Chapter 1 — The Long Walk to Work

Evan Vale adjusted the leather strap across his shoulder, the familiar weight of his longsword pressing between his shoulder blades as he stepped into the brisk morning air. Rain had fallen in the early hours, leaving the street damp and the air sharp with the smell of wet stone. The puddles on the pavement caught the light from shopfronts and traffic signals, turning them into fractured mosaics of color.

The city stirred with its peculiar harmony of eras. Cars and buses shared the streets with pedestrians in business suits and casual wear, each carrying a blade suited to their personality and skill. A man in overalls pushed a handcart loaded with crates, a falchion swinging lazily from a loop on his belt. A mother guided her young daughter to school, both wearing training swords in padded sheaths. Even the mail courier striding past carried a side-hanging short sword, its handle worn smooth by years of use.

The rhythmic clink of scabbards and guards brushing against buckles layered over the modern soundscape—the hiss of bus brakes, the hum of electric motors, the muffled beat of bass leaking from someone’s earbuds. Evan’s senses caught each one without conscious thought. The sword was part of the city, as normal as smartphones and takeaway coffee.

Overhead, the tram clattered along the elevated track, its windows revealing commuters standing shoulder to shoulder, swords racked neatly in vertical holders near the doors. A flash of sunlight off a polished hilt caught Evan’s eye, reflecting for a heartbeat like a silver beacon before vanishing as the tram moved on.

Turning onto Broadwell Avenue, Evan found himself in the thick of the morning rush. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee drifted from a corner café, mingling with the faint metallic tang wafting from the swordsmith’s shop across the street. The shop window displayed everything from elegant smallswords to massive zweihänders. The latter loomed in the center of the display, a newly forged work gleaming under warm light, its blade nearly as tall as Evan himself. The craftsman was inside at his workbench, his hammer blows ringing out steady as a heartbeat.

Across the street, a martial arts studio had posted a bold new advertisement: a sharply dressed man in a business suit leaping mid-air with a katana raised high, the tagline reading “Sharpen your body, sharpen your mind.”

Evan’s own longsword was a study in understatement. The grip, wrapped in black leather, bore the imprint of his hands from years of use. The cross guard was plain steel, the blade showing the subtle patterns left by decades of sharpening and care. No decorative etchings, no precious metals—just a weapon honed for balance and reliability.

The Rite of Selection had cemented this path for him. He remembered standing in the Hall of Arms as a boy of fifteen, the light from the tall windows cutting across rows of weapon racks. The air was rich with the scent of oil and leather, the faint grind of a whetstone somewhere in the distance. Each youth had moved at their own pace, testing blades, weighing their choices. Some sought flash—curved sabers with ornate guards, cleavers that looked designed to frighten more than fight. Evan had gone directly to the longsword rack, lifted one from its place, and known instantly that this was his.

Now, decades later, he passed a knot of teenagers clearly fresh from their own ceremonies. Their new blades hung awkwardly at their sides, straps either too tight or too loose. One lanky boy with bright red hair noticed Evan’s longsword and grinned. “Classic choice, sir!” Evan returned a small nod and kept moving, the ghost of a smile on his lips.

The architecture shifted as he neared the business district—old cobblestones with duel scars still etched in them gave way to gleaming glass towers. Billboards mixed corporate ambition with martial imagery: a tech CEO posed confidently with a katana across his shoulders above the words “Sharper business. Sharper blades.” Evan snorted softly; the man’s grip was all wrong.

Under the Armory Bridge—its beams now lined with solar panels—vendors were setting up their stalls. The air was thick with the scent of grilled meat and the sharper tang of freshly polished steel. Displays of scabbards in every color and design spilled from shopfronts, while repairmen worked quickly at benches, rewrapping grips or straightening bent guards. From a narrow side street came the sharp, rhythmic clang-clang of practice swords striking in a morning spar.

By the time Evan reached the granite-and-glass facade of Vantage Systems, the flow of sword-bearing commuters had become a steady current. Two police officers passed him, their weapons—an arming sword and a gladius—secured but well within reach. Their eyes swept the crowd in a habitual, calculating rhythm.

Inside the lobby, Dale, the building’s security guard and a retired duel champion, stood at his post with his broadsword resting in its display rack. The weapon’s guard was engraved with laurels faded from years of polish. “Morning, Vale,” Dale greeted with a nod.

“Morning,” Evan replied, swiping his ID badge.

The elevator ride to the tenth floor was a quiet interlude. A woman from accounting stood beside him, her short, double-edged sword sheathed in a sleek carbon-fiber scabbard. She offered a polite nod before watching the numbers climb.

When the doors slid open, Evan stepped into the hum of the open-plan office. The scent of coffee blended with the faint ozone tang from the printer. Desks stood in neat rows, each with its own mounted weapon holder. Some held ceremonial pieces, pristine and untouched; others, like his, were clearly working blades.

Evan slid his longsword into its wall mount beside his desk. The weight left his shoulders, but never his awareness. Rolling his shoulders, he settled in for the day—emails to answer, systems to secure, networks to guard. In this city, the digital and the steel were bound together, each as necessary as the other.

Evan Vale settled into his chair, the faint hum of the servers blending with the morning’s low chatter. On the far side of the office, Trevor from Sales was already holding court, retelling—loudly—his rooftop bar duel from the night before. The group around him chuckled and asked questions, some half-listening while replying to emails.

Evan brought up the network diagnostics on his screen. A conference room camera feed had gone down during a video call, and the ticket had landed on his desk. He was tracing the signal path when Kyle, the office’s self-appointed rapier expert, leaned on the edge of his cubicle.

“Morning, Vale,” Kyle said, eyes flicking to the longsword on the wall mount. “Still lugging that medieval relic around? You ever think about upgrading to something fast?”

Evan kept typing. “A blade’s only as fast as its wielder.”

Kyle smirked. “I could prove otherwise. We could make it interesting. Server room’s free after lunch.”

Trevor overheard and grinned. “Oh, here we go. Haven’t seen a good in-house bout in weeks.”

The energy in the room shifted. Conversations quieted as more heads turned toward them. Office duels weren’t rare, but they weren’t exactly encouraged either—especially after last year’s incident with the shattered monitor wall.

“I’m working,” Evan said, still checking switch logs. “Besides, I’d rather not spend my afternoon explaining broken equipment to HR.”

“That’s only if you lose,” Kyle replied, straightening up. “First blood. No killing strikes.”

Someone in Marketing called out, “I’ve got twenty on Kyle!” followed quickly by someone else shouting, “Fifty on Vale!” The banter spread, half the floor now invested in a fight that hadn’t even been agreed to.

Evan sighed, toggling the final network reset command. “If you’re that desperate, Kyle, we’ll do it by the rules. Lunchtime. And we log it with HR.”

Kyle grinned like he’d already won. “Deal.”

The crowd dispersed, the hum of the office resuming, though Evan could still feel eyes on him. This wouldn’t just be about bragging rights. In a place like this, every duel carried weight—reputation, respect, and the unspoken reminder that in this city, even in an office of servers and screens, the blade still ruled.

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