The ceaseless hammering of molten steel echoed through the cursed halls—no ordinary blacksmith's work. These weren't forging hammers. They were War Hammers, brutal and unforgiving, crashing down upon the dense metal slab as if trying to awaken the very abyss within it. Not one, but a dozen of them—swung relentlessly by hands that had known only battle and blood.
Within the shrine, the Phantorune moved in shifts. Day and night blurred into a single, endless moment. Time ceased to matter. They hammered, and hammered, and hammered—not because they were told to... but because something deep within them demanded it.
More than a dozen Tenets in, they kept forging steel relentlessly.. without direction.. no one gave orders.. it was their instinct to make a terrible weapon
It wasn't the legendary Forgemasters. It wasn't the warbound Blacksmiths of the Old Kingdoms. It was something far older... something far more dangerous.
The Ancient Smiths...
...and the Warriors.
Wait—Warriors?
Yes... Warriors of pure-blood Phantorune. Not just any breed of fighter. These were the warlords whose names carved bloodlines into history. War Gods, they were once called. Tyrants of Conquest. Legends of Slaughter. Men and women who razed kingdoms for breakfast and obliterated empires by dusk.
But now?
They chose to die of exhaustion forging this sword...
...rather than perish gloriously in battle.
They melted without direction.
They hammered without purpose.
They laboured without order.
A bloody great meteor—Bartharov, they called it—came crashing down on Tertha like the heavens themselves had had enough. Slammed into the land so hard it wiped out an entire bloody Empire overnight. No survivors. Not even ruins. No trace it ever bloody existed. Just a burnin' crater where life once stood proud. Like history itself spat it out.
But the dark silhouettes that emerged from the shadows—they wanted more.
That celestial fragment... they would forge it into a Sword.
A Weapon with no Master...
A Sword with no Name...
Not for Knights clad in gleamin' steel...
Not by a King's command nor royal decree...
Not for Monster Hunters nor silver-fanged Heroes...
Not for the ones who slay dragons with bright eyes and glory in their hearts...
Not to fell Demon Lords, nor answer some grand prophecy...
Not summoned by the will o' the Celestials above...
Not gifted to Heroes, nor Saints, nor any soul walkin' this cursed Tertha...
Not for anyone...
It ain't loyalty it seeks...
Nor justice...
Nor vengeance...
Only ruin...
Only destruction...
Only devouring...
It was meant for nothing.
For no one.
Only for the Chosen... the one selected not by fate, nor prophecy...
...but by the Sword itself.
Thirty-eight Tenets passed.
That metal—Bartharune Ore, as they began to call it—finally melted.
And after countless more years hammering, the first edge of the blade emerged.
The first whisper of annihilation.
A sword forged of ruin, power, and death itself.
.
"Drag that f***ing Beast here now, DAMMIT! The Sword is still empty!"
A voice, venomous and cold, snapped across the shrine. One of the shadows, eyes glowing a sickly blue, barked at the Phantorune hauling a monster bound in Arathov Chains.
The creature howled, thrashed, bit at the very air, but the chains tightened with every movement. It was being dragged, screaming, to the Altar.
.
"Pull!"
"Pull, Dammit!"
"Faster!"
"Get that bastard to the Altar!"
"Use your godsdamned backs, you maggots!"
"Why are your arms still attached!? PULL!"
"That way, you blind fools—THE ALTAR!"
"Pull Now!"
.
They wrestled the beast forward.
The elders of the Phantorune circled. The air became heavy. They began to chant, lips cracked from the arcane. Ritual death-magic.
The monster began to melt. Its body crumpled, as though crushed beneath unseen hands. It roared—not just in pain, but terror.
The Soul... the Dark Soul... was being yanked from its vessel, twisted and wrapped in spectral chains, slammed onto the Sword's half-formed edge.
.
"This—this is wrong! Back away! Now!"
One of the shadows panicked. His voice trembled.
"IT'S UNSTABLE, YOU DAMNED IDIOTS—GET AWAY FROM THE ALTAR!"
Another bellowed, fear cracking through every syllable.
"I-IMPOSSIBLE! WE—WE CAN'T ESC—!"
.
And then...
"Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!" —Scream from the West.
"Whaaaarrrrrhhhhh!" —Roars from the East.
"Khaaaaaaaakhhhhh!" —From everywhere, all souls have been snatched away withour a trace..
The forbidden ritual had birthed something grotesque.
The shrine was no longer warm with fire—it was cold. Terribly, unnaturally cold.
A Sword now existed—caught between life and death.
Worse than a blizzard.
Deadlier than a burning drought.
More dangerous than an oceanic thunderstrom.
The monster's soul had merged. But the Sword... the Sword wasn't ready.
It screamed.
A howl made of hunger, tearing the air, ripping the life from everything.
Not just the shrine.
One Ancient Temple.
One Village.
One City.
One Kingdom.
Gone.
Not a trace left behind.
The Sword consumed them all.
Living or breathing meant nothing.
Their souls were ripped into the blade, churned into a screaming storm of forbidden power.
Raw.
Unstable.
Cursed.
Thousands—innocents, warriors, priests—all lost.
Just for a single, nameless Sword.
And what power fed it?
Soul.
One of the taboo energies of Tertha.
The strongest, the purest, the most damnable of them all.
"Cursed be they who dare to wield Soul as Power."
.
And on the eve of the Blood Moon Eclipse...
A weapon was born.
A Sword without master.
A weapon without title.
Forged from the Abyss.
Those few, those damned few, who laid eyes on its form...
...called it only one name:
.
.
.
The Soul Sword.
.
.
.