The Secret

After Axe and Silvia cleared the dungeon atop the Great Pillar—the highest peak in the Kingdom of Cremia—the tension between them thickened like winter fog. The moment Silvia had dared to ask about Axe's true motives, the warrior had clammed up entirely. Now, Axe moved through the guild halls in stony silence, her jaw locked tighter than a vault.

Not even Mattilda, the guild's ever-charming receptionist, could pry so much as a grunt from Axe's lips. The woman who'd once traded barbs over ale now stared straight through friends and foes alike, her green eyes glazed with something colder than the mountain's eternal frost.

"This isn't normal. Not even for Axe," Mattilda murmured, her brow furrowed as she shot Silvia a concerned glance.

"Yeah, I thought the same," Silvia sighed, staring into her mug. "She won't say anything beyond orders - where to go, what to kill. If this keeps up, I can't spend eight more dungeons walking on eggshells around her." 

"When did this start?" Mattilda leaned across the counter, her voice low. "Axe seemed perfectly confident when you two left for the Great Pillar."

"Inside the dungeon." Silvia sighed, absently twirling a strand of her golden hair. "I asked about her strength—where it came from, how she got so powerful..." She shrugged, the motion making her cascading blonde locks shimmer. "Had no idea it would trigger her like this."

Mattilda's violet eyes flashed with sudden understanding. Her fingers tightened around the tankard she was polishing—knuckles whitening. Of all people, she knew Axe best. And that meant she knew exactly why the warrior had withdrawn into this icy silence.

"Silvia..." Mattilda's voice dropped to a whisper, her violet eyes darting across the guild hall. She leaned in close, close enough for the princess to smell the faint lavender oil she always wore. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Uh, sure," Silvia replied, her fingers tightening around her mug. The confusion in her blue eyes deepened—swirling with unasked questions.

She didn't realize it yet, but the truth Mattilda was about to share would shatter every assumption she'd ever made about Axe.

"Follow me." Mattilda's whisper cut through the guild's murmur as she hurried up the creaking staircase, her skirts brushing past the guest room where Axe had holed up since their return.

The warrior had taken no payment—just a jug of ale and half a loaf of bread before slamming the door behind her. Now, the walls themselves seemed to vibrate with the force of her snores, a guttural rhythm that spoke of exhaustion deeper than mere sleep.

Silvia hesitated at the threshold, her fingers twitching toward the knob before Mattilda caught her wrist. "Not there," the receptionist breathed, pulling her toward a shadowed corridor. "What I need to show you... it's better seen without witnesses."

The princess glanced back at Axe's door. That snoring was too loud, too perfect—like a performance meant to convince the world the warrior wasn't listening.

Mattilda guided Silvia up a narrow stairwell hidden behind a tapestry, into the guild's sealed attic. The room was unnervingly pristine—a vault of legends where relics rested behind reinforced glass. Blades that never dulled, armor said to whisper battle strategies to its wearer, rings that promised power at prices no sane warrior would pay… Every artifact here was a dream tempered by warning.

"I didn't know you hoarded treasures like these," Silvia murmured, drawn to a pulsating violet gem. Its surface swallowed the torchlight, casting jagged shadows across her face. The longer she stared, the more certain she became: something stared back from its depths. A presence, patient and hungry.

Mattilda's hand clamped down on her shoulder. "Don't. That one's not for touching—or admiring." Her nails bit just shy of drawing blood. "What I brought you to see is… older."

Beneath a heavy woolen drape lay a steel-banded chest no larger than a market basket—the kind merchants used to haul bread and apples through Cremia's bustling squares. Mattilda's fingers trembled slightly as she retrieved a tarnished key from her pocket, its teeth worn smooth with age.

The lock clicked open with a sound like a bone snapping.

Silvia leaned over Mattilda's shoulder, her breath catching—

Inside the chest…

—was Axe's true name, etched in blackened steel.

And beneath it, a child's leather shoe, small enough to fit a six-year-old. Stained brown with old blood.

Silvia's fingers hovered above the Soulgem, its crystalline surface pulsing like a slow heartbeat. "So this is how Axe does it," she murmured. The gem's glow painted shadows across the attic's relics—the golden helmet with its empty socket staring back like a cyclops' eye.

Mattilda nodded. "The Crown of Communion doesn't steal. It reveals." She lifted the artifact with reverence. "When Axe crushes a Soulgem, she doesn't just see memories—she experiences them as if they were her own. The joy, the pain... the moment of death itself."

A chill crawled up Silvia's spine. She remembered Axe's collapse after using the gem in their first dungeon—the way she'd gasped awake, her eyes wild with someone else's terror.

"That's why she won't talk about her strength," Silvia realized. "It's not hers. It's borrowed grief."

Mattilda's silence was answer enough. 

"Sit down." Mattilda's voice wavered in a way Silvia had never heard before. The receptionist dragged a chair forward with one hand, the other cradling the Crown of Communion—now humming softly with the embedded Soulgem's energy. Warmth radiated from the artifact, at odds with the icy dread pooling in Silvia's stomach.

The princess didn't move. "What are you planning to do?" The question came out sharper than intended, her knuckles whitening around the back of the chair.

Mattilda's violet eyes burned with uncharacteristic intensity. "I'm going to show you what forged Axe into… well, Axe." She adjusted the crown, its socket pulsing with faint light. "It won't hurt. But you must swear—on your title, your lineage—that you'll never speak of what you're about to see. Not even to her." A pause. "Axe's past is the guild's most guarded secret for a reason."

Silvia's throat tightened. "O-Okay—"

"Swear it properly!" Mattilda snapped, yanking the crown back. The sudden movement sent shadows leaping across the walls.

Silvia inhaled shakily. When she spoke, the words carried the weight of royal oath: "I swear on the Crest of Cremia. No living soul will hear this from me."

Mattilda gave a solemn nod, guiding Silvia into the chair. "Breathe deeply," she instructed, her voice uncharacteristically gentle as she lowered the Crown onto the princess's brow. The metal was surprisingly light, yet it carried the weight of countless untold stories.

"I don't see anything," Silvia muttered, her words echoing slightly inside the helmet's confines.

"Relax." Mattilda's finger hovered over the activation rune engraved on the Crown's apex. "It's not your eyes that need to see."

A click.

The Crown's vibration escalated into a resonant hum, the Soulgem flaring like a captured star. Silvia's body jerked once—then went utterly still, her breathing slowing to the rhythm of deep sleep. Her fingers uncurled limply in her lap, but her eyelids…

Her eyelids flickered rapidly, as if watching some unseen horror play out behind them