
"Aw, you've really exhausted yourself. Come here, are you hungry? It must be because you didn't eat anything after coming back."
"I didn't?"
She snorted, mouth curving down in that familiar way. "I can't tell if you're being serious or joking with your mother. You came back after sundown, talked with me for a while, then went to sleep — but you refused to eat, as you often skip supper, so I didn't press it."
"Ah, right. Now that you mention it, I'm actually hungry. What's for the meal?"
'Am I under some enchantment, or... have I developed dementia as karma for taunting Mr. Pétrøv? I only remembered the missing memory once Мама narrated it.'
"Are you okay?" his mother asked — concern written across her voice and face.
"Of course I am. I think I really pushed myself too hard yesterday." Casimir smiled awkwardly, rolling his shoulder. "You don't have to worry, really. Now, give me my meal, I'm ravenous."
His mother stood and picked a chipped bowl from above the mantle, ladling soup from the hanging pot in the hearth.
He took slow, deliberate sips, then spoke again. "But what are you doing up this early, Мама?"
"Nothing — I was feeling cold, so I decided to refill the hearth. You came in right at that moment."
"Ohh..." He kept eating. Then—
WHAM!
— a chunk of wood struck the floor near the entrance, dragging a spill of snow with it.
"Now that I'm free, I'll fix the roof first today..." He glanced upward, then something clicked and he looked back at his mother. "And where's my sword?"
'That cunning clown broke it. I need to fix that too.'
"Um, I think you put both your swords in your room, didn't you?"
"Both?" Casimir's brow furrowed—
—and without waiting for a reply he set his empty bowl down and ran to his room.
In the dark he couldn't make out much — but after a moment of focus he finally noticed it: two swords standing upright against the wall beside his bedroll.
He approached them with cautious disbelief, his heartbeat irregular, hand reaching out — drawn especially to the one sheathed in an unusual black scabbard traced with glowing ice-blue lines that only revealed themselves under close scrutiny, lending it the look of finely advanced gear with intricate smithing.
"Am I still drea—... No. I'm not." He mumbled it as his hand closed around the middle of the blade, and the faint glow steadied at his touch.
Then his eyes widened. He turned and crossed to the mirror in the main room, leaning in close, analysing his face grimly. There — a faint cut below his lip, long since healed. And on the right side of his forehead, a slightly darker healed scar, barely visible until he brushed his hair back.
"What happened, Casimir? Is something—" she asked, her tone perplexed, already starting to rise on her feet.
"No, nothing, I'm just doing skincare. Skin gets really dry in the cold, you know. Please don't stress over everything." He said it cutting across her question before she could finish.
"Oh, okay." She watched him with a strange, puzzled look. 'Skincare? Since when did he start doing that? I see.' A smile crossed her face as she shook her head. 'He must have taken a liking to some girl recently. Oh, I'm so happy for him, I hope he marries soon as well. Hear my prayer, Protector of this land.'
Casimir then pulled off his upper clothing, revealing a bare, well-built torso — milky-pale skin over a lean, defined frame, covered in deep yet fully healed markings and cuts. Among them, traces of vicious bites and stab wounds could still be made out. He turned his back to the mirror and his eyes went still. He drew a slow breath, hand reaching back toward his spine.
"Wh— what?!"
His mother asked again whether something was wrong, watching him with growing unease.
"Uhm, ah, can you see it?" he asked.
"Yes, I can. You're still covered in those old wounds." She paused. "But you don't have to feel insecure about them. They look beautiful on you."
'She — what? She can't see it?'
He ran his hand slowly down his spine, from the top to the base. Engraved into the skin were strange symbols — he had no idea how they had gotten there, and clearly, his mother couldn't see them at all.
𐌗
𐌒
𐌀
𐌉
𐌔
𐌇
𐌏
𐌅
𐌗
𐌉
𐌎
𐌔
𐌄
𐌒
Casimir stared at the symbols without blinking, utters mutely with bafflement.
"What in the world is happening..."
***
"What in the world is happening?" Yohan mutters under his breath, eyes wide with disbelief and refusal, utterly stunned.
"It can't happen!"