A tingling sensation spread through her. It was like plummeting into an abyss - or soaring into the heavens. The dizzying rush ran through her limbs.
For the first time in three years, someone had understood her feelings. He had glimpsed what it must have been like for her, someone who had killed even her own family with her own hands. He recognized the misery she bore.
She trembled.
'Do you know? Yes! I never wanted to do this. I really, truly…!'
The body that the cursed sword had stolen for itself wavered for an instant, stirred by her surge of emotion.
Her resistance ceased. Tears welled up, and then spilled. A single drop.
The man looking down at her widened his eyes. Echi thought his blue eyes were dazzling. Every tiny movement of his became painfully clear. His lips moved slowly.
"…Tears."
"Commander?"
"She's crying."
"…Who? You don't mean"
"That's impossible."
"They say once the cursed sword consumes you, the self is erased. Commander, what you're looking at is just a puppet moved by the sword."
The knights all spoke over one another in protest. But Yurien only shook his head.
"No. She's still there. She's fighting."
"Fighting? Against what?"
"Against the sword. With her own will."
And it was true. Echinacea was fighting the dark stains that spread through her body. She fought and fought, never once victorious, but never once surrendering either. If she had, she would have long since lost herself.
No one else would ever know that inside the body of the devil with the cursed sword, she was clawing desperately to take herself back. No one but him.
HE was the first to see it.
It was a feeling beyond words.
Echi wanted to break down in sobs. She wanted to cling to someone and cry until her throat bled. She wanted to scream that it had all been agony, that those years had been hell, that she was sorry to everyone, but, most of all, that she didn't want to die like this, as a monster. She wanted to beg, Please, someone, help me.
But the one tear was all she had.
Soon her eyes were dry again, and her body writhed once more. She bared her teeth like a beast and snarled. The red-haired knight clicked his tongue.
"This is unsettling. Let's just finish it and go."
"Even if her consciousness is intact, it changes nothing. Our task is the same," the blonde female knight urged.
Still, Yurien did not move. He stared straight into her frenzied, darting eyes before he finally spoke.
"That won't do."
"…Sir?"
"There's still a chance."
"What are you… Commander, wait, you're not saying…" The red-haired one faltered.
The burly knight, who had grasped his meaning at once, rumbled firmly,
"Commander. Overcoming a cursed sword is impossible."
"No," Yurien replied. "There's precedent."
"You can't be serious. You mean the tale of that so-called 'sword saint'? No one even knows if it was legend or fact."
"Commander," the blonde woman pressed, "even if it were possible, the demon inside that sword has already committed atrocities beyond forgiveness. Do you know how many domains were devastated by her hands alone?"
"Domains? That's just the beginning. The Empire's knights are in such ruins they're rebuilding with city guards. The Mage Tower lost half its senior magicians. Even royalty and nobility have been slaughtered. However you look at it, she's already condemned."
As the knights spoke one after another, Yurien finally answered quietly, "The scale of loss is partly because we came too late."
"What? You think we wanted to be late? The Empire insisted they could handle it themselves. That's why it came to this!" the red-haired knight snapped.
Yurien didn't argue. Instead, he removed the sword pressing against Echi's throat. Before she could react, he swung...
The pommel, brimming with mana, struck her squarely in the solar plexus. Already wounded, she crumpled instantly, her body fainting away. As her consciousness dimmed, she still caught their voices.
"We can't absolve unintentional crimes."
"Unbelievable… Yurien, normally I respect your chivalry, but this time—this is madness."
"Commander. What exactly do you intend to do?"
"…That woman…"
"…Why… She must… be punished…"
Their voices blurred together. Only one line rang crystal clear in her fading mind, "I will give her a chance."
It was a ray of light, descending upon her like a miracle.
* * *
If severing the arm that held the cursed sword were enough to separate it, that would have been a blessing. But it was impossible. Like the other swords of the Giosa series, the sword ValderGiosa was a weapon branded into the soul.
Echinacea was imprisoned in the underground cells of the Celestial Knight Order's headquarters in the city of Azenka. They fitted her with special seals made just for this purpose, and chained down all four of her limbs.
The Empire wanted the demon of the cursed sword executed, but Yurien dismissed their demands. After all, the Empire had insisted they could handle things on their own, only to cause massive losses and then come begging the Celestial Order for aid. Their words carried no weight anymore.
Echi did not want to waste the chance Yurien had given her. She poured all her strength into a single struggle, reclaiming her body from the sword.
The sensation of killing was far too vivid. When the cursed sword went on a rampage, it was nearly impossible to escape that flood of bloodlust. Now, when her body was restrained from slaughter, was her only window of opportunity.
Beneath her feet stretched unconsciousness; above her head, a distant void of awareness. Standing on the surface of her own subconscious, she fought against herself, against the darkness staining her body with the sword's mana.
She lost track of time. Hundreds of defeats piled up. More than once she nearly sank under the surface into oblivion. Yet she always rose again.
Never had she thought herself capable of such persistence. The girl she knew was lazy, fond of sleep, and too easily bothered by any physical exertion.
But now she understood. Pushed to her limits, she had uncovered the truth of herself. She did not give up. She could not. She refused to lose to the cursed sword that had destroyed everything she was.
Whenever exhaustion crushed her, when she wanted nothing more than to stop, she imagined what victory might look like.
'When I shatter that damned sword, I'll take a long bath. Then I'll sleep, a dreamless sleep that lasts as long as it needs to. When I wake up, I'll brush my hair, put on fresh clothes, and eat warm soup with soft bread. And after that…
…I'll confess everything to Yurien. To the one who gave me this chance. Maybe he'll tell me what I should do from here.'
Strictly speaking, all the massacres were the sword's crimes, not hers.
But Echi could never draw a clean line and pretend it had nothing to do with her. In the end, it had been her hands dripping with blood.
In the underground prison, her body snarled, shrieked incomprehensible sounds, scratched the walls and floor until her nails bled, thrashed like a beast possessed. But she could no longer kill anyone. And within, her mind fought on, endlessly.
Amid those days, Yurien sometimes came to the dungeon.
"Still the same?"
"Yes."
He would stand at a distance, looking in at her through the small slit cut into the heavy iron door.
No one was allowed near her.
ValderGiosa, the slaughtering sword, instinctively sought to kill any human that came close. Even the guards who brought her food and water only set the dishes down in the space between the double doors before retreating.
But Yurien always stood alone in that narrow space between doors, gazing through the iron at Echinacea. He never spoke to her.
Only watched her, with those quiet, blue eyes.
In his sight there could be nothing but a woman stained black, bound in chains, raging like a beast. And yet, every time, Echi felt that he was looking not at the body tainted by the sword, but at her soul, the part of her still fighting.
'That can't be.'
It was absurd. And still, every time he came, the same thought returned.
She was glad. Glad he was there. He was waiting for her victory. He believed she could overcome the sword, and so he watched. She wanted to prove him right, to prove his choice to trust her had not been in vain.
'When I reclaim my body… I'll meet him…'
There were so many things she wanted to say to him when they met again. Truly, so many. She gathered those words carefully, storing them inside her heart. They gave her strength.
She wanted to win. She wanted to break free of the cursed sword, to greet him with a smile the next time he came to see her, just as he always did. She dreamed of such a miracle.
But the miracle never came.
In some ways, the circumstances had been unfortunate. But the devastation that followed was so terrible that she could never dismiss it as mere bad luck, never forget what had happened.
A jailer suddenly opened the double doors and stepped inside. Perhaps because Echinacea's body had hung limp without the slightest movement for three days, he had come to check whether she was dead.
It was the sword's trick. The moment the jailer stepped into her reach, she strangled him with her slackened chains. He was dead in the blink of an eye.
'No, stop, stop it! Please, I beg you!"
Her cries were meaningless.
Because of the seals, her body could not wield the true form of the cursed sword. So instead, she seized the sword at the jailer's waist and used it to cut her chains. She had once heard that a knight who trained his body to the extreme could cut through metal even without mana, but she had never thought she would do such a thing herself.
Rummaging through the jailer's body, she pulled out the keys, opened the double doors, and stepped outside. She killed all the guards, then found the key to her sealing device.
The moment the seal suppressing her mana was undone, Echi felt the coming of catastrophe.
If Yurien had been there, and if even one more wielder of a Giosa sword had stood with him, perhaps they could have stopped her.
But by ill fate, Yurien was away from Azenka at the time, and the only wielder left in the city was the Vice-Commander of the order, a man named Baron, the largest of the knights who had once helped subdue her.
Echinacea went berserk. Baron held her off to the very end, buying time for others to flee, until his head was severed.
With her obstacle gone, she slaughtered every living soul in Azenka. Then she waited for the return of the other Giosa wielders, whom the cursed sword marked as "dangerous enemies."
Days later, the golden-haired knight Teresa and the red-haired Dietrich returned from a mission. In the blood-soaked ruins of Azenka, they came face-to-face with Echinacea. Dietrich raged desperately to protect Teresa, but in the end it was Teresa who saved him.
"Someone has to go and tell the Commander."
"If you go, Teresa...!"
"You wouldn't last five minutes if you stayed. Shut up and run!"
With those words, she sent him away. Echinacea, bound for a moment by Teresa's desperate grip, lost the chance to pursue him.
She killed Teresa first. Then she hunted Dietrich through the mountains all night long until he too fell.
It had been a nightmare. For them.
For her.
And at last, Yurien came.
He saw his stronghold, piled with corpses rotting in the open air. The stench was unbearable. Echinacea stood before him at the mountain of bodies, with the fountain behind her stained red.
Yurien turned pale, bit his lip until blood welled, and then froze into ice. The blue of his eyes, when they fell upon her, looked as though they had cracked.