Bernardo

The Twentieth Moon never truly slept.

Its streets pulsed.

Green veins crawled through cracked stone and shattered glass, feeding the colossal silhouette of Moreira, the monstrous tree whose roots strangled the city from below and whose branches clawed the clouds. Every beat of its heart sent a wet tremor through the ground, like the world itself flinching.

And walking through that corpse of a city came Bernardo Soares.

Each step rang softly.

Chin.

The tiny olive bell at the end of Baemsai Viper’s Blade chimed in the silence, a delicate sound in a place that devoured screams.

His boots splashed through shallow pools of blood pooled between broken cobblestones. Green bioluminescence reflected off his striped leggings, off the polished curve of his blade, off the neon scars tracing his ankles. The scars glowed brighter the closer he drew to the tree.

Good.

That meant Moreira still remembered him.

Roots twitched beneath the street.

Bernardo stopped.

He rolled his neck once, slow, loose, predator casual. The air smelled of iron and sap.

“Come on,” he muttered. “You’re not subtle.”

The street exploded.

A root thicker than a train burst upward, whipping toward him like a living battering ram. Bernardo pivoted, body flowing sideways as if pulled by invisible strings. His blade barely moved.

The spadroon’s trigger clicked.

Stored momentum detonated.

Baemsai screamed forward, cutting through the root in a single incandescent arc. Sap and blood vaporized midair. The severed mass slammed into a building behind him, collapsing three floors in a thunderclap.

Bernardo exhaled, slow.

More roots surged.

Dozens. Hundreds.

They tore through the street, walls, and ceiling of the ruined metro station ahead, weaving together into towering humanoid forms, their surfaces crawling with twitching veins and embedded human remains.

Minor Arcana constructs.

Meat puppets.

Bernardo cracked his knuckles.

“Waste of blood,” he murmured.

He dashed forward.

The bell rang faster.

Chin. Chin. Chin.

His blade danced.

Each strike released compressed velocity, turning precise cuts into annihilating blows. Limbs flew. Bodies folded inward like imploding stars. The battlefield bloomed with green light and drifting ash as he carved a corridor straight through the horde.

One construct lunged from behind, jaws unhinging.

Bernardo twisted mid-step, drove his elbow into its skull, and discharged the blade point-blank.

The thing vanished in a flash.

He didn’t slow.

At the end of the street, the ground collapsed inward, revealing the cathedral-sized root core of Moreira. It pulsed. It breathed. Faces writhed just beneath its translucent bark, mouths forming soundless prayers.

Bernardo stopped at the edge.

His chest rose.

Fell.

For a moment, the battlefield held its breath.

He raised his left hand.

“My name is Bernardo Soares,” he said calmly, voice carrying through the ruins, through the roots, through the screaming biomass, “and I hereby—”

The tree convulsed.

He hesitated.

Blood crept from the corner of his mouth.

The cost whispered through his veins.

No.

Not yet.

He lowered his hand.

Instead, he pressed the trigger.

Baemsai howled.

Momentum stacked upon momentum, coiling into a single, lethal vector. The blade glowed white-green, vibrating so violently the air screamed around it.

Bernardo stepped forward.

And leapt.

The bell rang once.

Chin.