---
The forest was still behind him, yet Ashen walked as if the trees still clung to him. Each step toward the distant capital tugged at something in his chest—not fear exactly, but a knowing. A weight. The Black Blade did not sleep, even sheathed. It pulsed faintly at his side, its voice absent but its presence undeniable. There was no denying it now: something ancient had chosen him.
And the world would soon take notice.
The other initiates kept their distance. On the road, they traveled in a loose line, some whispering, others casting glances not even trying to hide their suspicion. Ashen was alone without ever truly being alone. The blade's curse was now a shroud, turning the air around him cold with distrust.
"Don't touch him. Don't walk beside him. Don't even look for too long."
He heard one say it under their breath the night before. And though the instructors had barked at them to focus on training, no one said a word when Ashen's food was left half-served or when his tent was set furthest from the fire.
He didn't mind. Not anymore.
He was used to being alone.
Back at the orphanage, before the ceremony, he'd learned what it meant to be the one left behind.
---
It was a small stone building, crumbling at the edges but warm in winter—barely. The Orphanage of the Sacred Edge was where war orphans, blade-born exiles, and unwanted children were raised until the age of selection. Ashen had been there as long as he remembered, taken in as a swaddled infant left at the sword altar steps. His name was not given but assigned—Ashen, for the blade that had not yet chosen him, and for the smoke rising from the monastery hearth that day.
He was never cruel to others, and never asked for much. He helped in silence, fixed broken chairs, carried water, swept the training sands. But he had no flair for swordplay, no natural aptitude. Where others danced with wooden practice blades, he staggered. Where they called out sparks of early resonance from their latent swords, he felt nothing.
"You're empty," Brother Coran had once said. Not unkindly. Just plainly. "Some children are just not chosen."
And so Ashen had settled into his place. A ghost in the orphanage halls. A boy without light. Until the Choosing Day changed everything.
He remembered the way the room had gone silent. The moment when all sacred blades shimmered—gold, silver, azure, and violet—and yet one obsidian blade remained buried in the darkened altar, untouched.
Until it whispered.
It hadn't called out in glory or divine light. It had groaned—like a lock undone after centuries—and then it screamed. A piercing, hollow sound only Ashen heard. The other children shrank away. Even the priests gasped.
The black blade rose slowly.
And it turned toward him.
---
He could still feel that moment seared into his bones. The way the blade hovered above the altar, shivering with restrained hunger, its hilt curling in black smoke, the ancient runes along its length pulsing like a heartbeat. The orphanage priests had tried to intervene—"Stop the ceremony!" one shouted—but their voices were drowned beneath the howling wind that erupted inside the chamber.
And then it struck.
The blade did not wait to be touched. It lunged forward, embedding itself into the earth inches from Ashen's feet. The force knocked him back. His fingers bled as they reached for it, unthinking, instinctual. And when he gripped the hilt, the world turned to ash.
For a heartbeat, everything was gone.
He was standing in a different place. Not the orphanage chamber—but a void. Stars blinked and died around him. A voice coiled through the emptiness.
"I remember you…"
He could barely breathe. The blade spoke without words—through visions, emotions, crushing weight. It remembered wars long past. It had devoured champions, betrayed kings, and slept for a thousand years. It did not choose him the way holy blades chose others. It recognized him.
When the vision broke, he was back in the chamber. On his knees. Still holding the blade.
The silence was worse than any scream.
Ashen didn't cry. He couldn't. He only stood, the black blade still humming in his hand, as the priests whispered and the other children pulled away.
He had been chosen. Or marked. Or cursed.
But deep down, something in him had always known—he wasn't meant to shine like the others.
He was meant to burn.