As I was starting to learn, Crewe was not a man to delay once he made a decision.

The second after I voiced my request, he held out a hand to me expectantly. Since I have already established I’m not an idiot, I didn’t hesitate to obey. Smoothly, I pulled my sword from its sheath, moved my grip to its blade, and offered it to the lieutenant general, hilt first.

He grasped it tightly, then pointed the blade straight up into the air. “The sword which we can thank for your revelation…” He trailed off, stroking a finger down the blade. “A marvelous piece. The material that has gone into its construction is exquisite. And what’s this…”

The demon brushed his thumb against the gem embedded in the hilt, and froze in place.

I didn’t dare move or speak. For several long seconds, tension mounted inside me.

Is there something wrong with my sword after all?

Then Crewe began to shake, and mouths ripped themselves open all along his body as laughter erupted into the still room.

“Oh!” the lieutenant general gasped. “To think… so… that woman… she wasn’t without an heir, after all! It was such a shame…” He chuckled maliciously, his five eyes blazing even more brightly than usual. “Yes, I do recognize this blade now, puny as it looks in its current iteration.”

He swung back to me. The next thing I knew, one of his hands was gripping my chin tightly, manipulating my head left and right for a better viewing experience. I carefully resisted the urge to freak out or pull away.

“You do resemble her! I find it so very hard to tell you humans apart, though. No subtle differences in your colors, no depth of being to perceive, no distinct markings. One measly brand, that’s all that really serves to differentiate your souls, and it is such a boring chore to go rooting through the information in those.”

I struggled to process all of that until my mind latched onto the word ‘soul.’ I really shouldn’t have been surprised, but to discover that Crewe mostly relied on people’s souls to distinguish between them was an interesting discovery. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was unique, or if it was a trait all Abyss-born demons shared.

“If you can become half the nuisance that she was, then you’ll have already lived up to her legacy! And I do so hope you can manage that, fledgling, for both her sake and your own. Try not to disappoint. She did fall, in the end. If anything, you should aim to do better. To succeed where she failed.”

He finally released me, and it took all my will not to slide into a panic attack right then and there. The intense emotions ruling in that moment belonged entirely to the side of me that was Hayden. The mention of his mother had gripped my soul and threatened to tear it apart.

After all those years of wondering, after so much time spent hoping to learn even a smidgen of information about her, here in front of me stood a demon who had actually known her.

And I couldn’t demand a single explanation from him.

I stood there, frozen, fighting back a dozen different urges. I wanted to surge forward and say something incredibly stupid. I wanted to hurt myself in some way, if only for the brief reprieve from emotions that pain would offer.

Crewe, of course, did not care a single whit about what I was going through.

He took several steps away from me, then held my sword horizontally in front of his chest, blade pointing outward. For a few moments, he focused solely on breathing, eyes closed. His expression was as close to ‘serene’ as such a horrifying entity could manage.

When his eyes snapped open, so did his mouth. His jaws opened wider than I had ever seen them go before, reminding me of a snake more than a humanoid. More disturbingly, rather than a view of a regular person’s insides, we were treated to the sight of an endless void beyond those jaws. Stars glittered within the void, too many to count at a casual glance.

A rumbling noise emerged from this cavernous space, and then some of the stars started to surge closer, turning from pinpricks of light into glowing orbs surrounded by emerald flames.

Then they started melting.

A stream of green molten soul-stuff dripped out of the lieutenant and onto my sword, igniting it. The blade visibly softened as glowing lines began to manifest all along its length.

A shudder passed through me, flowing along my bond with the sword. I had to bite down a gasp as well as the sudden urge to lunge forward and try to pry the blade away from the demon. He could fend me off with zero effort, anyway.

I glanced at Glaustro and his brother to gauge their reaction. The only thing I saw on their faces was awe, rather than alarm or terror, so I fought to calm myself. That became increasingly difficult as the weight of mana in the room increased, and as I continued to feel jolts of pain and… something else, all streaming into me through the connection to my mother’s legacy.

The more flaming, emerald soul-stuff inundated my sword, the more the glowing lines became a distinct feature. They had started off as faded markings that covered maybe one percent of the entire weapon. Now they covered more than twenty five percent of the blade, and their numbers only continued to grow.

So did the complexity of the pattern they formed. It reminded me of the lines on a circuit board. The web of glowing lines intersected and branched as it spread, seeking to cover every inch of the available surface.

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The weight of mana also kept growing, pressing down on me unpleasantly as Crewe continued to work. Every few moments, in addition to the soul-stuff he was pouring out, the demon waved one of his many arms over the sword. His claws would flash before a single, abyssal-black drop of blood plopped down on the emerging pattern to join the emerald flames.

Every time, the blade absorbed the blood swiftly. Every time, the progress of the glowing lines multiplied exponentially.

Every time sent shivers racing into my very soul.

I was always vaguely aware of the links that connected me to my soul-bound items, not to mention the Abyss itself, but now the connection to my sword was thickening and solidifying in a way I could barely understand. And through this connection, something was reaching out for me.

It wasn’t the first time I felt my soul react to something, but of all the times prior, this was perhaps the most pronounced. I could, all at once, feel my soul both recoil away from and yearn for whatever was trying to establish contact.

The connection shuddered one final time as the lines reached and exceeded fifty percent of my sword’s total surface area.

Then the mysterious presence on the other end got through.

A wave of agony erupted through my soul. My other senses winked out, and then I was in a realm of pure darkness, body translucent and as naked as the day I was born. Thick cords of power ran from my chest into the distance, and I could instinctively tell what lay at the end of each one.

One particular line was currently serving as a conduit for Crewe’s emerald flames, trying to pump them into my chest. They sputtered when they entered my body, but they were gaining ground fast. From scattered sparks, the power slowly grew into emerald embers, and then the first green tongues of actual fire rose up.

The agony clouding my thoughts intensified, and an incredibly potent wave of fear slammed into my mind. I knew, immediately and instinctively, that the flames could swallow up my soul if I let them. Even if I managed to keep them somewhat in order, if I let them spread through my chest and reach my core, they would consume it.

Perhaps I would get something else in its place. Perhaps it would even be a more potent kind of power. But, it would never belong solely to me, nor would it be anything like the magic I could perform now.

I loved my magic. It appealed to a young, sheltered part of me that still dreamed of swishing a wand around while blasting off silly-sounding spells. I was most definitely not going to give it up without a fight.

So, with hackles raised and more than my survival on the line, I bent the entirety of my mind, will, and soul against the flames.

At first, nothing worked right. My translucent red flesh was not filled with mana like I was used to. The power flowing through me felt both similar and incredibly different, refusing to obey my attempts to corral it. Meanwhile, the flames kept growing, licking onwards and fighting to consume a whole section of my chest.

It was only when a surge of pure anger and frustration erupted out of me that the power within my soul reacted and shifted. The tiny ripple it made smothered the flames significantly, though only for a moment.

The ripple also brought an odd kind of enlightenment with it.

I’m not dealing with mana. I’ve felt mana before, and this doesn’t feel like it. My core isn’t even present in my chest, though I can feel it there, just at the edge of my senses. But, if this isn’t mana, then… it can only be my soul itself.

I felt silly, obsessing over labels in such a moment, but I couldn’t help it. I was so caught up in the idea of mana as some kind of external force, something I could gather up and tame. That was true, to an extent.

However, once it took root within my body, once it became part of me, didn’t it fall under the label of ‘me’, too?

In the same way, just because the swirly red substance was located under my translucent skin and I could ‘see’ it as a distinct feature of my insides didn’t mean it wasn’t a part of my soul. On the contrary, it was a more pure expression of my soul than the faux-human appearance I forced my manifestation to take in such moments.

The manifestation was far from perfect, after all. Parts of it still looked like they were sewn together, but the seams had significantly smoothed out by now. Rather than an obvious mish-mash of different identities, all the bits looked like they belonged to a single person.

A single person who happened to get mauled by a bear or something, and needed to be put together again more extensively than Humpty Dumpty.

The swirling red substance inside me, though? That was just one singular, uniform mass of power, pure and whole.

As that understanding surged through me, the power that made up ‘me’ suddenly fell under my perfect control. Calling upon that power to wash over the emerald flames was simplicity itself, and I ground away at them time and time again.

I realized quickly this strategy alone wasn’t going to work.

I was making progress, and I could definitely stop the flames from spreading. But more and more of the embers lingered, heating up and threatening to burst into a conflagration again.

So, instead, I gathered all the embers up.

I squished them together, exerting as much pressure as I could until they fused into one perfect sphere. Then I shoved the emerald sphere into the point where my sword-connection fed into my spectral form.

I couldn’t define what compelled me to do that. I only felt a surge of cold certainty that it was the right way to act, and I followed through with it almost before I could consciously make the decision.

It worked, at least for the most part. When forced into the sphere with my soul-stuff, the emerald embers cooled and almost settled down. But the flames just kept coming, surging along the link with my sword, shoving more power into that marble of emerald essence I had created.

The embers were starting to heat up again. The process was slow, but I could see a flame guttering to life within the half-transparent orb. If it erupted in a blaze, it would consume me instantly…

Then, just as the tiny flame started to radiate unbearable heat, the source of the fire cut out.

The connection between me and my soul cooled. I forced mouthful after mouthful of air into my lungs with desperate need as my eyes shot open, blinking blurrily at… the ceiling.

I had collapsed. Glaustro was on his knees next to me, gently trying to lift me up and glaring murder at Crewe. Graighast looked constipated and afraid as he stared at us, but he still seemed ready to back up his brother if necessary.

Meanwhile, the lieutenant general loomed over me, gripping my sword, his eyes focused on me and me alone.

“Well done! I thought you’d be able to withstand that, and I was right. Of course, I intended to offer you this boon from the start, but I pushed a little harder than I would have without knowing about your ancestry. Claim your sword, soldier, and be dismissed. I suggest visiting the station after this. It will help you immensely.”

He gazed at me with an oddly proud expression on his face, ignoring the other two demons in the room.

I rolled over to my knees and raised a shaky hand to accept the sword. The second my fingers brushed against it, I felt the power that slumbered within it, hidden from prying eyes and waiting to deliver death to my enemies.

Within my soul, sequestered away and still radiating heat, I could also feel a small fire. It crackled away in all its emerald glory, radiating its own brand of strength.

It wasn’t anger or fear that burned in me at the sight of it.

It was a hunger, and I wasn’t sure how far I would go to keep it fed.