Awakening of the Weakest Slayer

The words made Sezel feel as if he was standing naked to the bone in a cold wasteland. They bit deeper than any beast ever could. He froze for a second, mind blank.

He turned away from her, his movements stiff and mechanical, and faced the open sky. The sun had not yet climbed to its zenith, and the white, wispy clouds drifted lazily across an azure canvas. Indeed, the atmosphere here was more than tenfold better than on Earth. He could smell the sweet, earthy scent of the wilderness, a fragrance of life in a city of death. A strange, beautiful thing to notice.

"Yes," he finally spoke. "You are correct." He paused, then added, "But I am not a Rank-5. Nor am I a Rank-3." Vesta's ruby eyes locked on him, a flicker of astonishment passed through her. This was the first time that she had been so wrong in one of her assumptions, and the realization seemed to unsettle her.

"I am a Rank-0," Sezel confirmed.

Vesta's eyes widened, her expression depicting disbelief. "What..." her lips parted, her mind struggling to reconcile the impossibility of his statement. 'Has he lost his mind, a Rank-0? Is that even possible?'

She took a slow, calming breath, her chest heaving with the effort. "What are you saying?" she stated, her voice a mixture of disbelief and rational objection. "A Rank-0 doesn't exist. Logically, it's not possible."

"I am not lying," Sezel said, his voice slow. "I don't know how to prove it. It is up to you whether you believe me or not."

The dense silence returned, broken only by the soft, rhythmic breathing of the still-sleeping Shiki and Mari. Vesta was too stunned to speak, and Sezel had nothing more to say.

Soon, Vesta left her deep thoughts. She seemed to pull herself back from the brink of her disbelief. "Okay," she started, her voice still a little shaky. Her long, black hair waved in the soft breeze that drifted through the broken window. "I will believe you. For now. So, what you are saying is that you are… an anomaly?"

"I don't know what I am," he spoke, his voice a little bolder now. "I came to this place for that exact reason. To find answers I can't find on Earth."

Vesta sighed deeply. "How do you explain your Fable then?" she questioned, curious. It's a widely known fact that anyone below Rank-3 will not be having a Fable, much less a Rank-0.

Sezel looked at her, at her sharp, intelligent eyes, and then turned back to the sky. His thoughts were a chaotic storm. He wanted to say it out loud once, but he wasn't sure if he could.

Maybe… let's just try. He gulped, the fear a hard knot in his throat, and then he opened his mouth, the words coming out slowly, deliberately.

"I have a… GOLDEN FABLE."

He spoke the words whole, his eyes squeezed shut, bracing for the pain, the suffocation. But nothing happened. He slowly opened his eyes, a profound sense of confusion washing over him. He was fine. He had said it out loud, and nothing had happened.

He turned towards Vesta. She was frozen, her eyes wide with a shock so profound it seemed to have turned her to stone. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. Or perhaps, he was.

"What… what did you say?" she whispered, shaking her head as if to clear it of an impossible vision. "A Golden Fable?"

A slow, genuine smile bloomed on Sezel's face. His crimson eyes narrowed with a newfound integrity. A gust of wind blew his white hair across his face. "Yes," he said, the word a question to himself as much as to her. "You heard me?"

He couldn't quite believe it himself. He said it again, this time with more force, more conviction. "Yes. I have a Golden Fable." He checked again, an internal scan of his own body. Nothing. Not even a pinch of pain.

He couldn't believe it. When he tried revealing it to Raelion, he choked and fell to the ground unconscious, but now everything was normal.

What was different between these two circumstances? he asked himself. It was the place. He was on Earth back then, and now he was in the Spirit Realm.

But nonetheless, the main problem right now would be the girl beside him. She was shocked out of her wits, probably convinced he was a lunatic. First, he claimed to be a Rank-0, and now, he claimed to possess a Golden Fable. None of it made sense according to the known laws of their world.

He stood up, trying to de-escalate the situation that had so quickly spiraled out of his control. "Okay… okay, listen," he mumbled, running a hand through his hair. "You don't have to believe what I said. And please… don't tell anyone else."

Vesta let out a deep laugh, echoing through the hollow building. Sezel looked at her, his expression a mask of pure confusion. 'Why is she laughing?'

She calmed herself, her laughter fading. "This doesn't make sense," she said, looking at him, her ruby eyes glinting strangely. "And at the same time, it makes perfect sense."

Sezel stayed silent, his mind once again thrown into a state of confusion. Vesta, too, stopped talking, turning her gaze back to the world outside.

"What are you guys talking about?" a new voice broke through the tense atmosphere. Shiki had woken up, stretching and yawning, his hand covering his mouth.

Suddenly, something stirred on the ground floor — the grating scrape of a metal object being pushed across the stone floor. All of them stilled, their breaths the only sound in the sudden, anxious silence.

Sezel slowly walked to the stairs and peeked through the corner, hiding himself. It wasn't a beast. But Slayers. They were searching for something on the ground floor.

He carefully retreated, his movements silent and fluid, and went back to Vesta and Shiki. "There are Slayers down there," he whispered.

Vesta's eyes narrowed. "Enemy?" she asked.

"Yes, it seems so," Sezel replied. "Three of them, a whole cohort."

"Then, what do you say?" Shiki asked, looking at Vesta, who seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

After pondering over something, she replied calmly, "No. We leave them be. Let's get away safely."

A flicker of disappointment crossed Shiki's face. It wasn't that Vesta was afraid of them. With her power, she could likely kill all three of them in seconds, unless there was another high-ranking Slayer among them, which was highly doubtful.

They simply agreed to her plan and began to silently pack their meager belongings, preparing to once again melt into the shadows of the dead, forgotten city.