Crossworld Swordplay

Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The Blood Stone



Lina stood and dressed on unsteady legs, wincing at the dull ache between her thighs as she slipped out to fetch a warm pail of water from the dormitory faculty.

Damon rose once she was gone, pulling on his trousers without hurry.

Then his gaze turned to the cloth bundle on the table.

The Blood Stone.

He unwrapped it slowly. The dark emerald gleamed—streaked with crimson veins that pulsed faintly in the morning light, like something inside it was still alive. It felt heavier now. Or perhaps he was.

Damon stared into the surface—black, green, and red folding over one another—and felt something shift behind his eyes.

He ran his thumb across its jagged edge.

"A Blood Stone," he murmured, testing the weight, the balance, the texture. He didn't know exactly what it was—but something told him it mattered. That it held something. Power. Secrets. Growth.

Kael's voice echoed in his thoughts:

You're vicious. Reckless. Brutal.

A Blood Stone. Horseborn. Fifteen years old when killed. Fast as sin and hard to break.

If you want what's inside it, you'll have to figure out the final part of the ritual yourself. Fail or succeed… that's your problem.

Those words lingered longer than the rest—viciousness, brutality, recklessness, speed, durability. Horse blood. Ritual. Sin.

Damon smiled faintly, the black ash of the stone staining his thumb.

"Interesting," he muttered.

He set the stone down and carefully wrapped it again—just in time for Lina to return, balancing a steaming pail of water in her arms.

After bathing, Damon went to his classes as his days settled into a rhythm of discipline.

Mornings were for drills: stances, strikes, breathing, balance. The academy's training fields knew no mercy, and neither did Damon. His instructors noted his progress in silence; they'd learned quickly that praise meant little to him. It was the gaps, the flaws, the mistakes that mattered—and he hunted them down with almost fanatical precision.

Afternoons brought lectures. Geography, war history, theory of command, basic arithmancy. Damon listened, took notes, and said little. The other students either watched him warily or gave him wide berth. He preferred it that way.

Evenings were theirs. Friends, shared meals, extra training in the courtyards or secret rendezvous between budding young couples. Yet instead, he walked the cold stone halls of the upper wing, made his way past the frosted-glass double doors of the Grand Library, and took root beneath the copper-domed reading lamps of the west wing. There, among aisles of dust and parchment, he searched.

Blood Stones.

Every night, he scoured titles: ancient warfare, ritual minerals, obscure beast records, emerald encyclopedias—anything that might hold the faintest thread of meaning.

He found nothing.

Not a whisper. Not a footnote. Not even a fable.

After six nights, he'd read enough about emerald inlays and ceremonial bridles to recite them backward in his sleep—but still, not a single mention of stones like the one Kael had given him.

Still, Damon didn't stop. He kept going.

When the academy announced the end of term—one month and two weeks since they'd arrived—students were given permission to return home for a fortnight of rest, as they had now officially started their first year and had received their first set of academy uniforms: reinforced trousers, black or gray shirts, and a utility belt.

These casual garments were the final reminder for the young lords and ladies that the next time they returned, they wouldn't be allowed to wear their fancy dress and clothing in or outside of training, as they boarded the airships.

Damon left with the others—two silver stars pinned to his collar, earned through his achievements. He returned to the estate bearing his name—but not to rest.

He returned with the obsession still gnawing behind his eyes.

For two weeks, while other noble sons drank, feasted, and basked in familial adoration, Damon made daily trips to his house's downgraded private library, and even bribed his way into a scholar's archive in the city. Nothing. Not a single entry. The term Blood Stone meant nothing to any catalogue.

He returned to the academy with sharpened frustration and a tighter jawline.

The rest of his first year passed much the same way: drills, lectures, silence, the Grand Library.

By the final season, he could spar two students at once and disarm both within five minutes. His sword grew faster, his reactions honed, but his nights remained unchanged. Always the same silent aisle. Always the same stack of tomes. Still no Blood Stone.

Until halfway through his second year, during an ordinary storm-wrapped night when the candles hissed and the library was nearly empty, he reached for a book on astrology.

Not because it seemed relevant.

But because he had read nearly everything else that wasn't locked in a glass case and needed a second-year or third-year key to access.

Celestial Bodies and Their Omens: A Treatise on Moon-Cycles, Meteor Paths, and Solar Blooming.

It sounded absurd.

Still, he opened it.

Diagrams. Maps. Theories on moonlight and harvests, on full moons and tide surges. Nothing he hadn't skimmed before. But something about it kept him turning the pages. The tone was strange. Too poetic for a scholar's voice.

Then his hand brushed the Blood Stone.

He'd started carrying it with him, even while studying. Sometimes, he caught himself rolling it across the table as he read, idly tracing its jagged edge.

That night, he turned a page with the stone in hand—and where his thumb swept across the parchment, something shifted.

A faint glimmer. A ghost of ink where there had been none.

He blinked. Leaned closer. Rubbed the Blood Stone over the page again.

Letters bloomed.

Not black—but a glinting, near-metallic violet. Lines sketched themselves into existence as if soaked in dew and exposed to starlight. A symbol emerged in the corner.

A 3D sigil.

The same shape he'd once glimpsed faintly on the neck of the scholar he'd bribed.

No, that shape was different from this one.

His fingers froze.

He turned the page again and rubbed the stone across it. More writing. Hidden notes. And finally—finally—a term that made his pulse spike:

"Black Moon: An unrecorded third lunar phase. Appears once every sixteen years in predetermined regions. Unravels black rituals. Turns blood into Ink of the Dead. Heightens Living sigils."

His thoughts raced.

The night they'd come back to the academy—his first year—the sky had turned unusually dark. No stars. No moon. No birdsong. He remembered stepping outside the airship's sleeping quarters for a moment, only to feel something staring back from the void.

While a black sphere, illuminated by a white light, manifested in the eclipsed sky.

He hadn't understood then.

But now he had an idea of what it was.

He stared down at the book—his breath calm, but his eyes burning.

He whispered it aloud, as if tasting the phrase might make it more real:

"Living sigils."

Damon smiled.

"So I've failed," he sighed, throwing the long-since-weightless Blood Stone into the air.

"The power inside you has been unraveling ever since then, hasn't it?"

"Right? Sigil Stone," he murmured, catching it again and squeezing hard around its edges—having it break like brittle, hollowed glass. The emerald was fragile, as its center had at some point melted into a black pool of liquid that stained onto the book.

[Simulation Menu Unlocked]

Simulation Anchor Point: Detected

Anchor Point: Day 449, Year 304 – Sword Academy Library

Access Level: Level 1 – Single-Thread Jump

Simulate alternate outcomes from this point forward.

▸ Simulate World

Primary Divergence Option:


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