Even with the gates locked, the walls patrolled, the fires low, the wind still found its way through the stones. It whispered through the slats in the windows, curled beneath the doors, rattled the iron lanterns in their chains.
Some nights, I could almost understand it.
The way a man understands a voice he’s forgotten was ever spoken aloud.
Tonight, it said nothing I didn’t already know.
I sat on the edge of my cot, boots off, shirt half-undone. My right shoulder still ached from the last patrol — a deep, knotted soreness where the muscles hadn't quite healed right. I worked it slowly, rotating it against the pull.
The forge heat had faded hours ago, and the chill was creeping back in.
Durendal leaned against the wall beside me, just within arm’s reach. Always.
Its blade, still sheathed in wolfskin-wrapped scabbard, didn’t glow or whisper or hum with divine purpose. It didn’t float. It didn’t burn.
But it watched.
Not with eyes, but with weight.
Some relics in the stories came to their bearers like gifts.
A glow from heaven. A voice in dreams. A chosen one’s destiny.
My relic didn’t come like that.
It had been the first week after I woke in this world.
No answers. No warnings. Just steel in my hand, scars on my body, and memories I didn’t recognize.
I’d barely even accepted I wasn’t Han Soo-jin anymore when I felt the pull.
Not a vision.
Just... a place.
Somewhere in the deep part of me — the part that still thought in clicks and taps and highlighted passages from the novel — I remembered a footnote.
One line, half-buried in a lore drop:
“It’s said that the first Emperor’s sword was never recovered. Some say it lies at the world’s edge, still waiting to be claimed.”
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
In the book, it was a myth. Just another flavor of worldbuilding. No one ever found it. Aiden never visited the North that early in the plot.
But I wasn’t Aiden.
And I didn’t need permission from the narrative to ride.
It took me three weeks to reach the edge.
Just me and a horse named Lancelot, more loyal than he had any right to be. The last outpost had warned me against going further.
No man crossed the Hollow Reaches alone, they said.
No man came back.
But I wasn’t a man of this world then. Not really.
I rode anyway.
Weeks Later
I saw the edge of the world.
Not a cliff. Not a fall.
Just... an end.
The land didn’t break off into the sea or descend into void.
It just stopped.
Stone turned to dust. Grass turned to glass. The sky above it was still — too still — like a painting hung too long on a wall no one looked at.
And there, half-buried beneath frost and time, I found him.
The first Emperor.
Or what remained of him.
His bones lay slumped against the back of a stone outcrop — twisted in angles no body should ever find peace in. His crown, half-melted. His robes, black with rot.
And beside him, wedged between rock and earth—
Durendal.
It was heavy with silence.
I reached for it, expecting something to resist.
Nothing did.
It came free in my hand with a soft sound — like a sigh.
On the wall behind the body, someone had carved words into the stone. Dozens of them. Worn, but not lost. His hand must have worked for days, weeks, etching each line with the point of a broken blade.
A confession.
“The poison they gave me was not meant to kill quickly. First the toes. Then the legs. Then my hands. I was still warm when they left me here. Still breathing when they closed the gate.”
“I thought I would be mourned. I thought I would be remembered.”
“They took my voice. But I take the last word.”
“Let this sword lie here, untouched by cowards, until one who dares to die for others comes to claim it.”
My breath fogged in the air.
I remember dropping to my knees. I wasn’t crying. Not exactly.
But I understood him.
Because I was the same.
Dropped here by forces I couldn’t name. Forgotten. Voiceless. Watching the story unfold without me.
And now this sword was mine?
I wasn’t worthy.
Not then.
But I took it anyway.
Because no one else would.
Back in the keep, I reached for the scabbard now, fingertips brushing the leather.
Durendal didn’t stir. Didn’t glow.
But it remembered.
Just as I remembered.
Not the victory.
Not the power.
But the man who had been left to die alone.
That sword had belonged to a god-emperor.
The founder of the Aurelian Empire.
A man who raised cities, burned demons, and shattered mountain fortresses.
And in the end, he died in silence. Poisoned by his own court.
Buried in frost.
His name etched into stone by his own bleeding hands.
They forgot him.
I wouldn’t.
Someone knocked at the door. Three light taps. I stood, wincing at the ache in my knees, and opened it.
Ryel stood there, already in his nightclothes.
"I couldn’t sleep," he said.
I nodded, stepped aside.
He came in, sat across from the hearth, watching the low fire burn.
After a moment, he asked: "Did you always have that sword?"