The dark moon rose like a wound in the star-drunk sky, its absence of light seeming to draw shadows from every corner of the palace. I stood in my workshop surrounded by the instruments of damnation, while the three mind-wiped apprentices arranged materials with the mechanical precision of the soulless. The shadowsteel writhed on my anvil like something alive, the stellarium pulsed with captured starfire, and the Soulstone beat with the rhythm of a heart filled with hatred.
Commander Thane had arrived at sunset, bringing with him artifacts that made my skin crawl merely to look upon them. The meteoric iron for the guard had been shaped into curves that hurt the eye, geometries that seemed to fold in on themselves in defiance of natural law. The silk for the handle wrapping was the color of dried blood, and when I touched it, I could hear the faint echoes of screams from whatever innocents had died to provide it.
"The ritual begins now," Thane announced, his voice carrying harmonics that resonated in my bones. "Speak the words exactly as written. Any deviation, any hesitation, and the forces we are invoking will turn upon us all."
I nodded, though my mouth felt dry as ancient parchment. The scroll of incantations lay open beside the forge, its alien symbols seeming to writhe in the firelight. Each syllable would be a step further from redemption, each word a nail in the coffin of my soul.
But hidden within my leather apron, pressed against my heart, lay a small piece of silver—a fragment of the medallion Prince Xayon had worn as a child, engraved with the royal seal and the motto of House Karadia: "Honor in All Things." I had salvaged it from his abandoned chambers the night he went into exile just before I disappeared and ceased to be Master Genfrey of House Malcor, and it had been my talisman through these dark months.
If I could work it into the blade's construction, if I could bind it into the very metal without Thane detecting the deception, it might serve as the flaw I desperately needed to create.
"Begin with the shadowsteel," Thane commanded. "Heat it to exactly 1,247 degrees—no more, no less. The words must be spoken as the metal reaches temperature."
I placed the writhing fragment into the forge, watching as the flames turned from orange to blue to a color that had no name in any human language. The shadowsteel began to glow, but not with normal heat—it pulsed with an inner darkness that seemed to devour light even as it heated.
The first words of the incantation scraped from my throat like broken glass: "Mor'thak nethys vain koroth..." The language was older than empires, older than the first humans who had learned to speak. It tasted of sulfur and despair, and each syllable felt like swallowing poison.
As I spoke, the shadowsteel began to change. Its writhing slowed, then stopped, as if the alien words were binding it into the shape of mortal purpose. The metal started to sing—a low, keening note that spoke of violence and betrayal, of bonds broken and trust shattered.
"Good," Thane breathed, his eyes glowing with reflected malice. "Now add the stellarium. Seven drops, no more, as you speak the Second Binding."
The vial of liquid starlight felt cold as winter death in my hands. As I tipped it over the glowing shadowsteel, each drop fell like a tear from heaven, and where it touched the metal, light and darkness merged in patterns that hurt to perceive directly.
"Vel'tar mishkan dolor nethys..." The Second Binding was worse than the first, each word feeling like it carved a piece from my soul. But as I spoke, I felt something else—a presence, cold and vast and utterly alien, pressing against the edges of my consciousness.
The thing that lived in the darkness between stars was listening.
I fought to maintain my composure as otherworldly attention settled on me like a weight of ice and shadow. This was what the ritual truly invoked—not just the forging of a weapon, but the summoning of something that had no rightful place in the mortal world.
"Continue," Thane hissed, and I could see sweat beading on his pale forehead despite his apparent calm. He felt it too—the presence that pressed against reality like a tumor against healthy flesh.
The metal on the anvil had begun to take shape, flowing like liquid into the curves of a katana blade. But it was wrong, twisted, a thing that belonged in nightmares rather than the waking world. Its edge was sharp enough to cut through concepts, its surface reflected not light but the fears of those who looked upon it.
"The Soulstone," Thane commanded. "Shatter it as you speak the Final Binding, and drive its essence into the blade while the metal is still soft."
This was the moment. If I was going to act, it had to be now, while the ritual reached its crescendo and Thane's attention was focused on the otherworldly forces we had invoked.
I raised the hammer, speaking the words of the Final Binding as the crystal pulsed with malevolent life: "Koroth mishkan vain'tel othys morthen..." But as I brought the hammer down, I pressed my other hand against my chest, feeling the silver medallion through the leather of my apron.
The Soulstone shattered in a burst of darkness that screamed with the voices of the damned. Hatred poured from it like blood from a wound—centuries of accumulated malice, the crystallized essence of torment and betrayal. I felt it trying to flow into me as well as the blade, seeking to corrupt everything it touched.
But in that moment, as the darkness sought to claim me, I thought of two young princes laughing in an armory, of brotherhood and honor and the dreams of innocent children. The silver medallion seemed to grow warm against my heart, and I felt a barrier form around my soul—fragile as spun glass, but real.
The hatred flowed into the blade instead, binding itself to the shadowsteel and starfire in a fusion that made reality itself seem to recoil. But with it went something else—a thread of silver, too small to see, too pure to be detected by the alien presence that watched our work.
I was too scared to dare but I had done it. The medallion fragment was now part of the blade's very essence, a tiny spark of light hidden within the darkness.
"It is finished," Thane said, and I could hear the exhaustion in his voice. The ritual had cost him as much as it had cost me, perhaps more. "Behold—Soulrend, the blade that will end gods."
The weapon lay cooling on the anvil, and even in the dim light of the forge, it was terrible to behold. The blade curved like a frozen scream, its surface reflecting not the flames but something far more disturbing—glimpses of possible futures, moments of violence yet to come, the deaths of those it was destined to kill.
"The Emperor will be pleased," Thane continued, though he made no move to touch the weapon. "With this blade in his hands, no enemy can stand against him. Not armies, not heroes, not even—"
"His brother." I finished the thought, my voice barely above a whisper.
"His brother." Thane's smile was like the grin of a skull. "Prince Xayon's exile will end soon enough. The Emperor has ways of drawing him back to Karadia, ways of ensuring he cannot refuse the summons. And when he arrives, he will find a welcome sharper than any he might expect."
The Commander gathered his materials and departed, leaving me alone with the cursed blade and the weight of what I had done. The workshop felt different now, tainted by the presence we had invoked. Shadows seemed deeper, angles seemed wrong, and the very air tasted of despair.
I wrapped Soulrend in black silk, my hands shaking as I touched the fabric. Even through the wrapping, I could feel the weapon's malevolent presence, its hunger for blood and betrayal. Whatever I had been before this night, I was no longer. The forging had marked me, changed me in ways I didn't yet understand.
But deep within the blade's cursed heart, a fragment of silver waited, I hoped. A memory of brotherhood, of honor, of everything Xaldron had once been before darkness claimed him. It was so small, so fragile, that it might not matter when the moment came.
But it was there. And sometimes, the smallest things make the greatest difference.
As dawn broke over Karadia, painting the sky the color of blood and ash, I finally allowed myself to weep. For the innocence lost, for the choices made, for the brothers who had once laughed together in happier times. The tears fell onto the silk-wrapped blade, and where they touched, the fabric seemed to grow slightly lighter—as if even sorrow might have the power to push back against the darkness, if only for a moment.