Chapter 43: The Charges
Chapter 43: The Charges
They came when the sun was at its highest.
Ethan saw them from far off, through the [Eye of Truth]: twenty-three streams of energy advancing toward them, spreading into a perfect arc, gradually squeezing the space in the middle.
That wasn’t the formation of people coming to rescue someone.
That was a containment formation.
"Laira," he said quietly. "Don’t strike first. No matter what happens."
She looked at him. The torn wing drooping behind her back stirred faintly.
"And if they shoot you?"
"Then I still don’t want you striking first."
Laira gritted her teeth, but in the end she nodded.
Mira stood between the two of them, her hand clenched around the radio. Her face was drained white.
"Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough," she muttered. "Maybe they didn’t receive it."
Ethan didn’t answer.
He stepped forward, out of the shadow of the boulder, and stood in the middle of the open ground.
Then he raised his right hand.
The only hand he had left, crisscrossed with scars, empty, carrying no weapon of any kind.
The task force emerged from the mist.
Eight Gold-tiers, black armor sheened with gold, arrayed in the front rank. Fifteen Silver-tiers behind them, energy rifles fully charged, muzzles pointed down but fingers already resting on the triggers.
Not one of them had lowered their weapon.
Ethan looked at them, and inside him, a cold stone dropped.
So it was true.
The man with graying hair stepped forward. The pressure of a Gold Tier 9 bore down on the open ground like a blanket of lead. Mira, standing behind Ethan, suddenly staggered.
Then she saw his face clearly.
"Uncle..." Her voice broke apart. "Uncle Damien?"
Damien Vale looked straight at his niece.
In that moment, he saw everything he needed to see: a twenty-one-year-old girl, her healer’s uniform in tatters, her face smeared with grime, standing behind a young man missing his left hand, beside a dragon over two meters tall.
She was standing in the middle. Caught between those two.
"Mira," Damien said, his voice low and steady as stone. "Walk toward me. Slowly."
Mira froze.
"You heard it, didn’t you?" She spoke fast. "I broadcast. I told you everything. Ethan didn’t—"
"I heard." Damien cut her off. "I know you were forced to say those words."
The air congealed.
Mira blinked. Once. Twice.
"What?"
"You don’t have to be afraid anymore." Damien took another step forward, his voice softening, the voice of an uncle coaxing a small niece. "We’re here now. Walk toward me, good girl."
Ethan didn’t turn his head.
But he heard Mira’s breathing behind him, short and ragged, like someone who had just been dragged under water.
And he understood.
Someone had rewritten her words.
Someone had heard the entire truth, then carried it away and returned something else.
Twenty years. This had been repeating itself for twenty years.
"My name is Ethan Ashford," he spoke up.
Twenty-three gun barrels edged upward.
"I’m raising my hand. I’m carrying no weapon. I only want to ask one question." He looked straight at Damien. "What did you come here to do?"
Damien looked at him.
Then he pronounced the verdict.
"Ethan Ashford. By order of the Earth Shield Council of Safe Zone Number Seven, you are wanted on the following charges: seizure of resources within a coordinate, attempted murder of elite trainees Victor Hale and Nolan Greaves, and unlawful detention of the citizen Mira Vale."
Ethan stood motionless.
"And," Damien went on, "threatening the security of humanity."
Ethan didn’t understand.
For a moment, he truly didn’t understand.
The first three charges he could still handle. Those were Victor and Nolan’s lies, which he had guessed at two days ago. He had prepared. He had Mira as a witness.
But the fourth charge lay outside every calculation he had made.
Threatening the security of humanity.
That wasn’t a crime two young trainees could fabricate. That was the kind of charge written by the people who sat on the Council. The kind of charge that required no evidence, no witnesses, no trial.
The kind of charge that, once stamped on someone’s forehead, could never be scraped off.
"Say it again," Ethan said. His voice was hoarse. "The last charge."
"Threatening the security of humanity."
"On what grounds?"
Damien looked at him, and for the first time, a flicker of hesitation passed across the depths of his eyes.
But he read on anyway. Because those were his orders.
"You possess a Mythical rank Partner. You possess a special rank S item. You have displayed ideology hostile to human society. The Council assesses that if you are allowed to mature, you will become a threat that cannot be stopped."
He paused.
"This operation was approved to deal with that threat before it takes shape."
Ethan stood in the middle of the open ground, his right hand still raised toward the sky.
And he laughed.
The laugh was very faint. There was no joy in it at all. It came out of his throat like something breaking.
Fifteen guns hesitated.
"I understand now," Ethan said.
He lowered his hand.
"My crime isn’t seizing resources. It isn’t kidnapping anyone either. If it were, you’d have brought a judge instead of eight Gold-tiers."
He looked over the whole formation.
"My crime is that I opened a Mythical Blind Box."
No one answered.
"If I’d opened a rank D sword," Ethan said, his voice growing colder by the word, "then Nolan Greaves wouldn’t have needed to fabricate anything today, because he’d have finished killing me in this coordinate and nobody would have bothered asking. If I’d opened a rank B ability, you’d have given me a seat in the reserve program and clapped me on the shoulder and told me to keep trying."
He stopped.
"But I opened something that all of human history has only seen six of. And suddenly, I’ve become a threat to the entire species."
Damien was silent.
"What about the other six?" Ethan asked. "The six sitting at the summit of power. They hold Mythical power too. Why aren’t they threats?"
Corin, standing behind Damien, stirred slightly.
Ethan saw it.
"Because they have clans," Ethan answered himself. "Because they have seats on the Council. Because they’re strong enough that no one dares call them a threat."
He looked down at his severed left arm.
"And I’m twenty years old, missing a hand, with no one standing behind me."
The wind blew past. His torn cloak billowed, exposing the red veins slowly lighting up beneath his skin.
Fifteen guns immediately came up.
"That is exactly what I’m talking about," Damien said quietly, his eyes fixed on those veins. "You awakened six days ago."
Ethan looked down at his hand, then raised his head again.
"Six days," he repeated. "So try guessing where I’ve been for those six days, sir."
No one answered.
"Day one, I opened the Blind Box. Day two, I entered the Abyss Tower at Abyss difficulty because that was the only path for someone like me to catch up with people born already standing at the finish line. I lost an arm there. Day three, I was thrown into this Anomalous Coordinate, my body covered in wounds, no resources, no equipment."
He pointed toward Mira.
"Day four, I met three elite trainees. I saved their lives from a Bone-Winged Dragon. Immediately after, two of them used a clan artifact to lock down my Partner, then shot me from behind."
Ethan raised his scar-covered right hand.
"I used this to punch a Gold-tier’s energy shield. I crushed every single joint in my own hand. Not to seize resources. But so she wouldn’t be shot."
Mira stood behind him, tears rolling down her face.
"Uncle Damien," she said, her voice shattering. "I told the man on watch all of this. Word for word. I broadcast of my own free will. No one forced me."
Damien Vale looked at his niece.
Then he turned to look at Ryan Ashford, standing at the end of the line.
Ryan didn’t waver in the slightest.
"She’s being threatened, Captain," Ryan said loudly, his voice full of anguish. "That dragon is standing right behind her."
This was the exact moment everything shattered.
Because all of it was true.
Laira was standing behind Mira. The red veins were lighting up on Ethan’s skin. Ethan did possess a Mythical Partner and a rank S item. Nolan and Victor did return with broken bones.
Every single fact was correct.
Only the joints between them were lies.
And the one person who knew the real joints, the one who had heard Mira’s entire testimony at six twelve in the morning, was standing at the end of the line, wearing a headset, with the face of a grieving younger brother.
Ethan saw him.
Through the gap between two Gold-tiers, he saw that face.
And every question in his head had its answer.
Why the man on watch hadn’t woken the commander.
Why he had talked alone for four straight minutes.
Why Mira’s words, reaching Damien Vale’s ears, had turned into something else.
Ethan stood for a long time, saying nothing.
Then he spoke, and his voice was so light it carried almost no weight at all.
"Ryan."
The entire formation turned their heads.
Ryan Ashford stepped out of the line.
The rank S flame emblem glowed red on his chest. Beside it, the brand-new Silver insignia, not yet even scratched.
"Hello, brother," Ryan said.