Chapter 24: The Weight of Steel
(First Person POV – Kaiden)
The air in the Night Watcher barracks always smelled too clean. It was a sterile, filtered scent that lacked the character of the slums—the salt of the lower docks, the metallic tang of scrap heaps, and the thick, humid stench of too many people living in too little space. Here, everything was quiet. Everything was regulated.
I sat on the edge of my bunk, my eyes closed, slowly running a whetstone over the edge of a standard-issue combat knife.
Most people thought my talent, Perfect Weapon Mastery, was about strength. They saw me pick up a spear I'd never touched and throw it with the precision of a master marksman, or watch me wield a heavy claymore as if it were an extension of my own arm, and they thought: Gifted.
They were wrong. It wasn't a gift. It was a sensory overload.
The moment my skin makes contact with a weapon—any weapon—the world shifts. I don't just feel the grip; I feel the molecular density of the steel. I feel the exact center of gravity down to the millimeter. I know where the blade is dull, where the hilt is prone to slipping, and exactly how much force is required to snap a human femur or pierce a Void Beast's hide.
It's a library of violence that opens in my mind, and sometimes, the noise is deafening.
"You're going to grind that thing into a toothpick if you keep going, Kaiden."
I didn't look up. I knew the voice. Kael Ardent. Rank 7. The guy who acted like life was one big joke, probably because he'd never had to eat blackened synth-rat to survive a winter.
"It's three grams off-balance," I said, my voice rasping. "The factory mold was uneven."
Kael leaned against the doorframe, his amber eyes tracking the rhythmic movement of my hands. "Three grams? Man, the instructors say you're the most 'mechanically perfect' fighter in the batch. Why do you care about three grams?"
"Because in the Dead Zones, three grams is the difference between a clean kill and a stuck blade," I replied, finally setting the stone down.
I stood up, the knife feeling like a natural growth from my palm. I flipped it—a blur of silver—and caught it by the tip. The balance was better. Not perfect, but better.
"What do you want, Kael?"
"The Overseer just released the squad lists for the field simulation," Kael said, his playfulness dropping an octave. "I'm on Squad Delta. With Sera Veylan, that C-rank girl Lily, and..."
"And?"
"May Blackheart."
I froze. The name hit me like a blunt instrument. May Blackheart. Rank 16. The girl who beat Rokan Vale without breaking a sweat and then walked away like she'd just finished a grocery run.
"I'm on Squad Epsilon," I said, looking at the digital terminal on the wall. "Leading a group of E-rank rejects."
"Count your blessings," Kael muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "There's something wrong with Blackheart, Kaiden. I saw her in the cafeteria the other day. She didn't just scare those guys; she... she erased the air in the room. It felt like standing next to an open vacuum."
I gripped the hilt of my knife tighter. My talent didn't just work on weapons; it worked on threats. When I looked at most of the recruits, I saw targets. I saw the openings in their stances, the lag in their reflexes.
But when I looked at May Blackheart?
My talent went silent.
It was the most terrifying thing I had ever experienced. Usually, my mind would scream: Strike the neck, 45-degree angle, high velocity. But with her, there was nothing. No leverage. No weak points. It was like trying to find the edge of a shadow with a sword.
"She's a slum-born, just like me," I said, though I didn't believe it. "Maybe she's just better at hiding her hunger."
"Hunger is one thing," Kael said, turning to leave. "But Blackheart isn't hungry. She's... she's something else. Watch your back during the simulation, Kaiden. If Epsilon ends up near Delta's sector, stay clear of her."
I didn't answer. I waited until Kael's footsteps faded down the hall before I looked at my reflection in the blade of the knife.
I was Rank 9. I had survived the gangs of the lower 87th district by being the best with a blade. I had earned my way into the Night Watchers so I could finally be the one holding the leash instead of the one wearing it.
I picked up a second knife from my footlocker—a jagged, serrated thing I'd smuggled in from the slums. I held one in each hand. The 'Perfect Mastery' flooded my brain.
Left hand: 40cm reach, 0.5kg. Right hand: 35cm reach, 0.4kg. Twin-flow combat style: 98% lethality against unarmored targets.
I felt the steel humming in my palms, a cold, reassuring song.
"I don't care if you're a machine or a ghost, Blackheart," I whispered to the empty room. "Everything that bleeds can be cut. And I've never missed a vein."
I sheathed the blades with a practiced flick. The field simulation was in three days. The Great Void Nation wanted to see how we handled the monsters.
But as I walked toward the training hall, I wasn't thinking about Void Beasts. I was thinking about the girl with the red and black eyes.
In the slums, we had a saying: The biggest dog doesn't always win the fight, but the one with the sharpest teeth usually does.
I just had to hope my teeth were sharper than hers.
(AUTHOR'S NOTE:- I didn't know how to write his personality so i written something simple to understand by most people.)