The sword’s edge whispered against the whetstone, soft and steady. Kaelen worked the blade with the patience of habit, each pass sending sparks into the dark. The fire at his feet had burned low, its embers glowing like half-buried eyes. Around him, the borderlands stretched into silence, rolling plains brittle from drought, scattered trees twisted by wind, and beyond them, the shadowed ridges of the Blackreach Hills.
It was a lonely country, and Kaelen liked it that way. Loneliness was safe. Loneliness had no questions.
He turned the blade, tested the edge with a thumb, then drew the steel across the stone again. Not because it was dull, he kept his weapons sharper than most men kept their wits,but because the ritual soothed him. The rhythm of metal on stone gave his hands something to
