Chapter 10: Exile's Blade
He became a shadow.
No title. No home. No coin. Just the sword.
Kael wandered the edges of the empire, where the roads thinned and the forests thickened, where the glow of magefire didn't reach and people whispered of beasts and broken things. He followed no map. He had no destination. He walked until his feet bled and then walked further.
There was no comfort. Only survival.
He learned to chew bark when he could find no food. He drank from rivers choked with silt and decay. Sometimes, he stole bread from merchant stalls when his ribs ached too loudly—only when no one was looking. When someone was looking, he didn't run. He never ran.
If they came after him, he drew the sword.
Most fled.
Some didn't.
They left with cuts that didn't bleed right away.
He slept where the wind broke—under rotted bridges, in broken barns, under trees bent by lightning. Ashrend never left his side. He no longer wrapped it. No longer treated it like a relic. It was part of his body now. He couldn't sleep without one hand on its hilt.
There were nights when the hunger grew too loud, when the cold pressed in too hard, and the thought of giving up came crawling in like rot. On those nights, the blade would hum, low and deep, like a heartbeat buried in steel.
And he would remember:
The mountains.
The sky-duels.
The sword path.
And he would rise again.
He began training differently in exile.
Not with wooden dummies. Not in mirrored halls. But against the world itself.
He fought the rain.
Let it blind him, sting him, drown him—and cut through it anyway.
He fought the wind.
Moved in it. Moved against it. Learned how to let it carry his blade forward without resistance.
He sparred with shadows.
Imaginary enemies in every tree, every flicker of firelight. Dozens of them. All faster. All stronger. He learned to move not with strength, but with inevitability.
Every movement honed something tighter, crueler, truer.
In one nameless town, Kael passed through like smoke. The locals didn't speak to him. They watched him, though. A boy with hollow eyes and a sword bound to his back like it had grown there.
When two men tried to take it from him while he slept in the corner of a crumbling stable, only one walked away. Limping. Pale. Silent.
Kael didn't chase the other.
Let fear carry his name further than his blade ever could.
He was changing.
He no longer flinched when pain came. He welcomed it. It sharpened him. Where others lived to eat, to rest, to feel safe, Kael lived for only one thing:
The sword.
He began to see the world differently.
Every movement a threat. Every step a rhythm. Every breath a warning.
The sword heart pulsed louder now, echoing in his limbs, in his dreams, in the space behind his eyes. It was no longer just a pull. It was identity.
Kael didn't know who he was without Ashrend.
He didn't care to find out.
One night, under a blood-red moon, Kael stood on a ridge overlooking a vast valley of mist. His cloak was torn. His body thinner than it had ever been. He had eaten nothing in two days. But his posture was perfect. His blade, steady.
He whispered into the wind:
"I don't need them."
His voice cracked. But the words held.
"I don't need the academy. The pillars. The bloodlines. The rules. I don't need magic."
He drew Ashrend.
It shimmered in the moonlight—no longer rusted, not quite whole. Something becoming.
Kael raised it skyward.
"I am the sword."
The mist parted below him.
And in the silence that followed, he felt the blade respond with something ancient. Not warmth. Not comfort.
Just recognition.
The world had exiled him.
But the path had accepted him.
And in exile, Kael Draven became something the world was not ready for.
A man with nothing left to lose.
A man whose soul was sharpening.