The sword waited.
Suspended in the hollow heart of the forgotten chamber, it hovered above the fractured altar like a scar torn across time itself. It defied gravity, untouched by dust or decay, as though reality dared not touch it. The air surrounding it shimmered in warped halos, like ripples in a dream or the blurred heat above scorched desert sand. Forged not by mortal hands but by gods long buried beneath silence and sky, it pulsed—not with light or flame, but with something more ancient, more chilling: a presence. Sentient. Aware. As if the blade itself remembered every soul it had ever severed, every oath it had witnessed broken, every ruler it had devoured. This was not a weapon. It was a sentence forged into steel. A relic of divine cruelty, older than the Court, older than the blood that had fed its roots for centuries. Its very existence was a wound in the world—one that had never healed.
