By morning, the sword was gone.
Raen had hidden it beneath the floorboards of the abandoned forge, wrapped in cloth, bound with rope.
When he returned to check?
Only dust.
"It moved on its own."
He felt no panic.Only confirmation.
Whatever the sword was… it wasn't a relic.It was a beast in slumber. And now it was awake.
The days passed quietly — or pretended to.
Raen helped Garrick carry water. He scrubbed potatoes. He answered when spoken to. And he watched the villagers carefully.
They were kind.Too kind.Like they were trying to forget something.
He asked about monsters.
They laughed.
"Nothing's been seen in years," said a farmer. "The King's Blessing protects us."
Raen's lips twitched. That same king had once ordered his execution.
That night, he sat beneath the orchard trees outside the village, watching moonlight dance across the leaves. Then he felt it.
Not wind.Not sound.
Breath.
Hot. Rotten. Wrong.
"Show yourself," Raen whispered.
A snarl answered.
From the trees dropped a creature the size of a horse, with bone-pale skin and limbs that bent the wrong way. Its eyes glowed like cold fire, and its chest was covered in scars — symbols, carved into its flesh like a failed summoning.
A Ruinspawn.Impossible. These were supposed to be extinct.
It opened its jaw, revealing a tongue made of ink.
"You… reek… of stolen memory…" it hissed.
Raen didn't move.He didn't breathe.He just whispered:
"Return."
A blur of black and gold burst from the shadows.
The sword — the one he had hidden — flew through the air like it had always been part of him, landing in his hand with a clang that split the silence.
Raen stepped forward.
"I don't remember who I was.""But I know how to kill."
The Ruinspawn lunged.
Raen's feet moved on their own — a dance he had long forgotten but his body hadn't. Steel clashed with bone. Sparks flew. He ducked, twisted, and drove the blade into the beast's neck in one fluid motion.
It screamed — not in pain, but in recognition.
Then it vanished, swallowed by black mist, leaving nothing but scorch marks in the grass and a bitter aftertaste in the air.
Garrick found him an hour later.
The boy was standing alone, blade buried in the dirt.
"You fought something, didn't you?" the old man asked.
Raen didn't answer.
Garrick stepped forward and whispered, "You're not just a child."
Raen looked at the blade. Then at the moon.
"Neither is the world," he said."It's just pretending to be asleep."