Chapter 10 – Iron Echoes and Forgotten Blades
The town was nameless. A scattering of stone homes, worn tents, and hammer-scarred forges clustered around a broken well. There were no guards at the entrance, only wandering eyes and the weight of heat rising off the black earth.
Kael followed the others through its winding paths, silence clinging to him like a second skin.
Ryall clapped his shoulder as they passed a smithy. "You're not walking into an old ruin dressed like that," he said, eyeing Kael's patched shirt and torn boots. "Come on. Let's get you something that won't fall apart when the ground starts screaming."
Kael didn't laugh.
They stepped into the forge, the air thick with heat and iron. The blacksmith was a woman with arms like stone and eyes like rust. She said nothing as Tessan handed her a pouch heavy with coin.
"Fit him with light plating," Elira said. "He needs to move. Not drag."
Drev stood by the door, watching shadows creep through the smoke.
Kael stood still as metal was shaped, plates were strapped across his arms and chest, and a dull cloak was thrown over his shoulders. The armor was simple, more leather than steel but it felt like the first thing that was ever truly his.
Then he saw it.
Mounted behind the forge, forgotten and half-wrapped in chains, was a scythe.
Its blade curved like a crescent moon, edges blackened but not dull. Veins of some silver-dark metal ran through its haft, pulsing faintly with a glow that seemed... wrong. Not magic. Not aura. Just other.
He didn't hear the smith speak, didn't see the others turn. His feet moved on their own.
When his fingers closed around the haft, a chill raced up his spine.
For a moment, the world darkened.
He saw;
A battlefield of bones.
A scream without sound.
A hooded figure wielding the blade as if it had always been part of him.
Eyes like black suns.
"Kael!" Elira's voice snapped him back.
He turned, breath shaky.
The forge was quiet again. But the blacksmith was staring at him with narrowed eyes.
"No one touches that blade," she said low. "Been sitting there thirty years. Every Fathomwalker and Veilborn that tried to lift it said it burned them from the inside."
Kael looked down. His hand didn't hurt.
Ryall gave a slow whistle. "You've got a habit of picking the strange things, ghost."
Kael said nothing. He kept the scythe close.
They left the forge before dusk, heading east, toward the forgotten ruins called Thorne Hollow. A relic of a civilization buried in silence, now rumored to hold whispers of power and madness.
As they traveled, Elira walked beside Kael.
"You felt something, didn't you?" she asked.
Kael nodded.
"Want to talk about it?"
"No."
She didn't press.
The scythe rode on his back, wrapped in cloth. But Kael could feel it like a breath against his neck. The others glanced at it from time to time, uneasy. Even Drev kept his distance.
By nightfall, they reached the rim of the canyon where Thorne Hollow slept beneath layers of dust and stone.
No stars shone overhead. The wind carried no song.
Kael stared down into the abyss below, where old secrets festered and older truths waited.
The scythe whispered at his back not in words, but in hunger.
And far beneath, something stirred.