Sailor Mercury's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Mercury led Weldon through the trees to the clearing where the target slept. Saturn lay curled against a fallen log, her glaive resting across her knees. Mercury kept her voice low. "You read the grief. I'll break the lock." Weldon nodded once. He did not ask if she was sure. Weldon began stacking his spell stones at the clearing's edge. He worked fast, setting worn sigils into a small pyramid, painted faces turned outward. "She lost someone she was told to protect," he said while he stacked. "That's the wound. I've seen it before." Mercury watched the stones glow faint green, one by one. Her own hands were already cold with the new dark power she had taken into herself. Mercury knelt and carved a circle into the cracked ground between them. Concentric rings opened under her fingers, green light bleeding through the splits. At the center she set the focal mark — a small wheel of cold fire. "Begin," she said. Weldon raised his hands. The cairn behind him hummed. Saturn woke. She tried to stand. The circle caught her before her boots cleared the moss. Weldon's voice was steady, almost gentle, naming the grief out loud — the child she could not save, the order she had obeyed. Mercury pressed her dark power through the named wound. Saturn's chest arched. She did not scream. She only shook, once, like a struck bell. When the light faded, a stone shape stood at the circle's edge that had not been there before — a torso split clean down the middle, one half turned away, one half leaning toward a small iron plaque. The mark of a heart breaking and choosing again. Saturn rose slowly. She looked at Mercury and waited for an order. Mercury did not give one yet. "You will choose," she said. "But not today." Weldon wiped his mouth and met her eyes. "My audience," he reminded her. Mercury nodded. The deal would hold. Saturn was hers. The Queen was one senshi closer to standing alone.