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The courtyard had never been this silent.
The ancient trees lining the Sacred Ring stood like unmoved sentinels, their branches casting jagged shadows across the polished obsidian stones where the Initiates had gathered. The ceremony of Binding was complete. Or at least—it should have been.
Ashen stood alone now, at the center of the Circle. All other children had been matched with their blades. Each pairing had ignited in brilliant light—red, gold, violet, even white. Cries of joy had echoed through the dusk like bells ringing toward some distant dawn.
Except him.
When the blade touched his palm, the world had changed.
No explosion of radiant color, no triumphant hum or blessing chant. Only stillness.
And then darkness.
It wasn't a mere absence of light, but something far older. A pressure, a sinking, as if the air itself had remembered an ancient grief and chose to weep in silence. His chosen blade had released no gleam, only a whisper that no one else seemed to hear. It did not shine—it swallowed.
The metal was pitch-black, but not dull. It gleamed faintly, like oil on water, absorbing the glows of the other blades and twisting them into unnatural shapes. For a moment, he felt as if the sky had grown heavier, the clouds pausing their slow dance to bear witness. A flock of crows broke from the nearby spires and circled once before vanishing westward.
The Elder who had presided over hundreds of pairings—Seradin, a man known for his calm voice and ceremonial grace—stumbled backward. His staff clattered to the stone. His face had gone pale.
"This… this cannot be," he muttered, as though forgetting he held a crowd.
Children gathered in rows began to whisper. Some pointed. Others frowned. One boy stepped behind his friend, as though the blade Ashen held might lash out without warning.
Ashen didn't move. He stood rooted, breath shallow, staring at the thing now bound to his fate. The sword sat loosely in his hand, yet it was as though it weighed more than the earth beneath him. It wasn't heavy in body—but in meaning. In memory.
He tried to release it. His fingers didn't obey. The sword remained, warm and pulsing faintly with something that almost felt alive.
A girl—Lyra, the youngest of the Initiates, who had always smiled at him—now hid behind her older sister. Her golden blade danced lightly in her hands. Her sister whispered: "That's not a soulblade. That's a shadowbrand."
The phrase sank into him like a needle through cloth.
Shadowbrand.
He had heard that word once. In a story meant to frighten orphans into sleep. A tale about cursed blades that did not bond—they claimed.
Elder Seradin stepped forward again, shaking off his fear, though his hand trembled slightly as he raised his staff. "Ashen…" His voice cracked. "You… will be excused from the closing rites. You are… to wait within the Hall of Stone until further guidance is given."
A pause.
No applause. No chanting of his name. No crest etched upon the ceremonial pillar. Just an order to vanish.
Ashen's heart beat louder than the silence.
"Yes, Elder," he managed, the words scraping his throat on the way out.
He turned to go.
Behind him, a child muttered under their breath. Not quite a whisper, not quite a shout.
"That thing shouldn't have chosen at all."
Another voice answered. "He didn't choose it. It chose him."
---
The walk through the temple grounds was long, not in distance—but in weight.
He passed walls inscribed with names—heroes, champions, bearers of light. Not one of them bore a blade like his.
The path to the Hall of Stone was lined with pyrelamps. They flickered strangely as he passed, dimming instead of glowing. Each lamp responded to his presence like a breath sucked in—tense, hesitant.
He kept his eyes down.
What had he done wrong?
Wasn't this the day he had waited for all his life? To be chosen? To finally stand alongside the others as more than the quiet boy from the southern ward, more than the one who trained in silence and never dared dream too loudly?
He remembered the late nights in the orphanage yard, swinging wooden swords at phantoms. The little carved emblem he'd kept under his pillow—a crude crest of the Old Guard, copied from an old book.
All of it, now a mockery.
The sword pulsed again.
It didn't feel cruel. Just… awake.
---
Inside the Hall of Stone, no fires burned. The chamber was lit only by the moonlight falling through a narrow glass window at the peak of the ceiling dome. Carvings of past champions lined the walls. Ashen found himself beneath one of the oldest—a statue of Saint Caelrum, wielder of the blade Radiant Thorne, who sealed the Rift War with a single stroke of light.
Caelrum's face was noble. Stern. The statue's sword was held high, its tip pointing skyward in triumph.
Ashen looked down at his own.
The dark blade shimmered faintly as he sat. It didn't gleam, didn't shine. But it was not lifeless.
It stared back.
He closed his eyes.
He thought of the warmth of the blade's hilt when he first grasped it. How it had felt like… recognition.
Not love. Not hope.
But a memory.
As if the sword had once known him—long before today. Long before he was Ashen.
A thought surfaced in his mind. One not his own.
You returned. At last.
His eyes shot open.
He was alone.
Wasn't he?
He looked at the blade again.
It pulsed once. Then was still.
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