The world burned. Valenhold's spires crumbled into ash, their gilded facades collapsing under the weight of Princess Elara's stolen fire. Ethan crawled through the rubble, his hands blistered, the Eldertree seed's scream still echoing in his skull. Smoke choked the air, but the storm above raged louder—thunder without rain, lightning without mercy.
Lira hauled him behind a shattered pillar, her face streaked with soot and blood. "The seed—where is it?"
Ethan clutched his chest, where the seed's phantom pulse throbbed. "Gone. Elara took it. But… I saw something. *Felt* it."
The memory had struck as the Oathstone shattered—a vision seared into his mind by the seed's dying light.
*He stood in a cavern drowned in shadows, the air humming with the static of an approaching storm. The first Swordmaster, a nameless figure cloaked in starlight, knelt before an altar of living Eldertree roots. In his hands lay a blade forged from a metal that drank the dark—mythril, its surface rippling like liquid lightning.
"The crown is a lie," the Swordmaster whispered, his voice a chorus of thunder. "The trees are truth."
He plunged the sword into the altar. The Eldertree roots convulsed, their veins flooding with crackling energy. Lightning erupted—not from the sky, but from the earth itself—and the cavern became a cathedral of light.
But shadows gathered at the edges. Men in wolf-pelt cloaks, their eyes hungry. Vostra's first warlords.
"The storm is ours," their leader hissed.
The Swordmaster raised his blade. "Then drown in it."
The memory fractured. Fire. Blood. The sword buried deep beneath stone, its song silenced.*
Ethan gasped, the vision receding. Lira gripped his shoulders. "What did you see?"
"A sword," he rasped. "The first Swordmaster's. Made of mythril. It's buried in the Frostspire's heart."
Varyn emerged from the smoke, his stone gauntlets dripping molten rock. "Mythril's a fairy tale. Forged from Eldertree cores and lightning. Doesn't exist."
"It does," Ethan said. The scar on his ribs burned, the echo of the seed's voice threading through his thoughts. *The storm is yours. Claim it.*
A bolt of lightning split the sky, striking the arena's ruins. The air crackled, and for a heartbeat, Ethan's aura surged—**earth**, **wind**, **water**, **sunlight**… and something *new*. A fifth thread, sharp and electric, snapping at the edges of his control.
Lira's eyes narrowed. "Your hands."
Ethan looked down. Blue-white sparks danced across his fingertips.
They fled Valenhold under cover of storm, the Blackthorn Legion's horns fading behind them. The Frostspire Mountains loomed ahead, their peaks clawing at the tempest. Ethan's new aura flickered unpredictably—**lightning** lashing out in jagged bursts, scorching rocks and startling Varyn's stolen horse.
"Control it," Varyn growled after a stray bolt nearly ignited Lira's quiver. "Or I'll cut your hands off."
"How?" Ethan snapped. The lightning felt alive, a caged beast gnawing at his bones. "The seed showed me the sword, not a damned manual!"
Lira rode beside him, her gaze on the storm. "The first Swordmaster didn't *control* lightning. He *merged* with it. The vision—he stabbed the Eldertree. Maybe that's the key."
"Stab yourself and see what happens?" Varyn snorted. "You'll fry your guts."
Ethan ignored them. The memory's pull was relentless, the mythril blade's song a low, resonant hum in his blood.
They found the cavern at dusk, hidden behind a waterfall frozen mid-cascade—ice shards glittering like daggers in the stormlight. Inside, the walls shimmered with veins of raw mythril, their glow a cold, electric blue.
"Vostra's wolves have been here," Lira said, kneeling to examine claw marks gouged into the stone. "Recently."
Varyn placed a hand on the wall, his earth aura probing. "The sword's deeper. And we're not alone."
Ethan's lightning arced unbidden, illuminating a mural carved into the rock—the first Swordmaster standing atop a mountain of corpses, his mythril blade raised as lightning consumed Vostra's armies.
*The storm is ours.*
*Then drown in it.*
The cavern's heart was a tomb. The Swordmaster's skeleton sat upon a throne of Eldertree roots, the mythril blade across his lap. Its surface still rippled, liquid metal humming with trapped lightning.
Varyn whistled. "Fairy tales lie less than priests."
Ethan reached for the hilt. The moment his fingers brushed the metal, the storm outside roared. Lightning speared through the cavern's mouth, striking the blade.
Pain.
Blinding, all-consuming. Ethan's aura erupted—**earth**, **wind**, **water**, **sunlight**, **lightning**—colliding in a maelstrom that tore the throne to splinters. The Swordmaster's bones disintegrated, his voice echoing from the dust.
*"The crown breaks. The storm rises."*
When the light faded, Ethan stood alone, the mythril blade glowing in his grip. Lira and Varyn lay stunned at the cavern's edge.
"Ethan," Lira breathed.
He turned. His eyes crackled with blue fire, the lightning in his veins singing. The blade felt like an extension of his soul—a conduit, not a weapon.
"We need to go," he said. The storm outside answered, thunder shaking the mountains.
Vostra's wolves found them at dawn.
Twenty riders, their armor forged from Eldertree bark, their faces hidden behind wolf-skull helms. The leader dismounted, a curved axe dripping with frost.
"The stormcaller dies," he growled. "The sword returns to Vostra."
Ethan stepped forward, mythril humming. "Come take it."
The fight was short. Brutal.
Ethan moved like the storm itself—**earth** anchoring his steps, **wind** speeding his strikes, **sunlight** blinding his foes. But it was the **lightning** that ended it. With a roar, he plunged the mythril blade into the earth. The ground split, tendrils of blue-white energy erupting to engulf the wolves. Their screams harmonized with the thunder.
When the last rider fell, Ethan collapsed, the blade's glow dimming.
Lira caught him. "You're burning up."
"It's the price," Varyn said, eyeing the mythril warily. "Mythril's not metal. It's alive. And it's eating him."
That night, the seed's voice returned—not from the void, but from the blade.
*"You are not the first. Will you be the last?"*
Ethan dreamt of the Swordmaster again, standing atop a mountain of ash.
*"The crown broke me,"* the specter said, his mythril blade shattered. *"Do not let it break you."*
When Ethan woke, the storm had calmed. But the sword's hunger remained, and in the distance, Valenhold's ruins smoldered.
Princess Elara was coming.
The seed pulsed in Elara's grip, its roots burrowing into her palm. "You… promised power," she whispered, but the sapling's voice was cold. "You promised nothing."