Draven fell.
Lyra stood frozen, eyes open, staff loose between her fingers. Zareth turned his head, but for a moment he did nothing. He couldn't. His gaze locked onto Draven's body, as if his mind refused to accept that the enormous man who had been joking only seconds ago was now on the ground.
Aria drew the bow.
Kára raised Kazak'Thur.
Varkas tried to stand, but a stab of pain crossed his ribs and he leaned back against the wall.
Darian could barely breathe.
Aelthas stood behind Draven, scythe in hand.
The blood fell on the white marble. Some of it splattered the dark blade. The scythe didn't let it run. It absorbed it slowly, as if it had been waiting for it.
The sounds of the castle seemed to recede. The flames were still burning somewhere in the palace. The walls were still trembling. The wounded were still breathing. But for a moment, everything was reduced to that curved blade, black, silent.
And the blood disappearing along its edge.
Many centuries before, Sarion came to the Elven Kingdom.
He didn't arrive wearing his true face. During his travels, he often changed his appearance to move without drawing attention. In Eldoria he walked as an elf, blending among craftsmen, scholars and mages who studied the power of the Great Tree.
What he sought was knowledge.
The Great Tree held an unusual magic. It was unlike that of other peoples. Ancient, deep, and difficult to understand even for the elves themselves. Sarion studied it for years.
His ability, Spell Weaver, allowed him to create new magics. He could take an idea, a form, or a magical rule, and turn it into something different. That was why he advanced where others stopped.
At that time, Sarion was researching the name of weapons.
Not the name an owner gave them out of affection. Not an inscription in the metal. The true name. What a thing was at its core. Its function. Its history. Its place in the world.
With some weapons, the result was simple. A sword remained a sword. A spear remained a spear. The name strengthened its edge, sharpened its purpose, woke something small inside it.
But Sarion wanted to try something different.
He took an ordinary scythe.
It wasn't a weapon of war. It was a harvesting tool, used to cut stalks, grass and grain. Its blade hadn't been born for duels or battles. It had been born to cut when the time to reap had come.
Sarion studied it.
He deciphered its name.
And when he spoke it, the scythe woke.
It didn't wake the way other weapons did.
The power that rose from it wasn't great merely because of its strength. It was dangerous because of its nature. The scythe didn't cut only flesh. It didn't stop at metal, skin or bone. Its magic touched the boundary between life and its end.
Sarion understood the rule quickly.
Four cuts.
The first left a mark.
The second made the mark reach the mana.
The third held the soul.
The fourth extinguished life.
He called that power the Death Touch.
Sarion knew then that he had made a mistake.
Its power had no measure. It understood no intention. It only obeyed its purpose: to cut until finished.
So he sealed it.
He didn't destroy it. Perhaps he couldn't. Perhaps destroying it would have released the power he had woken inside it. He chose to lock it away, hide it, and leave it under the protection of the Great Tree, where elven magic could contain its edge.
Then he left.
The weapon stayed behind.
Almost a century before the war against the Demon King, the elves found it.
They didn't know who had left it there. They didn't know its name. They only felt the danger that emanated from it even while sealed. The king of that time ordered it brought to the palace and hidden in a deep chamber. No one was to use it. No one was to touch it. No one was to listen to whatever it might whisper from the metal.
For years, they obeyed.
Then the war came.
Lirandil, the Dawn Arrow, rode to the battlefield as a hero of the elves. She was Aelthas's mother. Her name became woven into the songs of that era, into the banners and the memories of a kingdom that needed to believe in its heroes.
But Lirandil didn't return.
She died at the hands of the Demon King.
Aelthas and his twin brother grew up with that absence.
Then the blood sickness took his brother. The same sickness the Great Tree could ease, but not cure. Aelthas lost the one who had been born alongside him, the only person who shared his face, his childhood, and a part of his soul.
Years later, when Aelthas was nearly three hundred years old, the sickness took his father too.
Then Aelthas took the throne.
He was not a monster.
He was a king marked by loss. Cold, rigid, proud. He ruled with distance because closeness had always cost him too much. He had lost his mother to war, his brother to sickness, and his father to the same blood that ran in his own veins.
Then Loth'Fael was born.
His daughter was, to him, the last living branch of a family beaten too many times by death. He protected her. He wrapped her in care. He watched over her with the fear of someone who had already lost too much.
When Loth'Fael fled with Elias, Aelthas didn't understand it as a choice.
He felt it as another loss.
One more.
He sought power because he didn't want to lose again. He sought control because he had confused love with possession. And deep within the palace, beneath the shadow of the Great Tree, he remembered the sealed chamber.
Sarion's seal had weakened over the centuries.
The scythe was still there.
Aelthas took it.
He wasn't chosen.
There was no trial.
There was no pact.
The weapon didn't reveal its name to him.
Aelthas forced the bond with magic, royal blood, and desperation. He tried to dominate a will that had never accepted him. The scythe answered that wound in the worst way possible.
It became corrupted.
The weapon began to consume him, but it also changed in the process. Its power twisted. Its will stopped being only finality and became hunger. Aelthas tried to use it to reclaim what he had lost, and the scythe used that pain to sink in deeper.
First it touched his fear.
Then his rage.
Then it took the love he felt for his daughter and warped it until it became control.
Over the years, Aelthas kept governing. Kept speaking in his voice. Kept wearing his face.
But every decision had another edge behind it.
The real Aelthas sank somewhere deep, still alive, but far from his own hands.
In the throne room, the scythe moved again.
Draven's blood was no longer on the blade.
Lyra dropped to her knees beside the body. Her hands were trembling, but she didn't reach out to touch him. Zareth took a step forward. His face had lost all calm.
—Draven...
Aelthas didn't answer.
The scythe turned slowly in his hand.
Lumine spoke in Darian's mind.
—That weapon didn't choose him.
Darian looked at Aelthas. The scythe turned slowly in his hand.
—Then what happened?
Nox answered with a low growl.
—He forced it.
Lumine was silent for a moment.
—And now it controls him.
Darian tried to stand. Pain tore through his leg and his shoulder. Aria stepped in front of him with the bow drawn. Kára moved forward a step, though she could barely hold the hammer. Varkas pressed a hand against the wall and forced his legs to stand.
Zareth raised his daggers.
Smoke filled the hall again.
Aelthas raised the scythe.
The black blade dipped slightly, pointing at all of them.
The fight began again.