Three Lines of Reply

The announcement arrived with three trumpeters. On the day the paper stamped with the golden eagle seal was posted on the notice wall in Valk Square, the entire city gathered before it. Those who could read recited the words aloud, and those who could not repeated after them until they had memorized every line.

“A peerage! They’re giving out peerages! Even a commoner can become a noble if they win!”

“Win? With all Seven Swords showing up—wait. Hold on. Don’t we have someone who already beat one of the Seven?”

The eyes in the square turned a beat late, all converging in the same direction. Toward the gray-clad swordsman standing directly before the notice wall.

Kael kept his back to their stares and read the announcement twice. Eligibility requirements, schedule, rewards. And at the very bottom, in small letters—the tournament was being held at the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Crown Prince’s behest.

It was a trap. Geralt had called it a trap. The princess had called it a trap. To Kael it was obviously a trap. The Crown Prince had slipped a fourth card between the three stages of buy, borrow, and destroy. He was making them walk into it willingly. The true cunning of the trap was that knowing made no difference; one still had no choice but to step inside.

A peerage. An imperial title granted directly by the royal family was a free-pass across the entire empire and the right to enter any region armed. Even the Gray Boundary in the north—without the Grand Duke’s permission, without drawing the imperial family’s suspicion. A status that allowed him to carry a sword openly.

To do what the dead wedge in the canyon had shown him, he needed that status. He had to confirm the main body. He had to inspect the remaining wedges. A mere mercenary could not cross even a single border checkpoint.

The scales had tipped.

“Commander. I will enter the tournament.”

“Knew you would.”

Vargas answered while studying the edge of his axe. Then he reached beneath the table, pulled something out, and tossed it over. A sword belt wrapped in cloth. A gray wolf’s head had been embroidered upon it.

“Squad emblem. Had it stitched into the belt. Means you’re going under the squad’s name. Understood?”

“…Please deduct the tailoring cost from my pay.”

“It’s a gift, you dense bastard!”

The news of his entry became the entire squad’s business by nightfall.

“I’ll look after Squad One! I’ll keep the leader’s seat warm, so come back with a title!”

Deren slapped his healed leg and boasted. The rookies were already calculating the odds at the capital’s gambling dens.

“How high do you think the payout on a win will be? If it’s twenty-to-one again, we can all buy houses.”

“You’re insane. Everyone knows he beat one of the Seven now. Best we’ll get is three-to-one.”

“Three-to-one is still good! I’m going all in!”

Amid the uproar, Kael calmly wrote the Squad One handover ledger. One page per member—ten pages total—detailing each man’s habits, weaknesses, and injury history.

Deren accepted the stack, read it for a long time, then sniffed once.

“…Hey. You wrote down things even our mothers don’t know.”

“I entrusted my back to them.”

“That’s exactly why everyone… Ah, never mind. Just hurry back. Seat’s getting cold.”

Preparations for the journey to the capital took five days. His companion was Hugo. He had chosen himself, and no one tried to stop him.

“A slum rat who’s never seen the capital once gets to watch the Imperial Martial Arts Festival from the best seat in the house? I can’t pass that up. Besides, who’s going to watch your back? You might be stronger with a sword, but I own the alleys.”

“You have alleys in the capital?”

“Alleys are the same everywhere. From above they’re roads. From below they’re spiderwebs.”

Dorte’s merchant caravan had also chosen the same departure date. They claimed it was to capitalize on the festival’s special demand, but Kael noticed Finn’s bedding tucked among the cargo lists.

“You’re taking Finn as well.”

“A merchant caravan needs porters, doesn’t it? …What are you staring at? The boy throws a fit saying he’ll cry for the rest of his life if he misses your match. What else can I do?”

“…Thank you.”

“Thank me? It’s non-refundable moral support.”

The moment the words left Dorte’s mouth, Finn dragged Kael out to the clearing.

“Then keep your promise. You said you’d let me hold a real sword ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠when you get back. I swung a hundred times every day for a thousand days. Well, not a thousand… one hundred and forty-seven days.”

“You were counting.”

“You told me not to count the whooshes!”

Kael turned over Finn’s palm. The skin where blisters had formed, burst, and hardened into calluses was orderly and even.

“…When I return from the capital, I will teach you the weight of a real sword first. Only the weight. Swinging comes later.”

“For real? Promise!”

“A swordsman does not make the same promise twice.”

“This is the third time!”

The night before departure, Kael sat at the desk in his quarters. The letter paper he had purchased earlier emerged from the drawer. He trimmed the lamp wick, lifted the pen, and remained motionless for a long time.

He had decided to write because his resolve was firm. His entry into the Imperial Martial Arts Festival would become known regardless. Rumors traveled faster than official notices, and the imperial family’s agents traveled faster than rumors. And the stage itself belonged to the Crown Prince. If the former fiancée of the Grand Duke’s daughter so much as hovered near that stage, the Crown Prince would gain another card. The North would become a hostage.

Therefore this was a warning. Not a personal letter.

Only after settling the matter in his mind did the pen finally move. It halted at the first line. He had begun to write To Your Highness when the final line of the letter still tucked in his breast spoke to him. Not with a title.

The compromise was to leave the salutation blank.

After three lines the problem became the closing. Kael offers sounded like an escort knight’s phrasing. Kael sends felt too… In the end he wrote only the name.

Kael.

When he finished, five crumpled sheets littered the floor. The first had been ruined at the greeting. The second after he wrote “Please do not worry” and realized the word presumed the recipient might worry. The third had shaky handwriting. The fourth still showed faint traces of “Are you well?” written and erased. The fifth—he himself did not know why.

The door flew open just as he was sealing the sixth sheet.

“Hey, we’re leaving at dawn tomorrow and you’re still not sleeping… Huh?”

Hugo’s gaze traveled from the sealed envelope on the desk to the five crumpled pages on the floor. His mouth opened slowly, very slowly.

“…Did you just write a reply?”

“It is a warning.”

“You crumpled five whole sheets for a warning?”

“The sentences were wrong.”

“Then send it even if the sentences are wrong! Hey, hey—this is a historic day. Our squad leader finally— Ah, never mind. I won’t ask who it’s for. I can guess.”

Hugo left whistling. Kael gathered the five discarded sheets and burned them in the lamp flame. As he watched them curl and blacken he thought of someone who had once crumpled five letters and sent a sixth. That person had burned even the sixth sheet and finally sent the seventh.

After sealing the envelope he reread the three lines in his mind. They felt somehow insufficient for a warning, yet somehow excessive for a simple greeting.

The letter was dispatched at dawn the next day on the northern express post. Only after watching the envelope disappear into the courier’s bag did Kael notice that his fingertips had grown slightly cold.

In ten years he had submitted over a thousand reports. His hands had never once gone cold.

On the morning of departure the old guild master of the Hunters Guild came running to the headquarters, panting heavily. The easy manner with which he would trade every secret he knew for three cups of liquor had been wiped from his face.

“You… You told me to inform you if anything happened in the canyon.”

“Speak.”

“The colossal beast—the monster of that canyon—it’s dead.”

The tavern fell silent. Vargas’s hand stopped sharpening his axe.

“The fur trader’s nephew saw it. The carcass washed down to the mouth of the canyon. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A snake the size of a house… sliced clean in two.”

“In two.”

“Yes. Not bitten, not crushed—cut. With a single stroke.”

Kael rose slowly. The creature that had trampled entire forests. The creature that had crushed nine shadow wolves to death while they were still running. How many swords in the empire could sever such a thing in one blow? Even if all Seven Swords attacked together it would still be a hunt, not a single cut.

“Guide me. I must see it before we leave.”

The carcass at the canyon entrance was exactly as rumored. Hugo had insisted on accompanying him. The solo-prohibition rule was still in effect, and the boy had thrown a tantrum until he was allowed to come. That tantrum died the instant he saw the corpse.

“…Hey. Is this the monster you were talking about?”

“Yes.”

“This… with one strike? By a human?”

“It might not have been human.”

“That’s even scarier!”

A mountain of gray scales the size of a house lay across the riverbed. The cut surface was impossibly clean. So clean that Kael stood before it for a long time. The cleanliness was familiar. The troll in Embankment Village had been sliced the same way. Geralt’s heavy sword had been cracked in exactly the same manner. This blade belonged to that same lineage.

And something worse than the carcass waited above it. When he climbed to the altar he found the gray stone pillar—the southern wedge that had guarded its post even in death—gone.

It had not been shattered. It had been torn out whole from the base. Sword marks scored the edge of the empty pit. The trace of a blade that had carved something embedded in the ley line free.

A dead wedge was not merely stone. It was a stone that recited a verse of the seal. Anyone with reason ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to take it was either trying to invoke the seal once more or trying to learn how to undo it.

Kael knelt before the empty pit and pressed his fingers to the sword mark left in the soil. A lingering trace remained. The flow of mana. It sprang from the same root as his master’s sword yet was somehow twisted.

His master had said he had only one disciple. He had never lied. Therefore there was only one answer.

Someone who knew this sword but was not a disciple. Someone who had learned from the same root yet could not be called a disciple.

On the way back down Hugo asked cautiously.

“That… pulled-out stone. What was it? Your face looked like someone had died in your house.”

“An old stone. It should not have been pulled out.”

“What happens if it is?”

Kael looked up at the sky above the canyon. The gray mist had risen a full span higher than the day before. The amount of breath the magic beasts of this region drew differed between when the dead wedge still held its place and when even that place stood empty. When winter came, the magic beasts here would go mad again. Faster than last time. More than last time.

“…Tell the commander to begin preparing for the winter subjugation from autumn onward. Twice the scale of the Embankment Village battle.”

“Twice?! Hey, you’re telling the squad that has to do it without you—”

“Which is why I must return quickly.”

The peerage, the status required to manage the seals, was no longer something to weigh. It had become a deadline.

Someone was gathering the wedges. One of the seven had already fallen into that person’s hands. With his master dead, the only one who knew the locations of the remaining six and the main body should have been Kael himself.

It should have been. But it was not.

“…There is another who knows the seal.”

The canyon mist breathed slowly above the empty pit.

At noon the procession bound for the capital departed through Valk’s northern gate. Six of Dorte’s carriages and two horses for Kael and Hugo. Squad members who had come to see them off followed all the way to the gate, raising a cheerful clamor. Finn waved his wooden sword from the luggage compartment of a carriage.

Kael glanced once at the northern sky. The capital lay northwest, the canyon northeast, and that person’s castle even farther north. The three-line letter would be racing somewhere across that northern expanse. For the first time in ten years—bearing his name.

The horses turned toward the capital. And Kael did not yet know that at the river ferry near the canyon entrance, a boatman was already sharing a story over drinks. A swordsman with gray hair and a black coat had boarded the ferry a few days earlier carrying a single stone wrapped in cloth. When the passenger asked the boatman his destination, the boatman had answered:

“This river only flows northwest, sir. All the way to the capital.”