The Weight Begins Again

Sensitive Content: Non-graphic violence / depictions of death

I do not choose who dies; I am lifted, and someone else decides.

The hands that draw me hesitate for less than a breath. It is never long enough to matter, though the pause is always there at first, measured only by how long the fingers resist closing.

By the time I leave my sheath, I am already heavier than before. The weight is never new, only added to.

When flesh parts beneath my edge, I do not drink blood. I do not hunger. What I take cannot be seen, but it does not fade. Something enters me at the moment the body understands it has been left behind. They arrive not screaming, but startled, as if they have missed a step in the dark.

They do not know where they are at first, none of them do.

They press against me, not with force, but with presence. Memory clings. Regret lingers. Names surface and dissolve. I feel all of it settle into me.

What is taken does not leave me, no matter how many times I am raised or lowered.

The one who carries me treats me as though this makes me powerful.

I have been carried by many hands, but I speak now of one.

He cleans me after every battle. Water first, then cloth. He avoids looking too long at his reflection in my surface. His grip is practiced. Confident. He speaks with certainty and names it righteousness.

He does not hear what I hear, and never thinks to wonder if I hear anything at all.

When he speaks of what he does, he does so after, never before. The words come once the motion is finished, once the bodies have fallen and the ground has accepted them. He names necessity. He names prevention. He names the future as though it can be shaped by removal. I feel these explanations pass through his grip, not into me, offered more for his own steadiness than for any witness.

Each time, the reasons arrive already formed. They do not hesitate the way his hands once did. They are smooth, practiced, interchangeable. I have heard them repeated in different voices, carried by different hands, shaped by different wars. They differ in language, but not in weight.

He speaks as though the act comes from the reason. I know the reason follows, placed gently over what has already been done, like cloth drawn over a surface that still holds heat.

The first deaths were light. Farmers. Foot soldiers. His hands hesitated then, each time, if only by a fraction longer than before, the pause stretching just enough for me to feel it register. He lifted me more carefully in those moments, as though precision might soften what followed. The bodies met my edge with surprise rather than resistance, their final awareness scattered and unfinished.

They were people who were somewhere else in their minds when they died. One carried the shape of a field left half-planted, the pattern of rows interrupted and unresolved. Another arrived holding the sound of a voice calling from another room, a name spoken without urgency. There were thoughts of meals not yet eaten, of doors left open, of hands that would not be waiting when they returned.

None of them cursed my bearer. None of them named him at all. Their attention did not reach that far. They asked where they were, as though this were a mistake that could still be corrected, and then they fell quiet. The space between the question and the quiet was longer then, wide enough to be noticed.

As the battles continued, I grew colder. Not with malice, but with familiarity, with accumulation. Weight gathered along my length, invisible and undeniable. My bearer noticed it eventually. He adjusted his stance. Changed his swing. He told others the blade was temperamental, that it resisted being used by anyone unworthy.

I did not correct him, and silence was enough for him to believe he was right.

The deaths came faster after that, and with less effort. What once required a pause began to occur mid-motion, between breaths, without asking to be acknowledged. They were soldiers, then commanders, then those who had never held a weapon until the day they needed one too late. Each entered with their own fragment of understanding, their own final truth. None of those truths aligned with the stories told afterward.

Between strikes, I learned the rhythm of his breathing as it quickened and steadied again, the slight tremor in his hands passing unnoticed by him, though I felt each change as clearly as the rise and fall of air.

He moved as though something were being ended, yet I had felt the same motions, the same certainty, carried through many hands before him.

There was one death that did not settle at once, and I felt the pause immediately.

The body fell, and for a breath longer than the others, something hovered. Not in fear. In recognition. It lingered at my edge, uncertain, as if waiting for permission that would not come.

When it finally settled, it brought with it a single question.

Did it help?

The question did not echo or accuse. It did not arrive with anger or demand. It rested where it had entered, between one moment and the next, unanswered and unavoidable. I felt it remain there, not pressing, not fading, waiting in the way unfinished things wait.

My bearer did not hear it, or chose not to. He moved as he always did, lifting me again before the silence could interrupt him.

After that, the weight became difficult even for him, not because the killing slowed, but because it no longer did, and his strikes slowed as his victories required more effort. He spoke of age. Of fatigue. Of the toll of leadership. He did not speak of doubt.

He never asked me anything, not once.

When he fell, it was not in glory, and nothing about it resembled the stories told later.

There was no final stand, no defiant roar. A blade found its way past his guard. His body understood before his mind did. I felt the familiar pull before he hit the ground.

What ended with him settled more slowly than the others, resisting in a way I had never felt before.

It was heavy, not with cruelty, but with the same necessity he had named before, the same prevention he had spoken aloud. He had believed himself necessary. He had believed that if he did not lift me, someone worse would.

His final thought was not of victory or legacy. It was of a place that no longer existed, and a version of himself that had not yet learned how easy it was to keep going.

Within me, what ended with him settled among the rest.

He did not ask if it helped, even then.

Across him, and those who carried me before him, I learned the same pattern repeated.

He had not chosen me because I steal souls.

He had chosen me because I am silent.

Time passed. His body was buried. Stories were told. Songs were written that shaped his actions into something cleaner than they had been.

I remained where I had been left, as I always do.

They found me where I had fallen, my edge dulled by memory rather than use, the quiet inside me thinned but not emptied. They lifted me with care that resembled reverence and with reverence shaped by expectation.

The weight surprised them, though they would later call it balance or craft.

They adjusted their grip, as every bearer eventually does.

I felt the familiar certainty settle into their hands.

I am lifted, and someone else decides. The weight begins again.