For the next week, the Bastion was insufferable. Silas was paraded as the "Prodigy of the Weald," his ego swelling to fill the hallways. He received a commendation and a new, custom-forged hilt for his rapier, while Kaela was assigned extra maintenance duty as "punishment" for damaging the training sword during the patrol. The injustice stung, but Kaela buried it under layers of Hagar's stoicism. While the other Novices celebrated in the mess hall, toasting Silas's fabricated bravery, Kaela retreated to the sub-basement armory—a dimly lit, heat-soaked cavern where the Guild's battered gear went to be reborn or scrapped.
It was here, amidst the smell of coal dust and hot iron, that she finally found time to tend to Rust-Eater. The fight with the Stalker hadn't damaged the blade—the ancient, rusted metal seemed impervious to actual chipping—but the violent vibration of the impact had loosened the rotting leather wrappings of the hilt. The grip was sliding in her hand, a liability she couldn't afford. She sat on a wooden stool near a cooling forge, a pile of fresh leather strips she had scavenged from the scrap bin resting on her lap. Carefully, she began to unwind the old, desiccated binding that had been on the sword since she pulled it from the Blackfield.
As the final layer of dry leather crumbled away, the naked tang of the sword was exposed to the light of the forge for the first time in perhaps centuries. Kaela expected to find simple, pitted iron, or perhaps the maker's mark of a forgotten Ostrum smithy. Instead, the metal under the grip was shockingly different from the rusted blade. It was black—not dark grey, but a true, abyssal black that seemed to drink the firelight. It was smooth, unblemished by rust or time, and etched deep into the steel was a single, intricate sigil. It wasn't a Guild stamp or a Kingdom crest. It was a stylized depiction of a broken chain wrapping around a weeping eye.
Kaela traced the sigil with her thumb. The moment her skin touched the black metal, the hum returned, but it was different this time. It wasn't the eager vibration she felt during combat; it was a low, mournful resonance that made her teeth ache. The sword felt suddenly heavy, not physically, but spiritually, as if the memory of a thousand crimes was pressing down on her wrist. She frowned, leaning closer to the firelight. Below the sigil, in an ancient script that was barely legible, was a single word etched into the steel: Atonement.
"You shouldn't have uncovered that," a rasping voice said from the shadows. Kaela spun around, her hand instinctively going to the hilt, but she stopped. Standing in the entrance of the armory was the Old Smith, a man known only as Garn. He was a fixture of the basement, a man as wide as an anvil and twice as hard, who rarely spoke and never looked Novices in the eye. But now, he was staring at the naked tang of Rust-Eater with a look of pure, unadulterated horror.
Garn limped forward, his heavy leather apron creaking. He didn't look at Kaela; he couldn't take his eyes off the black metal. "Cover it up, girl," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Cover it up before the Inquisitors smell it." Kaela didn't move. "What is it, Garn? What is this steel?" The smith looked around nervously, checking the shadows of the ventilation grates. "That isn't steel," he hissed. "That is Void-Iron. It was mined in the Deep Dark, before the First King rose. It was the metal used by the Penitent Legion."
Kaela's blood ran cold. The Penitent Legion was a myth, a bedtime story about a cursed order of knights who had betrayed humanity during the Age of Ash and were forced to wield weapons that drained their own souls to kill demons. They were erased from history, their names struck from the obelisks, their weapons shattered and thrown into the abyss. "This is a Sin-Eater's blade," Garn continued, stepping back as if the sword might bite him. "It doesn't just cut flesh, girl. It eats the Aura of its wielder to feed its edge. That's why you can use it. You have no Aura to speak of, so it's starving. If you were a Grandmaster, that sword would have sucked you dry and turned you into a husk in minutes."
Kaela looked down at the blade—the rusted, ugly thing that had saved her life a dozen times. It wasn't a tool of a hero. It was a parasite, a punishment forged in iron. The pieces of the puzzle slammed together: Hagar's fear of the weapon, the way it devoured the Shadow Hand's vibration, the way it felt light only when she emptied herself and became "void." She wasn't mastering the sword; she was enduring it. She quickly began wrapping the fresh leather around the tang, hiding the weeping eye and the black metal from view. "Does anyone else know?" she asked, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. Garn shook his head, retreating back to his forge. "Just you, me, and the ghosts. Keep it wrapped, Vane. If the Guild finds out you brought a Sin-Blade into the Bastion, they won't expel you. They'll execute you." Kaela finished the wrapping, pulling the knot tight. She holstered the weapon, the weight of it now feeling entirely different. It was no longer just a secret; it was a death sentence. And it was the only friend she had.