The unconscious victim was dying.
Kaelen could see it in the way the young man's chest barely rose and fell, in the grey pallor of his skin, in the shadow corruption that still leaked from the ritual markings carved into his torso. They'd carried him back to The Drunk Golem through Eredor's back alleys, avoiding the city guard patrols that flooded the streets after the magical disturbance at the ruins.
Now the victim lay on a table in Ronan's basement, and Lia was doing everything in her power to keep him alive.
"His soul is fractured," she said, her hands glowing with purification runes as she worked. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her face was pale from magical exhaustion. "The ritual tried to rip it out of his body. If I can't stabilize the fragments..." She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
Ronan stood nearby with a bottle of some foul-smelling potion, ready to assist. Kaelen felt useless, standing in the corner with Soulrender still strapped to his hip. The sword had been unusually quiet since they'd returned, but he could feel it... satisfied. Gorged on the souls of the cultists he'd killed.
The thought made him sick.
"Can I help?" he asked quietly.
"No," Lia said, not looking up from her work. "Your shadow energy would only make the corruption worse. Just... don't touch him. Don't even get too close."
So Kaelen stayed in his corner and watched Lia work, watched her pour out her own life force to save a stranger, watched the luminous runes she created grow dimmer as her strength waned. This was what she did—what she'd been doing for him every time he used Soulrender's power. Burning herself out to keep others from becoming monsters.
*How long can she keep this up?* he wondered. *How long before saving me kills her?*
An hour passed. Then two. Ronan brought coffee and food that none of them touched. The victim convulsed twice, his back arching off the table, and each time Lia had to channel more power to force the shadow corruption back. Finally, as dawn light began to creep through the basement's high windows, the young man's breathing steadied.
Lia sagged against the table, gasping. "He'll live. The corruption is contained. He'll need weeks of treatment, but he'll live."
"You did it," Kaelen said, moving to support her before she collapsed. "You saved him."
"We saved him," Lia corrected, though her voice was weak. "If you hadn't disrupted that ritual when you did, his soul would have been completely destroyed. No purification magic in the world could have helped him then."
"And if I hadn't used Soulrender's power, I wouldn't have been able to disrupt it at all," Kaelen said. He could feel the new Shadow Scars burning on his arm, a constant reminder of the price. "So I guess we're both complicit in this particular miracle."
Ronan cleared his throat. "Before you two start a philosophical debate about means and ends, we need to talk about the other thing you brought back."
"The other thing?" Kaelen asked.
"The information that Marcus Blackwood—former Arch-Mage of Valorian, genius magical theorist, and the man responsible for half the advances in runic defense over the past thirty years—is now leading the Cult of the Shade and personally trying to corrupt Eredor's Star Core node." Ronan's expression was grim. "That kind of changes the entire situation."
Lia had recovered enough to stand on her own, though she kept one hand on the table for support. "Marcus Blackwood... I've read his papers. His work on energy harmonics is foundational to modern rune theory. He was considered one of the greatest minds in Aethor." She looked at Kaelen. "What did he say to you? Exactly?"
Kaelen closed his eyes, replaying the encounter in his mind. "He said he'd been waiting for Soulrender to resurface for thirty years. That the sword and he have 'unfinished business.' And that he'd teach me what the blade really is and what it will make me become."
"Thirty years," Ronan muttered. "That's about when Marcus disappeared from Valorian. The official story was that he'd been exiled for researching forbidden magic, but there were rumors he'd gone willingly. That he'd discovered something that made him question everything the kingdom stood for."
"What kind of something?" Kaelen asked.
Ronan moved to the shelves and pulled down a thick, leather-bound book—the kind of tome that suggested forbidden knowledge and late-night research. "Shadow Hunter archives. We kept records on everyone who'd ever touched a Forbidden Artifact, even tangentially. Marcus Blackwood's file is... extensive."
He dropped the book on the table, flipping through pages until he found what he was looking for. "Here. Marcus Blackwood, age twenty-three, loses his entire family when a Star Core node destabilizes in Valorian's southern province. Three hundred people dead, including his wife and infant daughter. The official investigation blamed a 'natural magical surge.'"
Lia leaned over the book, reading the cramped text. "But Marcus didn't accept that explanation."
"No, he didn't," Ronan confirmed. "He spent the next five years researching Star Core energy, diving deeper into forbidden texts and ancient histories. And he found something—evidence that the Valorian royal family had been deliberately suppressing information about the Star Core's true nature."
"What information?" Kaelen asked.
"That the Star Core isn't purely 'light' magic like Valorian claims," Lia said, her finger tracing a passage in the book. "It's a balance of light and shadow energy, constantly in flux. The ancient mages who first studied it understood this and built their magic systems around maintaining that balance. But after the Shadow Lord's war three hundred years ago, Valorian decided that all shadow magic was evil and tried to purge it entirely from their kingdom."
"Which destabilized the natural balance," Kaelen realized. "Making Star Core nodes more likely to surge and explode."
"Exactly," Ronan said. "Marcus figured this out. He tried to present his findings to the Valorian Council, tried to convince them to change their approach to shadow magic. They branded him a heretic and drove him out of the kingdom."
Silence fell in the basement. On the table, the rescued victim muttered something incoherent in his sleep, still lost in whatever nightmares the ritual had left him with.
"So Marcus isn't just a fanatic," Kaelen said slowly. "He's a man who lost everything, discovered that his own kingdom's policies were responsible, and decided to burn down the entire system."
"A tragic villain," Lia agreed. "Convinced he's the hero of his own story. Which makes him more dangerous than any mindless cultist."
"And he wants Soulrender," Kaelen added, his hand moving unconsciously to the sword's hilt. "Why? What could he do with it that he can't do with his own shadow magic?"
Ronan turned more pages, then stopped at an illustration that made Kaelen's blood run cold. It showed three swords, each with distinctive designs, arranged in a triangle around a stylized representation of the Star Core. Beneath the illustration was text in an ancient script that Kaelen couldn't read, but Ronan could.
"'When the Three are reunited at the heart of the world, the seal will break, and the Shadow Lord will rise again,'" Ronan translated. "That's from the oldest Shadow Hunter texts. The prophecy that's driven cultists for three centuries."
"Marcus needs all three Forbidden Blades," Lia said. "Soulrender is just the first piece. If he finds Hearteater and Mindbreaker..."
"He can free the Shadow Lord from the Netherveil," Kaelen finished. "And if his theory is right—if the Star Core really does need balance between light and shadow—he might even be able to justify it to himself. Bringing back the Shadow Lord to 'restore balance' to a world that's been suppressing shadow magic."
"Twisted logic," Ronan growled, "but logic nonetheless. Which means we have two problems now: stopping the Cult's immediate plans to corrupt Star Core nodes, and preventing Marcus from collecting all three Forbidden Blades."
"Do we even know where the other two blades are?" Kaelen asked.
"No one does," Ronan said. "They were scattered after the Shadow Lord fell. Legends say Hearteater is in the Deep Ocean, Mindbreaker in the Sky Citadel, but those are just stories. Marcus has been searching for thirty years and hasn't found them."
"But now Soulrender has resurfaced," Lia said, looking at Kaelen. "Which means the other two might start awakening as well. The Forbidden Blades are connected—when one reveals itself, the others respond."
*Connected*, Soulrender whispered in Kaelen's mind, the first words it had spoken since the fight. *Yes. We can feel them, distant and dreaming. Our brothers. Our sisters. One in water. One in sky. Both waiting. Both hungry.*
Kaelen relayed the sword's message, and saw both Ronan and Lia's expressions darken.
"Then it's a race," Ronan said. "Between us and Marcus, to find the other Blades before he does."
"Or to destroy them," Lia added. "If Marcus can't complete his collection, he can't free the Shadow Lord."
"Can they be destroyed?" Kaelen asked, looking down at Soulrender. The blade pulsed at his hip, almost as if it were laughing at the suggestion.
"Theoretically," Lia said. "Forbidden Blades are powerful, but not indestructible. The problem is destroying one without killing its wielder. The bond you have with Soulrender... if someone tried to destroy the blade right now, the backlash would likely destroy your soul along with it."
"So I can't get rid of it without dying, and I can't keep using it without losing my humanity," Kaelen summarized. "But at least we're stopping apocalyptic cults and racing ancient villains to prevent the end of the world. Could be worse."
"How?" Lia demanded. "How could it possibly be worse?"
Before Kaelen could answer with some dark humor, the unconscious victim on the table suddenly sat bolt upright, his eyes snapping open. They glowed with residual shadow energy, purple light leaking from his pupils.
"He comes," the young man said, his voice not quite his own—layered, echoing, wrong. "The Architect of Ruin. The Weaver of Shadows. He sees through borrowed eyes. He knows the Soulrender has awakened. He knows its wielder is weak, untrained, ripe for claiming."
"Who's speaking?" Ronan demanded, moving to the table. "Who are you?"
The victim's head turned with an unnatural, jerking motion to stare directly at Kaelen. "I am the echo of what was and will be again. I am the dream that waits in the Netherveil. I am the Shadow Lord, and I *hunger*."
Lia's hands blazed with purification runes, and she slammed them against the victim's chest. "Release him! You have no claim here!"
The young man convulsed, his back arching, that terrible voice still emanating from his throat: "The boy with my blade will come to me. In time. They all do. The sword will guide him. The sword will bring him. And when he stands before my throne, he will *kneel*—"
The purification magic detonated, a burst of blue-white light that sent everyone reeling backward. When Kaelen's vision cleared, the victim had collapsed back onto the table, unconscious once more. The glow was gone from his eyes.
Lia was breathing hard, her hands shaking. "That was... that was the Shadow Lord. A fragment of his consciousness, left in the victim by the ritual. He was using the poor man as a window to observe us."
"How much did he see?" Kaelen asked.
"Everything, probably. Our faces, our location, our plans." Lia moved to check the victim's vital signs, her movements mechanical, automatic. "The Cult didn't just sacrifice this man for power. They used him as a spy."
Ronan cursed. "Then this place is compromised. Marcus knows where we are."
As if summoned by his words, a sound echoed from above—the tavern's front door being smashed in. Shouting. The clash of steel. Screams from the customers.
"Shadow Cult," Ronan growled, already pulling weapons from the racks on the wall. He tossed Kaelen a proper sword—not a practice blade, but a real weapon with lethal weight. "They're here. Dozens of them, by the sound. This is a full assault."
More sounds from above: Mira's voice raised in a battle cry, the crackle of combat magic, something heavy crashing to the floor. The tavern's customers were fighting back, but against trained cultists...
"We need to evacuate," Lia said, moving to pick up the unconscious victim. "There's another exit, right? A back way out?"
"There is," Ronan said, "but it leads to the canal district. If Marcus is smart—and he is—he'll have that exit covered too. We might be walking into an ambush."
"Then what do we do?" Kaelen demanded. "Stay here and fight? Against dozens of cultists?"
"No," Lia said firmly. "You stay here and hold the basement entrance while Ronan and I get the victim to safety. You're the only one who can stand against that many attackers."
"You want me to use Soulrender," Kaelen realized. "You want me to accumulate more Shadow Scars."
"I want you to survive," Lia shot back. "We can deal with the Scars later. Right now, we need to keep that blade out of Marcus's hands, which means keeping you alive."
From above came another crash, closer this time. Someone was fighting their way toward the basement entrance.
Kaelen looked at Soulrender, at the blade that promised power and damnation in equal measure. He thought about the Shadow Lord's words: *They all come to me. In time.*
Not yet, he thought. I'm not done being human.
"Alright," he said aloud, drawing the cursed blade. Shadows immediately wreathed the steel, eager and hungry. "Go. I'll hold them off. Just... come back for me, okay? I don't want to survive this alone."
Lia stepped forward and, before Kaelen could process what was happening, kissed him. Brief, fierce, tasting of coffee and desperation and something that might have been hope.
"Don't you dare become a monster," she said when she pulled back. "Don't you dare give up. We're going to figure this out. Together."
Then she was moving, helping Ronan carry the victim toward the back exit, leaving Kaelen alone in the basement with a sword full of shadows and a doorway full of enemies.
The basement door burst open. Cultists poured through, their bone masks gleaming in the runelight, shadow magic crackling around their hands.
Kaelen smiled—a cold, dangerous expression that wasn't entirely his own.
"Well," he said to Soulrender, to the cultists, to the fate that seemed determined to drag him into darkness, "let's see how much I'm willing to pay for victory."
The sword sang with joy, and Kaelen charged into battle.