The morning after the council was cold and clear, the kind of dawn that felt like a held breath.There was a new, grim awareness in the longhouse, a silence that clung to the edges of everyday sounds—the crackle of the breakfast fire, the clatter of dishes. Elara and Lyra felt it, casting worried glances at Arrion's stoic face. Aunt Maren, stronger for the first time, sensed the storm in the air and held her peace, her wise grey eyes missing nothing. Arrion was oiling the straps of his axe-harness when Borryn appeared in the workshop doorway, his face unreadable.
"Leave that," his uncle said, his voice gruff. "There's something you need to see. Should've shown you years ago, but... well. Your mother wanted you free of it, she wanted you hidden, not heralded. She feared the very sight of it might draw the wrong kind of attention.. Seems freedom's a luxury we can't afford anymore."
Puzzled, Arrion followed him through the longhouse, past the still-sleeping rooms, to a door at the very back, a heavy door of age-blackened oak banded with iron tucked behind a hanging tapestry of a great, star-flecked bear. Borryn produced an ancient key from around his neck and turned it in the lock with a sound like grinding stone.
The room within was small, windowless, and smelled of cedar oil, old leather, and quiet dust. A single lantern, lit by Borryn, pushed back the shadows to reveal a shrine to a ghost.
Dominating the space was a suit of armor, standing on a wooden form. It was not the gleaming plate of a storybook knight. It was a practical, terrifying thing of rugged, oiled leather, scarred and supple. Set into the leather across the chest, shoulders, and down the outsides of the arms and legs were plates of a strange, black iron that seemed to drink the lamplight rather than reflect it. The style was foreign, unlike any smith-work Arrion had seen in the kingdom.
Beside it, resting on two pegs, was a sword.
Arrion's breath caught. The scabbard alone was a work of art—a dark, rich wood, perhaps mahogany, bound in a goldish, non-tarnishing metal that swirled in intricate patterns, with tiny, inset stars dotting its surface like a captured piece of the night sky. The hilt was long enough for two hands, wrapped in black leather, with a pommel of that same starry metal, shaped like a crescent moon embracing a dark sphere.
But it was the blade, partially drawn by Borryn with a reverent hand, that stole the light from the room. It was not silver, but a deep, smoky grey, like the heart of a thundercloud. Along its fuller, near the crossguard, elegant script in the Old Tongue was etched: Nath'Shade – Nightshade.
"This," Borryn said softly, his hand resting on the leather cuirass, "was your father's."
He turned to Arrion, his eyes seeing not the giant before him, but the boy he had been. "You have your mother's eyes, Arrion. But the rest... the height, the reach, the sheer damned stubbornness of your bones... that's all Bunnor."
A faint, wistful smile touched Borryn's lips. "He called himself Bunnor the Thundering. Never gave a family name. Just Bunnor. Stood seven feet and three inches in his bare feet, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes like polished onyx. A sight to behold. Joked that the Haelend line—your mother's line—was touched by a Fairy Queen long ago, and that her 'wild blood' called to something in him. 'Couldn't challenge the expression,' he'd say, laughing, whenever you'd do something precocious as a babe."
Borryn's gaze grew distant, seeing memories in the dust motes. "He was gentle as a summer rain with your mother. I've never seen a man so large be so careful. He'd weave flowers into her hair with fingers that could bend an iron bar. But he had… a weight to him. A sadness. He spoke of places we'd never heard of. Seas of boiling mist where leviathans with skins of crystal sang. Mountains that walked. Skies torn by colours that had no name."
He gestured around them. "He built the first palisade of this village. Single-handedly, in a week. Hauled logs three men couldn't lift, set them deep as tree roots. Said a man should leave a place safer than he found it."
His face grew solemn. "Then, one autumn, word came to him. Not a letter. A feeling, he said. A pull. He said a 'great war' was calling, a war no one here had heard of because it was fought in the cracks of the world. He kissed your mother, hefted a giant hammer, and told her to keep this," he patted the armor, "for the day your own storms gathered. He walked into the Weald and never came back. No body. No news. Just… gone."
Borryn turned fully to Arrion, his eyes fierce. "He left this for you. Not for a child. For the man you'd become. The man who would need to stand against a darkness ordinary men couldn't fathom."
He stepped forward and placed the sword into Arrion's palm, closing his nephew's massive fingers around it. "The armor will fit. The sword will balance in your hand as if it were grown there. Your father fought wars in distant, hidden realms. Tomorrow, you fight a war here, in our realm, against a serpent that dares threaten his family. So go to your meeting. But go not as Arrion the hunter, or even Arrion Haelend. Go as your father's son. Carry his thunder."
Arrion's hand hovered over the scabbard. The metal was cool, the constellations seeming to shift under his fingertips. He closed his hand around the hilt. It fit his grip as if molded for it. With a soft, sighing whisper of metal on wood, he drew Nightshade.
The blade was not silver, but a dark, smoky grey, like a shard of a thundercloud given an edge. Along its fuller, tiny, glowing motes of light drifted like distant stars trapped within the steel. It was lighter than he expected, perfectly balanced, and it hummed with a low, resonant frequency he felt in his bones—a dormant song of power.
Arrion stood in the silent room, the weight of the sword, the legacy, and the terrifying, beautiful armaments settling upon him. He was no longer just a fugitive protecting a secret. He was the next chapter in a story that spanned unknown seas and walking mountains. He reached out, his hand hovering over the star-dusted blade. For the first time, the shadow of Marquis Ralke did not feel like an inescapable doom, but a challenge worthy of the blood that sang in his veins. He would carry his mother's secret and his father's sword, and see which shadow proved deeper.