Warmth

The X-blade fragments. They were also soulbinded to Malphas.

When Malphas grew bored, he looked through his items and discovered he could only summon these fragments. Not to his surprise, when he summoned one, it appeared silver-black with smooth curves and razor-sharp edges, broken into five pieces. The hilt of the item took the shape of an "X" similar to his pendant but with a darker red color.

The X-blade was hollow, without a soul. Yet, whenever he glanced at it, a powerful hatred began to erupt from deep within his heart.

It wasn't the blade itself he hated, but rather the sense that someone else once held it. Every time he thought of this mysterious figure wielding the blade, his hatred grew even stronger.

---

"Hey, Caelen."

"What's up?" Caelen responded, his mouth full of food.

"I've been wondering about something for a while. What does it mean when an item is 'soulbinded'?" Malphas asked.

Caelen's eyes widened as he looked at Malphas's expressionless yet curious face in shock. "Where did you hear that term?"

"Well, when I looked through my items, I noticed one of them said it was soulbinded."

Caelen swallowed his food, taking a long sip of his drink before letting out a gasp of air. "You're a very lucky person, you know that?"

Malphas tilted his head in confusion.

"Soulbinded weapons are the rarest of the rare. People will pay any amount—and I mean any type of money—for unused soulbinded weapons."

"Why's that?" Malphas asked.

"Because no matter how weak they start, they grow stronger as their wielder grows. When a weapon is soulbinded, it connects to the wielder's essence, so even in death, the weapon stays linked to them."

The last part echoed in Malphas's mind. Unfamiliar as he was with his soulbinded items, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd stolen them off a dead man's body.

How did he come to possess them, then? He wondered.

Then he recalled a distant, fractured memory: lying in the sand, faceless, with only a red "X" on his visage as his vision shattered. The memories were scattered into countless fragments, each one slowly disintegrating into an abyss. Malphas felt as though he were standing in that abyss, looking down upon them.

Those memories held sadness, regret, anger, anxiety, and fear, but despite the darkness, a few fragments emanated happiness. He approached one of these happy memories, the warmth of it standing out among the rest.

"Warm," Malphas said as he stood above these shattered memories. Intrigued by this strange sensation of warmth, he crouched down and picked up the fragment.

The memory was distorted and full of static, barely audible, but he managed to make out one thing. Small hands, reaching out within the memory, grasping at a massive figure. It was a woman. She had no face, only a smile, with long black hair that absorbed all light, like a void within a grey world.

The empty feeling in Malphas's heart—the emptiness that surfaced each time he thought of the odachi—began to fill up. He placed a hand over his chest. "What was that feeling?" he murmured, noticing a water droplet fall onto his hand.

It was a tear. 

He was crying.

"What is this?" he asked aloud, only for his thoughts to be interrupted by a loud voice calling out from above the abyss. Caelen's voice grew louder and louder.

As Malphas's body began to blend into the abyss, panic set in. He frantically grabbed as many happy fragments as he could.

'I… I don't want to lose this feeling,' he thought desperately, his eyes welling with more tears as he clung to the memories. But suddenly—Poof—he was gone, the shards slipping from his grasp, falling back into a pile as his tears connected each piece.

---

"MALPHAS!" was all he heard as he quickly opened his eyes to find Caelen looking at him with a confused expression.

"What happened?" Malphas asked, holding his head.

"You tell me! You blanked out and started crying," Caelen said, pointing his fork at him.

"Crying…" Malphas repeated, feeling his face, finding only the wet trails left by tears under his eyes.

"So, kid… why'd you start crying?"

"I-" Nothing came to mind. Whatever he had just experienced had been wiped away as if it had never happened. "I… don't know."

Caelen raised an eyebrow, making a strange face. "You… you're weird."

Malphas simply looked at Caelen, who now wore a distorted expression. "And you just found out?" he mused.

Caelen's expression snapped back to normal. He started to say something but stopped, holding his mouth as if realizing something. 'I… I just realized it,' he thought, his head hanging in defeat. 'How did I not notice it sooner?'

---

Back at Caelen's house, Malphas walked inside, not bothering with anything but the couch where he slept, and he sat down, staring blankly at the dark T.V. screen.

A few minutes passed, and he remained lost in thought. Then he heard a soft crackling sound from above him and felt plastic being pressed against his head. Malphas snapped from his trance and looked up to find Caelen holding a clear plastic bag with black clothing inside it.

"What's this?" Malphas asked.

"It's your uniform," Caelen answered.

"Uniform? For what?"

"Don't you remember? You're heading to the academy! You've learned everything you need to get in, so it's time for you to pack your stuff and get ready."

"Pack my stuff? Why?"

"They assign dorms to the students there," Caelen responded as he jumped over and sat next to Malphas.

"Listen, Malphas. This time, don't cause any trouble. Some families at the academy think they're better than everyone else, but in reality, they're just like anyone else. Still, some of their kids think they run the school. So if anyone pushes you around, knock them in the face."

"That seems easy enough. But if their families are so powerful, wouldn't I face consequences for hitting them?"

"Yeah, but if they keep bothering you, just hit them twice as hard."

"Alright. Now get off—I'm heading to bed."

Malphas grabbed the uniform from the plastic bag and tossed it onto the ground.

"Warning you now, you'll have to wake up early, so don't act like a brat about it," Caelen called, recalling a past struggle trying to wake up Malphas.

"Okay, okay," Malphas groaned as Caelen walked to his room, closing the door behind him. 

Inside was a plain bed, a nightstand on one side, and a dresser on the other.

Caelen sighed as he approached the bed. It was large enough to fit two people comfortably. He lifted the covers, sat down, and glanced at the nightstand to find a bottle of medicine beside a glass of water.

The medicine had pills placed on a napkin in front of it. Behind the medicine stood a photo.

Caelen placed his palms over his face, letting out a long sigh before taking the pills and washing them down with water. His eyes felt heavy as his body slouched forward onto the mattress. Pulling the covers up, he looked once more at the photo before drifting into sleep.