Chapter 73: When You Reach S Rank
The ash fiends charged first.
Glen met them before they reached the shelter entrance.
Thunder Phantom Step cracked across the ruined street in a streak of purple light. He appeared in front of the first fiend, black sword already moving. The blade cut through its neck, then reversed into the second creature’s ribs before the body hit the ground. The third leapt over him, claws stretched toward Mary.
It never reached her.
A shot of orange fire mana tore through the air and struck the fiend mid-leap. The creature spun violently, flames crawling across its chest. Before it recovered, Isla lifted the Frostbreaker and swept a thin beam of cold through its body. The sudden shift from burning heat to absolute cold split the creature apart in midair.
It shattered across the road in black fragments.
Caleb tapped his gravity focus once.
The remaining fiends dropped from the rooftops like stones.
Not dead.
Pinned.
The asphalt cracked beneath their bodies as invisible pressure crushed them into the ground. Caleb stood at the shelter entrance, one hand raised, the floating prism above his focus spinning faster than before.
"Civilians are inside," he called. "Entrance is being sealed."
"Good," Glen said.
His eyes never left the hooded figure.
It stood beyond the broken streetlight, black wrappings moving softly in the ash-filled wind. The silver lights beneath its hood stayed fixed on Mary, not Glen. That irritated him more than it should have.
Glen stepped forward, sword low.
"You came all this way to say her name," he said. "Say something useful."
The figure tilted its head.
"Morrigan belongs to the dead."
Glen’s jaw tightened.
Mary stood behind him, still holding the kitchen knife like it mattered. Her face had gone pale, but her eyes were sharp. Too sharp. The name had cut through her mask, and now Glen could see pieces of someone else beneath the woman who raised him.
He hated that.
He hated that there was a version of his mother he did not know.
The figure took one step forward.
Glen moved immediately.
Purple lightning flashed beneath his feet. He closed the distance in less than a heartbeat and swung for the hood. The strike was clean, aimed to split the thing from shoulder to waist.
The blade passed through black cloth.
Nothing else.
Assassin Reflexes screamed.
Glen twisted sideways as a pale hand burst from the wrappings and passed where his chest had been. The fingers did not touch him, but the air around them blackened, and the edge of his coat withered into dust.
He landed hard, boots skidding across ash.
"Do not let it touch you," Mary said.
Glen glanced back. "You already said that."
"And you are still too close."
The figure laughed softly.
It was not the Wanderer’s theatrical amusement. This sound was quieter, older, almost tired.
"The boy carries the wound," it said. "How sentimental."
Mary’s expression changed.
Glen saw it.
The smallest flinch.
The smallest crack.
His grip tightened around the sword. "I am standing right here."
The figure turned toward him slowly. "Yes. You are."
Then it vanished.
Not with speed.
The shadows around it folded inward, and the body disappeared from the road. Glen’s instincts fired before his mind caught up. He activated Obsidian Skin and raised his sword behind him.
The impact came a fraction later.
Something struck his blade hard enough to throw sparks into the ash. Glen’s arms went numb, but his guard held. The hooded figure was behind him now, one black blade extended from its sleeve.
For one second, they were close enough for Glen to see beneath the hood.
Not a face.
A hollow shape wrapped in pale markings.
Old runes.
Old wounds.
Then Mary moved.
She did not rush. She did not shout.
She stepped into the angle between them and threw the knife.
The blade struck the figure’s wrist joint, not hard enough to damage it, but precise enough to shift the attack by a single inch.
That inch saved Glen’s throat.
He drove his knee into the figure’s side, then followed with a short slash across its chest. The black wrappings tore open, revealing pale armor beneath, engraved with symbols Glen did not recognize.
Mary did.
Her breath caught.
The figure stepped back.
"Still sharp," it said to her. "Even broken."
Mary’s voice was quiet. "You should have stayed buried."
"So should you."
Isla’s fire pistol barked once.
A compressed round of fire mana struck the figure’s exposed armor. The flame spread across the old runes, lighting them orange for a heartbeat before the darkness swallowed it.
Isla’s eyes narrowed. "That is unpleasant."
Caleb raised his focus. "Then let us make it kneel."
Gravity slammed down over the street.
The broken cars sank lower. Ash flattened against the ground. The hooded figure’s shoulders dipped slightly under the pressure.
Only slightly.
Glen saw the opening anyway.
Thunder Phantom Step.
He flashed forward, sword angled for the exposed neck. The figure raised its arm to block, but Glen shifted mid-step, using Kaelen’s training instead of raw speed. His blade changed direction and cut across the thing’s side.
This time, it landed.
Black fluid sprayed across the ash.
The figure looked down at the wound.
Then back at Glen.
For the first time, the silver lights beneath the hood sharpened with interest.
"You have his timing," it said.
Glen’s eyes went cold. "Whose?"
Mary stepped forward. "Enough."
The word was not loud.
But the figure stopped.
That bothered Glen.
It had ignored his speed, Isla’s fire, Caleb’s gravity, and his sword, but one word from his mother made it pause.
Mary lowered the kitchen knife. "You found me. Deliver your warning and leave."
Glen turned his head slightly. "Mom."
She did not look at him. "Not now."
The hooded figure straightened. The wound in its side closed slowly, stitched shut by threads of black shadow.
"The seal weakens," it said. "The First Throne bleeds. The Ash King has opened his eyes, and the child born from a dead shadow carries the key in his bones."
Glen stared at it.
None of that meant anything.
All of it sounded like a threat.
The figure looked at him again.
"When the boy reaches the height of kings, tell him where the grave is."
Mary’s hand tightened around the knife.
The figure stepped backward into the falling ash.
"Run while you still remember how, Morrigan. The next one sent for you will not speak first."
The shadows around it folded.
Glen moved.
Thunder Phantom Step fired beneath him, but Mary grabbed his arm before he launched fully. His momentum nearly pulled her off her feet, but she held on long enough to break his rhythm.
The figure vanished.
The street went silent except for the distant shrieks of fiends and the low crackle of burning wreckage.
Glen slowly turned toward his mother.
His face was calm now.
Too calm.
"Let go."
Mary released his arm.
He looked at the place where the figure had disappeared, then back at her. "You stopped me."
"Yes."
"I could have followed it."
"You would have died."
"You do not know that."
Mary looked at him then, and for the first time, the mask slipped completely. Not enough to reveal the whole truth, but enough for Glen to see the weight behind her eyes.
"I know exactly that."
The words hit harder than anger would have.
Isla approached quietly, fire pistol still in one hand, Frostbreaker humming on her arm. Caleb came down from the shelter entrance, face pale but controlled.
No one spoke.
Glen looked at his mom. "Who is Morrigan?"
Mary closed her eyes.
For a second, she looked tired again. Not weak. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with lungs, medicine, or hospitals. Tired like someone who had been carrying a name longer than he had been alive.
Then she opened her eyes.
"Not here."
Glen’s hand tightened around his sword. "I am done hearing that."
"I know."
"Then answer me."
Mary looked toward the shelter entrance, where survivors watched from the darkness below. Then she looked at the ruined road behind them, at the ash drifting between broken towers, at the city that had almost swallowed her again.
Finally, she looked at Glen.
"You are not ready."
He laughed once.
Cold.
"I crossed half a dead sanctuary to find you."
"And I am grateful."
"Do not."
Her face tightened.
"Do not talk to me like I am still a child," Glen said. "Do not vanish for days, cut through monsters like a ghost, get called by some dead name, and then tell me I am not ready."
Mary stepped closer.
Glen had grown taller than her years ago. Stronger too. Faster. More dangerous than anyone from Sector Nine had any right to become.
But when she looked up at him, he felt like the kitchen table was between them again, and he had just come home bleeding from a fight he pretended he won.
"You are powerful," she said. "You are not ready."
Glen said nothing.
Mary reached up and touched the side of his face.
He almost pulled away.
Almost.
"I hid because I had to," she said softly. "I lied because the truth would have killed you before you learned how to hold a sword. Hate me for that later if you must. But survive first."
His throat tightened.
"What are you saying?"
Mary lowered her hand.
"I am leaving."
The words were quiet.
They still cut.
Glen went still. "No."
Mary’s face softened. "Glen."
"No."
"This is not a discussion."
His eyes darkened. "You think I came all this way for you to disappear again?"
"I think you came all this way because you love your mother." Her voice trembled once, then steadied. "And because you love me, you need to let me go before what is hunting me decides to hunt everyone standing near me."
Glen stepped closer. "Then we go back to Eden. Vane, Malachi, all of them, they can—"
"No." Her answer came fast. Too fast. "Do not take me to Eden."
That made Isla’s eyes narrow.
Caleb looked down.
Glen noticed both reactions, but his focus stayed on Mary. "Why?"
Mary did not answer.
Of course she did not.
Instead, she removed something from beneath her torn blue coat. A small black ring on a broken chain. It looked old, scratched, and dull, but the moment Glen saw it, the dark power in his core went completely still.
Mary placed the chain in his hand.
"When you reach S Rank," she said, "come find me."
Glen stared at the ring. "Where?"
"You will know when you are strong enough."
"That is not an answer."
"It is the only one that will keep you alive."
Ash drifted between them.
Glen looked at his mother, and the anger in him became something quieter.
Worse.
"If you leave now," he said, "I will find you."
Mary smiled faintly.
For the first time, it looked like pride.
"I am counting on it."
Then she stepped back.
The shadows around the alley behind her seemed deeper than before. Not magical. Not obvious. Just wrong enough for Glen’s instincts to sharpen.
"Mom."
Mary paused.
For a heartbeat, she looked like she might turn back.
Instead, she said, "Reach S Rank, Glen. Then come ask me who you are."
The ash thickened.
A blink.
A breath.
And Mary Mcdonald was gone.
Glen stood in the street with the black ring in his palm.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
No truth.
Only a command.
Reach S Rank.
Isla stopped beside him. "Glen..."
"Do not."
She closed her mouth.
Caleb looked toward the shelter. "We should return to Eden."
For a long moment, Glen did not move.
Then his fingers closed around the ring.
Hard.
The metal bit into his skin.
"Yeah," he said.
His voice was calm.
That was how Isla knew he was furious.
"We return."
Above them, Johannesburg burned.
Behind them, the survivors hid underground.
Ahead of them, Eden waited with its secrets, its machines, and its scholars who probably knew more than they had ever admitted.
Glen turned away from the road where his mother had vanished.
He did not look back.
Not because it did not hurt.
Because looking back would not bring her back.
And Glen Mcdonald had learned a long time ago that pain was only useful when it became motion.
By the time they reached the old bypass tunnel, his decision had settled inside him like a blade.
He would return to Eden.
He would train.
He would steal every skill, every class, every scrap of power this broken world tried to keep from him.
And when he reached S Rank, he would find his mother.
Then someone was going to explain why his whole life had been built on lies.
