The tavern stank of spilled ale, sour sweat, and burnt onions. Smoke coiled thick around the rafters as if trying to escape. Most nights, Ruvan wouldn't have been here. But tonight, he couldn't bear the silence of the forge ruins. He needed voices. He needed life.
Old Marrick's voice rose above the tavern clatter.
"And there he stood," the old man croaked, thumping his mug on the table for emphasis, "sword raised high, its edge burning like the sun itself! Solrend, the God Blade. Forged by the First Smith under the Mountain of Stars. No steel, no bone, no dark magic could withstand it."
"Tell it right, Marrick!" someone jeered from the back. "He forged it from the sun's fallen flame, not under some mountain."
"Ha!" another shouted, half-drunk. "You believe that rubbish? Gods don't forge swords for men. Men forge swords to kill other men. That's all."
The tavern erupted with laughter. Someone tossed a crust of bread at Marrick's head. He scowled and took a long swig of ale before continuing, undaunted.
"But the Silent King," he rasped, lowering his voice so the crowd leaned closer, "he feared Solrend. Because it was the only blade that could cut him down. They say his priests still hunt for its shards, buried in the old battlegrounds of the north."
"Bah," the tavern keeper scoffed, wiping his hands on a stained cloth. "Stories to scare children."
"It's true," Marrick said, voice shaking. His eyes, milky with age, flickered around the room. "I've seen his soldiers. Bone-armoured fiends with eyes like dead coals. I was there, at Frostvale, when they burned the town and salted the fields. The priests walked among the ashes, chanting over the bodies."
Ruvan's stomach twisted. He sat near the corner, nursing a half-full mug of watered ale he couldn't afford. His back still ached from where the dark force had thrown him earlier that day. He shifted, trying to ease the pain, but his gaze stayed locked on Marrick.
"Did you ever see Solrend?" he asked softly.
The old man's head snapped towards him. Silence fell for a moment.
"No, boy," Marrick whispered. "But I saw its light once, when I was a squire. My master wielded a shard of it. Even broken, it cut through the Silent King's horrors like paper. But he fell… and the blade was lost in the mud."
Ruvan swallowed. His heart beat faster.
A sword that burns like the sun…
He imagined himself holding it. Felt the warmth in his palm. Saw the Silent King's army falling before him like shadows before dawn.
"Don't fill his head with lies, Marrick," the tavern keeper snapped, slamming a plate of boiled turnips on a table. "He's just a forge rat. Next you'll have him thinking he can save us all."
"Better dreams than despair," Marrick muttered into his mug.
But the crowd had already lost interest. Laughter and dice games resumed, drowning out old legends with drunken curses and clinking cups.
Ruvan finished his ale in silence. His fingers itched for the feel of steel. For the heat of the forge. For the hammer's rhythm that made his heart steady.
But the forge was gone. Ferric was gone. Saerholm was dying.
He rose from his seat, pressing a copper coin onto the counter. It was all he had left, but he needed to leave before they realised he couldn't pay the rest.
Outside, the night air was bitter. Smoke still drifted above the eastern quarter where the attack had struck hardest. He walked towards the forge ruins out of habit, his boots crunching on broken cobblestone.
At the shattered doorway, he stopped.
The half-formed blade still lay there, buried under rubble. Its edges rough, unfinished. Just a bar of steel with dreams trapped inside it.
He knelt and brushed ash from its surface. Cold. Lifeless.
"Solrend," he whispered, the name tasting like hope on his tongue. "A sword that could end all this."
He closed his eyes. Marrick's words rang in his ears:
Better dreams than despair.
And in that moment, surrounded by ruin, Ruvan made a silent promise.
He would find Solrend.
Or forge something even greater.
Even if it killed him.
Because he was done waiting for heroes.
He would become one himself.