Someone else had a word for her, though.
Her long-time guest, unwelcome and uninvited, sat there in her core in a knot of deadly power. If she unleashed it, it could save her. If she released it, she could save herself.
As always, she reminded herself what would happen if she released her guest. Unless Eithan popped out of the ground, her guest would destroy everything. And everyone, probably including her. Unless it hollowed her out and used her as a husk, which was worse.
No, she didn’t need that parasite’s help. She needed her master to step up.
A twisting snake shot out from Jai Long’s palm, and she met it with the edge of her master’s sword. Only the sheer quality of the weapon saved her, because she had no madra left to pour into it. Her bloody fingernails drummed with pain to the beat of her heart.
Show me what to do, Yerin begged.
The Remnant still urged her to attack. The unwelcome guest still pleaded for freedom.
And Yerin’s heart bled, because she finally accepted the truth: this wasn’t her master. Breaking him open wouldn’t be a betrayal, it wouldn’t mean abandoning him. If she dug into the Remnant and sucked its power dry, she wouldn’t be losing her master’s voice.
She’d lost that almost a year ago, in Sacred Valley.
So, as Jai Long kicked her body down the mountain with a bored sigh, Yerin reached inside herself. Her master’s Remnant was just a mass of silver power in her core, but she visualized it as it had appeared when she adopted it: a ghost of silver chrome, armed with six bladed limbs.
She reached for that ghost and crushed it with the power of her will.
As though she’d lit a beacon, the aura around her ignited. Silver light blazed into the sky, a column of razor-sharp power that turned all the vital aura in the area to sword aura.
Beneath her feet, a thousand invisible blades slashed at the stone, pebbles whipping up to sting her skin. Even the air whistled by her ears as it was cut, the wind lashing at her hair and her robe.
As the power of the sword raged within and without, she was devoured by a memory.
The girl stood before the Sword Sage amidst the wreckage of what had once been a prosperous family.
Her power blazed in his spiritual sense, half of it raw and unshaped, half bloody and murderous. She was only seven or eight and scrawny, and she looked like she’d missed more than her share of meals. Ragged hair hung into her eyes.
She hauled on a rope of blood madra that stretched from her stomach as though the far end was tied to a runaway horse. Her bare feet were planted, her teeth gritted, arms straining against the power of the parasite.
Which stretched out, its end forming into a blade, trying to cut him. She had managed to halt it while the blade was still an inch from his throat.
The world came back into focus as Yerin found herself scraped and bloody and surrounded by a furious storm of silver light. Even the droplets of blood running from her wounds splashed up, sliced by aura, covering her with a scarlet mist.
A column of light rose into the air from her body, like she was a falling silver star.
She grasped at the Sword Sage’s memory like the fading edges of a dream; her master remembered that moment more vividly than she did. That moment: their first meeting. When she’d tried to save him from the power of her unwelcome guest.
Jai Long stood over her, and she found enough energy to stare defiantly back. He was far enough back that the sword energy didn’t cut him, but he was a sword artist himself—he could fight through the violent storm of her advancement to continue the fight while she was vulnerable.
But he merely crossed his arms and waited.
He could defend himself from this weapon, this seed of a true Blood Shadow, with only a fraction of his madra. He was in no danger.
But she didn’t know that. And she forced her body to its limit, muscles straining, blood running from the lip she was biting to keep the parasite from stretching any closer to him.
He was a stranger to her. The Blood Shadow had already consumed everyone she knew. All the others he’d seen in her position had given up—they had lost all reason to live, and thus all reason to fight. Their parasites thrived in such situations, filling their bodies like husks, stealing their power to bring it away.
And here, a little girl fought with all her body, mind, and spirit. She held on, her eyes furious and determined, resisting to the end.
And the fragment of a Dreadgod was no easy foe.
Yerin climbed to her feet, madra filling her, seeping into her weapon. Sword aura was so thick in the air, bright silver even to the naked eye, that it had started gathering on the edges of her blade. With half the effort it normally took, she executed her weapon Enforcer technique: the Flowing Sword. The technique collected aura with every slash and thrust, making the weapon stronger as it moved.
Everything in the Path of the Endless Sword revolved around vital aura. Most sword Paths could be used without a sword—their madra itself was sharp enough to cut old oak, so who needed the weapon itself? You could Forge whatever you needed for a fight.
On her Path, every technique was half a Ruler technique. Made her more powerful, gave her techniques extra heft…so long as she held a sword. If she didn’t have a weapon with a sharp edge, she was worth less than any other sacred artist.
That’s what her Goldsign was for.
Looking down on her, Jai Long must have felt the power building to a crescendo. He stood just beyond the silver light that poured as a torrent into the sky, and debris scattered by aura blades crashed against his chest.
Still he waited, arms crossed. Obviously, he expected more.
He had come to kill her, but here was a child who stood against a Dreadgod’s madra. She had power of her own—otherwise, the parasite would have chosen someone older—and enough resolve to keep on fighting even when the battle was lost, when she had no one left, when there was no hope of victory and nothing to fight for.
She was perfect.
Her master’s memories and attitudes soaked into her, washing over her with a palpable sense of his presence. He had chosen her because she fought to the last breath. Because, when backed into a corner and given no path to victory, she would still attack.
The Path of the Endless Sword had no defense. Sword aura could not shield her, it could only cut.
Whether she fought to escape, to kill her opponent, to protect herself, or to save someone else, she had to do so by attacking. That was the one weapon in her arsenal, the one road forward.
She’d studied the Path of the Endless Sword for years, and she knew exactly what it could do, but now she felt it. Bone-deep.
The silver light around her faded from a blaze to a halo and then died. Pebbles and droplets of blood, held aloft by the force of her spirit, scattered on the ground. The vital aura had carved out a smooth crater in the stone beneath her, and many of the rock pieces now drifted in the air as a fine dust.
“Congratulations,” Jai Long said, in his flat voice.
Yerin stretched her second bladed arm, which loomed over her other shoulder. With the pair of them, she looked like she’d glued a couple of steel fishing rods to her back and strapped knives to the end.
“Highgold,” she said, feeling the new resonance of her spirit. “Well, that’s got a kick to it.” She pressed her fists together, a sacred artist’s salute, and noticed her fingernails had stopped bleeding—Lowgold to Highgold wasn’t a big advancement, but advancing always did the body good. “Thanks for waiting.”