The ceaseless hammering of glowing steel echoed through the cursed halls.
This was no common forge. No blacksmith's rhythm. These were war hammers—massive, merciless—slamming again and again into a slab of dense, unyielding metal, as though each blow sought to awaken the very abyss buried within the metal.
Not one hammer.
A dozen.
They rose and fell in unison, perfectly timed, swung relentlessly by hands that had known only battle and blood. Inside the shrine, the Aoratoz worked without words.
Day and night lost their meaning. Time blurred, collapsed, and vanished. They hammered on—not because they were told to... but because something deep within them demanded it. The forge consumed them, generation after generation, until death itself became part of the work.
More than a dozen Tenets passed.
Still, they forged.
No commands.
No spoken goal.
Instinct alone drove them forward—Instinct to make a terrible weapon.
Those were not the Forgemasters of legend.
Not the warbound Blacksmiths of the Old Kingdoms.
No—they were older than that.
And far more dangerous.
The Ancient Smiths.
And the Warriors?
Yes—Warriors.
Pure-blood Aoratoz Warlords—names that had once shaped eras. They had been called War Gods, Conquerors, Tyrants. Men and women who razed kingdoms for breakfast and obliterated empires by dusk.
Yet here they stood.
They chose to die of exhaustion forging this sword rather than fall on the battlefield.
They melted metal without a cause.
Struck without declared purpose.
Worked without command.
Long before this, the sky itself had burned.
Fire rained from the heavens, as if the skies themselves had finally had enough—sending fragments torn from the distant void sending fragments torn from the distant void to consume the world beneath—scouring the earth for metal not born of this world.
One massive burning meteor, obliterated them all.
A colossal shard of blood-red stone tore through the sky and struck Tertha with world-ending force. Later, it would be named Bartharov.
An empire vanished in an instant. No survivors. No ruins. No proof it had ever existed—like history itself spat it out.
The fragment was claimed.
Carved from its shell of stardust and stone, the steel remained unyielding.
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 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 extinction—
Only devouring.
It was meant for nothing. For no one.
It would be claimed only by the Chosen—the one selected not by fate, nor by prophecy.
...but by the Sword itself.
Thirty-eight Tenets passed.
Decades of hammering while empires turned to dust beyond the shrine's walls.
At last, the Bartharune yielded.
From the white-heat, the first edge emerged.
No fanfare. No glory.
Only the first whisper of annihilation—the opening note of an apocalypse.
A sword forged of ruin, power, and death itself.
'Drag that f***ing beast here—NOW! THE SWORD IS STILL EMPTY, DAMMIT!'
The command scorched through the shrine, raw and jagged enough to cut through the roar of the forge. High above, one of the Elder Shadows—eyes burning with a fiery, sickly blue—barked down at the Aoratoz warriors as they hauled a creature bound in Arathov chains.
It fought. Screamed. Thrashed.
'WHERE'S YOUR HANDS?!'
'USE YOUR HANDS OR I'LL CUT THEM OFF! PULL'
'PULL, DAMMIT!!
'ARRRGGGHHH, PULL 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, YOU BASTARDS! PULL NOW!!!'
The commands tore through the searing air as the Aoratoz wrestled the beast toward the altar. It fought. It screamed. It thrashed against the Arathov chains until the metal bit deep into its flesh.
High above, the Elders began to form the circle, their voices rising in a rhythmic, jagged chant. Their lips, dry and cracked from the friction of the arcane, bled as the forbidden laws took hold.
The beast began to liquefy, its form buckling as if crushed beneath the weight of a thousand agonies. A roar tore from its throat—not of pain, but of pure, existential terror.
The Dark Soul was being flayed from its vessel. It was yanked, twisted, and bound in spectral chains before being slammed onto the sword's jagged edge. The metal hissed, hollow and hungry.
'This—this is wrong! Back away! NOW!' One of the Shadows shrieked, his voice fracturing.
'IT'S UNSTABLE, YOU DAMNED IDIOTS—GET AWAY FROM THE ALTAR!'
'I-IMPOSSIBLE! WE—WE CAN'T ESC—!'
'A-AAAA—!'
And then...
A shrill buzzing sound echoed— shattered by a light that obliterated everything.
But the ritual didn't just take the beast. It was hungry, its tongue lolling out to catch anything. It thirsted for more, with a maniacal laugh that had just "crawled" from the abyssal of hell.
A guttural scream erupted from the West. A dying roar from the East. And then, a sickening, hollow silence from everywhere—souls snatched clean from their husks without a trace. The forbidden law had birthed a monster, and the sword had finally found its breath.
The crackling of fire swept through the ashes, reducing everything to dust. The soul-sucking throb of the sword was replaced by an unnatural frost that made the air feel heavy and piercing.
There, a sword now exists—caught between life and death.
Worse than a suffocating blizzard.
Viler than a burning drought.
More dangerous than an oceanic thunderstrom.
The monster's soul had merged. But the sword... the "sword" wasn't ready.
The cursed sword was born, a weapon even more cursed than any demon. Then, the blade laughed—a mad, hungry laugh, draining the life out of everything, a laugh terrible for anyone to hear.
Not just the shrine.
A temple vanished.
Then a village.
A city.
An entire kingdom.
Gone.
Bodies meant nothing. Breath meant nothing. Souls were torn away and consumed, feeding a power that should never have been touched.
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 those who dare to use the 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.
.