The Approaching Shadow
The reason Sian chose to ask about the sword's name rather than order her to do something different was simple.
Tiana had broken through her own limits through sheer force of will — the spirit of single-minded devotion by which anything can be achieved. Selene had awakened an eye that might have been tied to her bloodline as much as to her talent.
So then — what if it had nothing to do with the person's talent at all?
Astria herself was talented enough, but the sword she carried?
It's just a sword. Nothing more.
No such thing as talent existed in a lump of steel. In a fantasy world like this, there might have been magic swords or ego swords lying around, but the blade Astria carried didn't seem to be anything of the sort.
So there's no way she can actually do this.
Sian was absolutely convinced it was impossible.
And hearing those words, Astria tilted her head, quite naturally unable to make sense of them.
"...The sword's name?"
It wasn't as though the world lacked weapons that bore names. The spear that pierced a god. The holy sword that struck down the Demon King. The cursed blade said to grant its wielder power at the price of madness. And aside from such legendary relics, ego swords existed as well — weapons that carried special titles, names of their own.
But weapons with names were, ever and always, limited to the famous ones.
"Yes. Your sword's name."
"......It doesn't have one."
She shook her head as she said it. The swords handed out to the many children of her household — herself included — had never carried anything so grand as a name.
Yet at her answer, Sian shook his head in turn.
"It's not that it doesn't have one. You just don't know it yet."
"......?"
Her expression said she still couldn't follow. The sword she carried had been forged by her family, given to her, and had never once left her hand since. It was fitting for a house renowned for its swordsmithing — the blade's performance outstripped anything an ordinary forge could produce, which was why she still carried it to this day.
And yet...
Her sword, the one she'd carried all this time, had a name?
Of course it didn't make sense to her. But she reasoned that Sian wouldn't have said something so absurd without cause, and sank into deep thought. If his words were true — if her sword really did have a name—
"...How am I supposed to find out?"
"If I told you that, it would defeat the whole point."
So I have to figure it out myself.
For a girl who had always been pushed and prodded down a path decided for her, this was an absurdly difficult exercise — no, it was training she couldn't even begin to approach, let alone attempt.
"Listen to the voice of your sword."
Muttering that much, Sian rose to his feet. Astria didn't follow him. She simply stayed where she was, lost in thought, and so Sian left her behind and headed off to gather herbs.
Well, I can always tell her later that it was a lie.
Her habit of trusting people too easily was something she'd need to work on, too.
After Sian vanished into the forest, Astria stood rooted in place for a long while. The cool breeze drifting out of the trees stirred her silver hair, but she didn't so much as twitch.
Her mind was wholly consumed by the riddle Sian had just thrown down.
The sword's name.
Common sense said it was impossible. Her sword had been forged alongside countless others in the Lucenoct ducal armory, merely one of the blades distributed to the family's children. A lump of steel with no special history, no soul dwelling within it. There was no way such a thing possessed a name.
...And yet.
She recalled the look in Sian's eyes. There had been no mischief in them, no trace of mockery. If anything, they had held a certain depth — the depth of a man testing her.
And his words.
"It's not that there isn't one. You just don't know it yet."
Those words meant that the name already existed — that she had simply never perceived it. Since when? From the moment the sword was forged? Or from the moment she first gripped it in her hand?
His refusal to explain the method surely meant the core of the lesson lay hidden within the name itself — or within the process of uncovering it.
Shring.
Astria slowly drew the sword from her hip. The faint light of the sun caught the blade, and along its surface she could make out the subtle traces of its forging. The family crest etched delicately into the hilt wrapped her hand with a familiarity born of years spent together.
Beyond the cold touch of the metal — was there something else waiting there?
A name...
Memories of her childhood surfaced, of standing in formation on the frozen training ground, the family instructor's frigid voice ringing in her ears.
"From this day forward, this sword is the thread that holds your life. Carry it with you always, everywhere, and never let it leave your hand. To lose your sword is to lose your life, and—"
He had said more after that, but she had never paid it much mind.
Could it be...
It had been issued by her family, yes, but that didn't mean it was necessarily ordinary. Might there be something hidden within it, something even she didn't know?
"......"
But no matter how she examined it, it was an ordinary sword. Even when she poured mana into it, the mana merely coated the blade — there was no special response of any kind.
And since Sian refused to tell her, she would have no choice but to unravel it alone.
Sinking deeper and deeper into her struggle, she murmured Sian's final words aloud.
"The voice... of the sword."
She had heard that the highest realms of the sword held states known as the unity of body and blade, or the sword of the heart. But what Sian had spoken of felt somehow different from all of that.
In the end, after wrestling with the problem for a long, long time, she could only let out a sigh.
"I don't know."
While Astria wrestled with her thoughts, there was a man quietly watching the rural village from a distance.
And then—
"Captain. Everything has arrived."
At the sound of the voice, countless figures materialized around the man. His eyes, glimpsing out from beneath a hooded robe, swept over them.
"The target?"
"Confirmed to be in the village."
"And this one called Sian?"
"That is... unclear, sir."
"Unclear?"
The man murmured the word with a note of genuine puzzlement. There was no reproach in it, no sarcasm. The subordinate reporting to him was competent enough that the man had kept him at his side for years — and a man like that had never once spoken such words before. That was all the surprise amounted to.
"Aside from the target, there are no fighters in this village worth our caution."
"Hmm?"
It was certain that their target — the person who had saved Astria — was somewhere in this village. And yet, aside from her, no one worth worrying about?
Something didn't add up.
"We did look into this Sian as well, but... no matter how we examined him, he seemed like an utterly ordinary man. Being generous, I'd put him at a C-Rank adventurer at most. However..."
"However?"
"According to the information we obtained while posing as merchants, he is the teacher of several powerful figures."
"Several powerful figures'?"
"Yes. Besides Tiana, whom we'd already learned of, there's Elina. And recently, apparently, even Selene Vesperia has taken him as her teacher."
He had heard both names before. And yet—
Is that even possible?
The question rose unbidden. Elina and Selene Vesperia were both strong, but they were strong in completely different directions.
Elina was a warrior who wielded no sword at all, simply smashing everything to pieces with her transcendent body. Selene, by contrast, was a mage hailed as the Great Mage of the future.
People with entirely opposite orientations, sharing the same teacher?
It hardly seemed credible. There were plenty of fighters who handled both sword and sorcery, but every one of them was strong only because they deployed whatever they happened to possess as the situation demanded — to put it plainly, they simply had good combat instincts. Judged separately, each of their two skills was usually mediocre at best.
"......Hm."
The captain stroked his chin. His instincts, honed by long years in this line of work, were telling him that a man named Sian posed no real danger.
But he also knew that this — precisely this — was the situation demanding the most caution.
Because this world truly does contain beings of an entirely different order.
Beings so powerful that even someone at his own level couldn't begin to perceive them.
Like his master.
It probably won't come to that... but still.
It occurred to him that Sian might well be a genuinely dangerous existence.
As the captain stroked his chin, lost in deliberation, one of his subordinates watching him carefully opened his mouth.
"Shall we proceed as planned?"
The original plan had been to kill everyone in the village to seal their lips, take the target, and return to Lucenoct. The information surrounding their runaway target, Astria, had to be kept to an absolute minimum.
But his thoughts were beginning to tilt toward the side of not stirring up trouble for no reason.
"The target's location?"
"For the past several days, for some reason, she seems to have kept apart from the village — alone in the forest."
Hearing the report, the man nodded as though a decision had crystallized, and spoke.
"Then we secure the target first."
At the captain's words, the figures melted into the shadows one by one, without a sound. As if they had never been there at all, they slipped through the darkness toward the forest beyond the village.