The thought hit me sideways and wouldn’t let go. I wasn’t a key. I was evidence. A breadcrumb left behind, pointing toward something that had been buried too deep. No wonder Jerald watched me so closely. No wonder keeping me alive mattered so much. I wasn’t just another kid under his care. I was a living trace of what had taken his family.

  I shivered at the horror of it. Ruptured earth. Creatures spilling through a tear in the world. Whatever monsters they’d faced to seal that rip, it hadn’t been small.

  “Trolls,” I said suddenly.

  Doyle blinked. “What?”

  “In the forest,” I said, the words tumbling over each other. “Big ones. Not like the farm. Bigger. Much bigger!”

  That got his attention. He straightened at once. “Trolls as in more than one? Where?”

  I didn’t waste time. I told him about the clearing, the way I’d followed the sound. Five of them. Massive. The iron bracers etched with runes. The clubs made from whole trees. I explained how I’d marked the trees as I backed away, how I’d counted them twice to be sure.

  By the time I finished, Doyle wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was already somewhere else, measuring the danger.

  He took it all in without interrupting, eyes fixed on me, weighing each word. When I paused, he asked what I might have missed. I went through it again, slower this time. The size of the clubs. The runes on the iron bracers. The smell of burnt meat. “Sheep, I think.”

  Doyle’s expression tightened. “That complicates things,” he said. “There’ll be people moving through that stretch of forest soon. They could walk straight into it.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. One step back, then another, and it was as if the space he occupied simply gave up on holding him. The air folded. He was gone.

  The room felt different with him gone. Hollow. I glanced around and noticed a small stack of books on the table that hadn’t been there this morning. That must have been how and why he’d come in to find the room deserted. Help, delivered quietly. And I’d answered it by sneaking into the city.

  The guilt settled in my stomach.

  When rules are bent against you long enough… you learned to bend back, but that didn’t make it sit any easier.

  I crossed the room and ran my fingers over the spines:

  Anomalous Enchantments and Their Failures

  Blessing Theory Beyond Bloodlines

  Modern Runes and the Loss of Intent

  I swallowed and picked up the last one. The rune book felt heavier than it looked.

  As I opened it, the sword stirred. The false silver sheen slid away from the blade, leaving it dark and honest.

  “Will this one have the answers?” it asked.

  I didn’t know. But I kept reading anyway.

  “Some,” I said, not sounding convinced. “I’m guessing.”

  I flipped through the book, skimming until the diagrams started to resemble the marks I’d seen on the blade. My finger traced the margin as I read.

  “Contract runes,” I murmured. “Rare. Expensive. Actively triggered.” That fit.

  I turned a few more pages. “And the others,” I went on, slower now, “the ones that don’t switch on and off. Core runes. Passive. They improve or modify the object or it’s wielder.”

  I glanced at the blade and confirmed.

  Four contract runes.

  Seven core runes.

  My stomach tightened with excitement.

  I skimmed the book quickly searching for Rune’s I recognised on the blade. First, I found the energy rune, described as increasing liveliness and endurance. That explained the way my legs never quite tired when the sword was in hand. A cooling rune. I remembered the steadying chill that followed a hard swing. A wound-closing rune, minor but reliable. I glanced at my hand, already scabbed where it should still have been bleeding.

  Strength was there too, though listed as low-grade. A slight increase. Nothing dramatic. Speed followed it, barely more than a nudge. Perception, marked as moderate. That one caught my eye. The illustration beside it was simpler than the lines I’d seen etched into my blade.

  I frowned.

  Absorption was listed near the back, treated like a warning more than a tool. Edge reinforcement followed, tied to weapon-on-weapon encounters. I thought of the training dummy. The spriggan’s knife. The way the sword had eaten its way through metal in the mine without slowing.

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  That hadn’t been nothing.

  But according to the book, the things I’d fed it were considered scrap. Training gear. Low-grade enchantments. The kind of magic nobles dismissed as disposable. Along the blade there were no duplicates, but it seemed they were refined when the same rune was absorbed twice.

  My gaze drifted to the blade resting beside me, dark and patient.

  If that was trash…

  I swallowed.

  What would happen if it tasted something better?

  The blacksmith’s promise crept back into my thoughts. Whatever the others didn’t need, I could feed to the sword. The idea glimmered like a thin light at the end of a long tunnel. Another risk, but one with purpose.

  My mind strayed to the trolls. The iron bracers wrapped around their forearms, thick with runes of their own. Old. Heavy. Powerful. For a heartbeat, the thought tempted me.

  No. Too dangerous.

  I pushed it aside and turned back to the book.

  I flipped until I found the section on active runes again and read more carefully this time.

  “Contract Runes,” the text said, “are so named because their creation does not occur without a contract or sacrifice.”

  I froze.

  “Does that mean what I think it does…?” I asked quietly. “Like Ricky… was he…”

  “Don’t dwell on that,” the sword hummed.

  “But—”

  “You did not take a life,” it said, firm. “You’ve said it yourself. You are no killer.”

  I swallowed and nodded. “Brent has a lot to answer for.”

  “Indeed.”

  I exhaled slowly and focused again. “So, four of these, then,” I muttered, more to organise my thoughts than anything else. “Ricky’s rune from the medallion. The holding rune from the training construct. Useful, that one. The invisibility rune from the woman in the alley.”

  My finger tapped the page as I thought of the last one. “And this…” I flipped through the book, scanning diagrams until a familiar shape caught my eye. A squared sigil, warped and angular.

  There.

  “A kinetic guidance rune,” I read aloud. “Rare. Largely unused in modern combat. Considered a minor derivative of more aggressive combat runes.”

  I kept reading, pulse picking up.

  “Allows the wielder improved accuracy through subtle control of the body. Increases speed, balance, and precision rather than raw strength or speed.”

  I leaned back slowly, the pieces sliding into place. That wasn’t brute power. It was the blade helping me move better than I should have.

  And if this was the minor version…

  I read on, lips moving as the words settled. “Does not increase speed but allows greater understanding within the body.” I leaned back slightly. “That… actually makes sense.”

  The memory of the fight with the massive spriggan surfaced. I hadn’t been faster in the way Rob was fast, or Jerald. No burst. No blur. I’d just known where my weight needed to be. When to shift. When to duck. My body had listened better than it ever had before. The others had empowering blessings. This was something else. Guidance, not force.

  The sword’s dark sheen slipped back into its false silver a heartbeat before a knock sounded at the door.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Doyle stepped inside. “I sent word with Rob,” he said at once. “If all goes well, he’ll reach Jerald before anything bad happens.”

  “Good.” I felt relived.

  Doyle however didn’t return my smile. Instead, he folded his arms and fixed me with a look that tried very hard to be stern.

  “Don’t think this gets you off the hook,” he said. “You went into the city. Risked your life. Nearly tore up months of planning.” His gaze flicked to the book, then back to me. “All for what. Two elixirs?”

  The weight of his words landed hard.

  “Well… not just that,” I said in my defence.

  Doyle studied me, waiting.

  I reached for the rune pocket. His brows lifted the moment my hand disappeared into fabric. When I drew my hand back out, the colour drained from his face.

  Four crystals caught the light as I set them on the bed. Yellow. Green. Blue. Purple. Each one dense with colour, clean enough to look unreal. They didn’t clink when they brushed up against each other. They settled, dense and silent.

  Doyle stared.

  “What… no. No, seriously?” The words came out thin. He leaned closer, then stopped himself, like he was afraid to breathe too hard near them. “Those are—”

  “So,” I said, trying for casual and missing by a mile. “What do they go for?”

  He shot me a look sharp enough to cut. “Did anyone follow you?” His gaze flicked to the window, then back to me. “Who did you steal these from?”

  I hesitated. Judging by his reaction, half-truths wouldn’t hold. I started from the moment I’d left the cottage and worked my way through it, trimming only around the blade’s involvement. The city. The shops. The guards. The alley. His mouth tightened as I spoke, concern replacing disbelief.

  “Stop,” he said eventually, holding up a hand. “We’ll deal with that part later.” He looked back at the crystals, eyes narrowing as his focus shifted. “What you did was far more dangerous than I realised.”

  He leaned in, hovering a breath just short of the purple crystal. “No trace runes,” he murmured. “Clean. Untouched.” He swallowed. “I haven’t seen stones this large or this pure in a very long time.”

  His gaze snapped back to me. “And they just let you walk out with them?”

  “On Nick’s credit,” I said.

  Before he could respond, I rested a hand on the sword. The change rippled through me, skin tightening, bone shifting with a faint, crawling pressure. Nick’s face settled over mine like a mask pulled too snug.

  Doyle recoiled a step. “You didn’t…”

  I raised both hands quickly. “No. I know what you’re thinking, and no.” My pulse thudded in my ears. “This rune. The one Jerald arranged for me. I think I… added to it.”

  He stared at me, really looked this time, eyes tracking the familiar lines of Nick’s face where they shouldn’t be.

  “I see,” he said slowly. “And you’re sure you didn’t…”

  I shook my head. “All it takes is a touch. That’s it. No blood. No bodies. I take the look and that’s all.”

  He exhaled, tension easing a fraction. “I trust you will...”

  “…keep this ability quiet,” I said. Not mentioning that a certain woman already knows.

  He let out a long breath, rubbing a hand over his face. “Then thank you for trusting me.”

  I shrugged, the weight of it settling in. “I don’t have many people who’d still stand by me.”

  “And don’t forget the other two,” he said. “They already think of you as one of theirs.”

  I blinked. “Even after a week?”

  “Underdogs look out for their own.”

  I nodded. I understood that far too well.

  I glanced back at the crystals on the bed. “So, these,” I said. “What are they for, and how much trouble can they buy us?”

  He stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “You took them without knowing that?”

  I winced.

  I shrugged, suddenly aware of how thin my reasoning sounded out loud. “They looked expensive,” I said. “And I was… being a bit petty.”

  Doyle barked a laugh, sharp and surprised. “Of all the things you could have walked out with, those?” He shook his head. “You might’ve made the best mistake possible.”

  He leaned over the bed and pointed at the crystals, careful not to touch them. “These aren’t trade stones. They’re catalysts. Used in the forging of soul blades.”

  I went still.

  My gaze slid, slow and uneasy, to the sword at my side.

  “Seriously?”