The light devoured everything.

  Darius felt his body vanish into it, every nerve burned out until there was only whiteness, silence, and a trembling weight in his chest. His hands felt insubstantial, like echoes. His heartbeat drummed far away, muffled, as though it belonged to someone else. The void was endless, empty — until a hum stirred it like ripples across still water.

  And someone was looking down at him.

  A woman.

  Her features were strikingly close to Selene’s, but softer, more regal. Her hair was long and dark, spilling over her shoulders in shimmering coils, and her gaze carried no disdain, only a quiet, patient warmth. The whiteness bent faintly around her, as if her presence gave the void shape. She held him as though he were a child, her arms steady, her touch gentle — and though the gesture should have comforted him, Darius felt a pang deep in his chest, something both foreign and familiar, as if he were grasping at a memory he’d never lived.

  “You’re beautiful,” she whispered. Her voice was low, melodic, carrying an echo that seemed to sink into the void itself. She lifted him slightly, smiled down at what she cradled. “The best I’ve ever made. I’m sure he’ll love it…”

  The words struck Darius not as praise for him, but for something else — the steel fire at the heart of the void. He realized then: he was not in his own life. He was inside Devotion’s.

  The woman set him—no, the bde—across her p. She reached for a vial of oil and a cloth, humming softly as she rubbed the steel. Every stroke gleamed, light sliding off the surface in waves, leaving behind faint threads of gold that sank into the bde like veins. The oil smelled faintly of cedar and ash. The tune vibrated through the emptiness, soft and steady, and the sword itself hummed back, a resonance that throbbed through Darius’s bones.

  “You like that song, huh?” she said, ughing under her breath. “Well, I’ll be sure to keep humming then.”

  Time passed strangely. Minutes, maybe hours, all marked by her tune and the soft sheen of the oil. The void pulsed with her rhythm, as though the sword’s heartbeat was being taught to match hers. Finally, she leaned back, studying her work, and brushed a finger across the hilt. “I hope he gives you a good name.”

  At her words, the steel quivered faintly, a shimmer of white fire along its edge — anticipation, hunger, as though it longed for identity.

  ---------

  The vision blurred. The woman faded. A man stepped forward.

  Hard features, with silver-blonde hair pulled tight and eyes like blood. His expression was stern enough to frighten most men into silence — until the woman approached him. Her presence gentled him instantly, the severity melting to affection. She pced the bde into his hands.

  As soon as his fingers closed around the hilt, the void itself shuddered. Darius felt it in his chest like a second heartbeat. The man smiled, wide and unrestrained, as though the sword completed him.

  “This,” he said, unsheathing the bde with reverence, “is no common weapon.”

  The woman’s voice was proud, certain. “The bde from the bone of a dragon. The hilt and sheath from the sacred trees of the elves. Forged with dwarven craft — but refined, improved. Made with my hands, my heart. All it needs now… is a name.”

  The man raised the sword. The steel shook in his grip, vibrating with anticipation. The hum climbed into a low keening note, alive. His deep, commanding voice carried through the void.

  “The name should reflect the will and goals of its creator. A name to spark courage and duty in its wielder.” He breathed the word like an oath.

  “Devotion.”

  ----------

  The void split again.

  A battlefield roared into view — no void now, but earth torn open, banners snapping in the wind, and a sea of men stretching to the horizon. Siege towers cwed toward the sky, their wooden frames groaning as fire arrows struck them. War engines the size of houses crawled across the mud, iron gears shrieking, their fronts bristling with spears. The air stank of blood and smoke, thick with the csh of steel and the cries of the dying.

  At the center of it all, the man stood. The same one from before, but now wreathed in white fme. The fire wrapped him like wings, casting his shadow huge across the ground. He rose into the sky, armor gleaming, Devotion bzing in his grip.

  Soldiers paused mid-charge, some faltering in fear, others raising shields and spears as if defiance alone could halt him. From below, Darius saw their faces—dust-caked, bloodied, desperate. Some shouted curses at the man in the heavens, spitting their st defiance into the wind. Others stared in silent terror, their knuckles white around their bdes.

  The man lifted the sword high. His voice rolled over the battlefield like thunder.

  “Devotion… cleave.”

  He let the bde fall. Slowly. Lazily.

  The world split.

  Light poured outward in a single stroke, so bright it carved away banners and towers, so fierce it ripped war engines apart like children’s toys. The front line of soldiers vanished, consumed in an instant. Screams never finished. Armor melted from bodies, shields crumbled into sg. The ground itself caught fire, a canyon of fme tearing across the field.

  When the gre faded, silence crushed what remained. A ravine stretched where the army had stood, its edges still burning, tongues of white fire licking upward like hungry spirits. The stench of charred flesh smothered the air. Bckened corpses y fused to shields, others still burning where they fell, their mouths open in frozen screams.

  And yet—among the ruins, there were still survivors. A knot of soldiers remained at the far edge of the devastation. Singed, staggering, half-mad with terror—but alive. They looked up at the man floating above them. One raised a broken spear with shaking hands, daring to defy. Another spat blood into the ash and screamed in wordless rage.

  The man looked down at them. For a heartbeat, triumph filled his face. He had broken them. Then his smile faltered. His gaze lingered on the ravine—on the mountains of corpses, the burning earth, the wasted lives scattered like chaff.

  His voice broke against the silence.

  “What a needless waste of life,” he murmured.

  ------------------

  The vision tore itself apart once more.

  Now the sword screamed.

  Not in triumph, but in anguish. Darius staggered beneath the sound, clutching his head as if the cry had split his skull.

  The man stood not on earth but in storm-dark sky, his armor bckened with soot, his cloak torn and whipping in the wind. Before him loomed a figure — vast, terrible, half-hidden by smoke and shadow. Its outline shifted, sometimes leathery wings blotting out the stars, sometimes something more like broken feathers. Its eyes burned red through the haze, its form never still, never clear. Talons dripped with blood one heartbeat, then seemed like hands the next. Every beat of its wings — or were they wings at all? — shook the void with thunder. The image was muddled and blurred, like Devotion itself didn't want to retain this memory.

  The man met it head-on, Devotion bzing in one hand, his other already sketching lines of light into the air. Glyphs spun from his fingers with practiced ease, no pause, no hesitation. Swords and spells became one rhythm. A cut across the air — and sparks of steel became a storm of fire. A downward sweep — and a circle of lightning followed the bde’s arc, binding the creature’s wing in chains of crackling light.

  Darius’s breath caught. This was not the zy cleave that erased armies. This was something harder, sharper — control. He saw how the man’s feet shifted even in the air, how his shoulders turned with each strike, the precision of a swordsman trained to kill. Every stroke of Devotion carried the weight of discipline, not just power.

  And still the sword wailed. Every csh rang with grief, the bde quivering as though it mourned each cut. His glyph fred into a shield of molten gold, catching the blow — and with the same motion, his bde drove upward, puncturing bck flesh. The monster shrieked, and the void itself trembled.

  Darius felt it then — the strain. The glyph lines frayed even as they held. He had never seen anyone fight like this, not even Garran: spell woven into strike, strike into spell, a dance of seamless violence.

  “I know,” the man whispered to the sword, his voice heavy with sorrow. His arm trembled, blood dripping from his fingers, but his grip never faltered. “I know… but we must. For their sake… we must.”

  The figure screamed, wings spreading wide, and the sky split with its cry. A massive glyph unfurled before the man, radiant and consuming, like a sun called into being. His arms shook as he raised the bde into its light. Sword one final time. “Devotion… cleanse.”

  -----------------

  The vision colpsed.

  Darius found himself back in the white void. The screaming was gone. Only silence. Devotion floated before him, suspended in the air, its white fire faint but steady.

  He drifted toward it. The fmes licked at him as he raised his hand, but they no longer burned. They welcomed him, almost testing. He let out a ragged sigh.

  “You’re hurting,” he said quietly. “I’m not your master. I understand. You’ve lost people. So have I.”

  He lowered his eyes. The golden thorned crown of the Sanctum on his breastpte glinted faintly in the void.

  “I’m sorry. For binding you against your will. But I need your power. I need to make sure I don’t lose anyone else. To stop as many people as I can from losing those they care for.”

  His voice shook, but he forced the words out, firmer this time. “Help me. Help me keep others from knowing the pain we carry. Let it end with us.”

  The sword fred. He reached toward the hilt, but resistance pressed against him — not heat, not pain, but weight. As if the bde demanded he speak truly. Darius’s jaw tightened. He nodded once.

  “Devotion… please. Give me strength.”

  The resistance eased. His fingers closed on the hilt. And the void shattered.

  Light rushed back into the world. The storm parted, and the rooftop’s ruin held in mid-colpse. The fmes that had raged uncontrolbly now bent themselves to him, wrapping his armor in a steady white corona. His bck pte gleamed beneath it, the golden thorned crown on his chest bright as firelight. His red cloak, ragged from battle, snapped in the winter wind.

  Selene rose through the gaping hole with the Saints at her side. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of him, her annoyance barely masking the awe. She listened — and for the first time, Devotion was silent. No more screaming in her ears. Its fury had turned outward, and it was aimed squarely at Malcolm. But what unsettled her wasn’t the fire itself — it was the silence. Devotion had once been her father’s bde. Now it roared for another. The thought cut colder than the winter air: had the sword abandoned him?

  “How is this possible? ” she hissed, her voice cutting sharply. “Why him?!”

  Malcolm’s composure was shattered. He gred at the young Inquisitor cloaked in white fire, spit flying as he roared, “Impossible! You’re not even a Warlock!”

  Darius vanished in a streak of fme. He appeared before Malcolm in an instant, his voice hard as steel.

  “Magic Swordsmen. I’m not a Magic Swordsman… yet.”

  Malcolm had only time enough to raise an ice shield. White cracks spidered across it instantly. He cwed at the air, sketching frantic glyphs, shards of frozen light spilling between his fingers — but the fire unmade them as fast as he drew. The impact hurled him skyward, through snow and storm. Regaining bance, he looked down — and saw Darius below, Devotion lifted overhead, white fire bursting into the heavens.

  “Devotion… cleave.”

  The bde came down. Faster than Malcolm could think, faster than the storm could close. The st thing he saw was a fsh of white, and the thought struck him, unbidden—

  Beautiful.

  The clouds split wide as the fme struck, rending the sky in a pilr of light that echoed Selene’s meteor.

  When the bze cleared, Darius stood alone on the broken rooftop. His head bowed. The golden thorned crown gleamed on his chestpte, unbowed, bright against the soot.

  He looked down at the bde in his hands, its fire settling to a quiet glow, and whispered:

  “Thank you.”