They traveled the borderlands at moonlight.
Under Lysara's caution, they only journeyed by stars. "The blade attracts eyes," she had warned. "Eyes that ought to have remained closed." Kael did not protest. With each mile they traversed, the land became more alien. The trees slanted at an angle, as if wind-blown but the wind no longer blew. The earth became darker. The silence deepened.
On the fourth evening, they arrived at a location known as the Bleeding Valley.
It was not marked on any map, but its name rang out in Lysara's voice as if she had heard it a long time ago. The grass here was pale, fragile. Long cracks ran through the ground like veins. As Kael walked, he saw that the cracks contained something black—ash, powder-fine but abnormally cold. He dropped to his knees, put his fingers into it.
It hissed.
The sword throbbed at his back.
Lysara's voice right behind him. "This is where the third bearer died. She was Sirael. Turned the course of an eighty-year war. Killed a god with that sword."
Kael glanced back over his shoulder at her. "So why do they call it the Bleeding Valley?"
Lysara's eyes were far away. "Because when she died, the sword continued killing."
The ash stuck to Kael's fingers longer than it should have.
---
That evening, Kael sat beside the campfire, Shadowfire in his lap. He hadn't drawn it since the village. Not completely. The feel of it had started to become a second spine—pinching into him, merging with him. When he closed his eyes, it was there.
Waiting.
Watching.
Whispering.
"Does it speak to you?" Lysara asked quietly from the other side of the fire.
Kael paused. Then nodded. "Not in words. More like… hunger."
She watched him for a very long time. "It picked you because you were strong. But it does not know mercy. Or fear. Or limits."
"I don't need it to," Kael replied.
"No," she concurred. "But you'll have to recall those things for yourself. Or it will strip them away from you."
He gazed down at the sword.
Its runes had started to throb in time with his heartbeat.
---
They were attacked at dawn.
The cry of the initial Ashbound had cut through the mist like glass—racked, unhuman, with overtones like multiple voices tied together. They formed from the boulders in a dozen grotesque shapes: armored as knights, but deformed, elongated, as if something had been pulling on the inside to stretch them out.
Their commander was twice the height of a man, clad in red robes that blazed without flame. His helmet was shaped like a dragon skull, and his hands crackled with black lightning.
Lysara screamed, hurling fire from her palms in spirals that curved through the air like ribbons of sunlight. Two Ashbound disintegrated to ash. The others continued on.
Kael acted without thinking. Shadowfire sprang into his hand, a blast of power thundering through his arms.
And the world curved.
He struck the blade once.
Time shattered.
The air around him disintegrated—a wave of purple light tearing across the valley, tearing earth and sky out by the roots. When it receded, five Ashbound were not there.
Not killed.
Erased.
The blade vibrated, full of triumph.
Kael drew breath, heaving, and sensed something at the back of his eyes stir. A flicker of something deeper.
"Kael!" Lysara cried. "The warlord!"
The dragon-helmed warlord lifted his hand.
Darkness flowered.
Kael brought up Shadowfire to counter it—and for an instant, their powers clashed, light and shadow, fire and void. The force sent him to his knees.
The warlord's voice boomed in his head.
"The sword remembers me, bearer. I died by its blade once. And I have come back to take it."
Then he dissolved into smoke.
---
When the fight was finished, Kael was standing in the ashes of a shattered battlefield.
The earth reeked of smoke. The valley fell back into stillness.
Lysara moved towards him cautiously. Her clothes were burned. Her blood trickled down one arm.
"He was a revenant of the First Age," she explained. "One of the dead kings. Borne at will of the Black Tower."
Kael glared at the sword. "He knew."
"They all will. Every war you fight now will be with ghosts."
Kael shut his eyes.
And somewhere within the blade, something hummed.