Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Elisser pulls up a stool and sits at the table. Without asking, she reaches for the ceramic jug and pours herself a full cup of Boris’s cactus wine. She tilts it back and drinks like she’s putting out a fire in her throat.

"Aaarrhhh... Damn." She wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve. "All right, boy. Tell me. What’s wrong with the shuriken."

The dynamic in the room has flipped. Five minutes ago she was the examiner. Now she’s the student—and she knows it. The grey eyes that scanned me with contempt when she walked in are scanning me with hunger now.

I lean back. Let her wait one extra second.

She returns the crystal and the karambit to her apron pocket. The shuriken stays on the table between us, the four-pointed star catching the firelight.

Now the second part of the show. Eventide takes the stage.

I pick up the shuriken with my left hand. With my right, I draw Eventide.

The blade ignites the moment it clears the sheath. The shadow-edge unfurls in a violent rush of displaced air—a sound somewhere between a metal whistle and an exhaled breath—and the violet light fills the workshop, painting every surface in deep, oceanic purple.

The guards along the wall flinch. Hands go to weapon hilts. One of them takes a half-step forward.

Boris raises a hand. Stand down.

Elisser doesn’t flinch. The opposite—she leans forward across the table, her grey eyes locked on Eventide with focused, predatory hunger.

"Magnificent." The word leaves her mouth in barely a whisper. "You really are full of interesting surprises, boy. She’s... alive."

"Can we focus on the shuriken?"

I keep the blade at low burn. Just enough to demonstrate. Eventide drawing Elisser’s attention is useful, but only up to a point—too much focus on the sword and we have a different conversation, one I’m not ready to have.

She nods, dragging her eyes away from the blade with visible effort.

I tap Eventide against the shuriken. A light contact. The shadow-edge screams against the small steel star with a sharp, grating shriiik—just enough to leave a mark.

I check the damage.

[Wavebreaker Shuriken — Durability: 49/50 → 42/50]

"Now," I say, "you’re a master smith. You must have a repair hammer somewhere on you. Try fixing it."

Elisser’s hands plunge into her apron pockets. They come out fast—first an oiled rag, then a small bundle of wire, then a thick leather glove, and finally a compact hammer no bigger than a tea cup, the head dark grey and pitted from use.

She slips on the glove. Picks up the hammer. Sets the shuriken down on the stone floor beside her stool—not the table; she’s protecting the wood—and crouches over it.

Her free hand presses flat against the hammer’s head. Her eyes close. A faint hum builds in the air around her, and the hammer’s surface starts to glow—first a dull orange, then a deeper red, then white-hot. OXI channeled directly into the metal.

She opens her eyes. Lifts the hammer.

And brings it down.

The impact is wrong for her body. There is no warning swing, no telegraph. The hammer falls with a controlled, terrible force that has no business coming from a five-foot frame. The sound is not a clang—it’s a deep thump, the way a dropped anvil sounds through stone.

Like a deepwater ogre is wearing her body as a costume.

The shuriken doesn’t move under the impact. It doesn’t deform. It doesn’t accept the energy.

She strikes again. Same result.

A third time.

On the fourth strike, she stops.

A small, choked sound leaves her throat. "Ohh..." Her eyes find mine across the rim of the table. "Impossible..."

I just smile.

"It told me the moment I touched it. Cannot be repaired."

Boris—who has been sitting in restless silence through the entire demonstration—throws his head back and laughs. A full-bellied roar that fills the workshop and bounces off the stone walls.

"I have lived long enough to see this old woman look like a child next to another child!" More laughter. He slaps the table with his palm hard enough to make the cactus wine jump in its cup.

Elisser ignores him. She’s still staring at the shuriken on the stone floor.

"The durability was full," she mutters, almost to herself. "I had no way of knowing..."

"A one-life weapon is a weapon doomed to fail," I tell her. "That makes it broken. Not the metal. The concept."

Elisser straightens up. Her shoulders square. She takes a long, slow breath through her nose—slow, careful, dragging her dignity back up through her lungs. When she exhales, something has changed in her posture.

"All right, boy. Tell me what you want me to do for you. I can see your standards are very high." She nods toward Eventide.

"We don’t need to talk about price?"

"You taught this old woman that there’s always something new left to discover. You gave me joy in a place where joy died years ago." She waves a hand. The gesture is final. "I’ll help you. This time."

I aimed higher than I thought.

Chaos Theory really is both a curse and a blessing.

I tap my comm. "Oliver. Come down to that laboratory we visited earlier. I need supplies."

"Be there in a minute," Oliver answers. In the background I hear him bark, "Lola, don’t go that way, girl, wait for me—!"

I cut the comm.

Reach into my inventory and pull out two heavy ingots. I set them on the table. Their surface is dark, almost black, with a faint pearlescent sheen that catches the firelight in slow, oily waves.

[High-Grade Alloy x2 — Rank A]

Then I add the rest of the Reef Stalker hide Oliver collected—a thick, folded bundle of chromatophore-rich material, still faintly shifting color even at rest.

Elisser coughs. Hard. Then chokes on her own breath.

"Oh, shit."

"The rest of the materials will arrive shortly."

"What—" She clears her throat. Picks up one of the alloy ingots. Turns it in the firelight. Her hands are trembling. "What would you like me to make?"

"For me, a new set of armor. Keep in mind I’m still Rank E."

A Rank-A item, used directly, would be locked by the system. The material is too dense, the crafting too refined—my body isn’t graded high enough to channel the OXI requirements.

The system would simply refuse to let me wear it as intended. The limit is 3 steps up.

But a master smith working at Rank-S Order can adapt. She can take the alloy and forge it into something that respects my current Rank while preserving the ceiling for when I climb. A piece of armor that grows with me.

She reaches for the ingots.

I pull them back.

Her eyes flick up. Confused. Then sharp.

I remember the weapon Rhayne used in the future.

The weapon that detonated alongside her and erased an entire continent from the map. The iconic blade—if you could even call it that—that no one but a dancer could wield.

The kind of weapon most warriors would never recognize as a weapon at all.

A length of black fabric. Two meters long. Light as silk. Heavier than any sword.

"For my friend here." I gesture at Rhayne behind me without turning. "I want you to make a Battle Ribbon."

Elisser’s whole face splits into a grin.

Wide. Wolfish. Every line in her face rearranging itself around teeth I hadn’t noticed she still had.

"Now we’re talking, boy."