The library of the Rust Sea was a joke.
It was a single tent, half collapsed, filled with water damaged scrolls and moldering books that smelled like regret. The librarian a toothless old man named Parch who claimed to have once been the royal archivist of the Iron Dominion spent most of his days drunk on fermented cactus juice.
But Parch knew things. Strange things. Forgotten things.
And when Lee asked him about a weapon that could kill a god, Parch's bloodshot eyes went wide.
"You're talking about the Dawnblade," Parch whispered, leaning so close Lee could smell the cactus juice on his breath. "The Sun Killer. The Light Eater. The sword that broke the sky."
"I'm listening."
Parch shuffled to the back of the tent, pushing aside piles of junk until he found a metal box rusted, dented, held shut by a chain of braided hair. He opened it with trembling hands.
Inside lay a single scroll.
Not old. Ancient. The parchment was made of something that wasn't animal skin dragon hide, maybe, or something older. The ink glowed faintly, even in the dim light of the tent.
"The Dawnblade wasn't forged," Parch said. "It was born. When the silver mother cracked, when Sol Umbra shattered, a piece of her core fell to the world. That piece that shard of a dead sun became the Dawnblade. It is light made solid. Hope made steel. And it is the only thing in existence that can kill a being like the Hollow King."
"Where is it?"
Parch's face darkened. "Lost. Hidden. Buried in the heart of the Shattered Lands, in a place called the Ashen Mausoleum. The same place where the last Sun King died, three hundred years ago."
"The same place where the Shattering happened?"
"The very same." Parch unrolled the scroll. It showed a map crude, faded, but recognizable. A path through the Shattered Lands, past demon nests and dead cities, to a mountain shaped like a skull.
"The Mausoleum is guarded," Parch continued. "Not by demons. By something worse. The ghosts of the Sun King's personal guard a thousand warriors who swore to protect their king until the end of time. They're still there, still watching, still waiting. And they don't let anyone in."
"Then I'll convince them," Lee said.
Parch laughed a wheezing, phlegmy sound. "You can't convince ghosts, boy. Ghosts don't listen. Ghosts don't care. Ghosts just are. They're memories with teeth."
"Then I'll fight them."
"You can't fight memories either."
Lee looked at the map. At the mountain shaped like a skull. At the path that led through hell itself.
"Watch me," he said.