The entrance to Lia's safe house was, appropriately enough, a tavern.
Not just any tavern—*The Drunk Golem*, a four-story establishment wedged between a rune inscription shop and a burnt-out warehouse in Eredor's craftsmen district. The sign above the door featured a comically rendered earth elemental with a mug of ale, looking distinctly worse for wear. Despite the late hour and the storm, warm light spilled from the windows, and Kaelen could hear the rumble of conversation and laughter from inside.
"A tavern?" Kaelen asked skeptically, water dripping from his hair. "That's your hiding place?"
"Best place to hide is in plain sight," Lia replied, pulling her soaked cloak tighter around her shoulders. The purification ritual had taken more out of her than she'd let on—her face was pale, and she moved with the careful deliberation of someone fighting exhaustion. "Plus, the owner owes me a favor. Several favors, actually."
She pushed through the door, and a wave of warmth and noise washed over them. The common room was crowded despite the hour, filled with the usual mix of Eredor's population: craftsmen still in their work clothes, off-duty city guards, a few mercenary types nursing their drinks in corners, and a table of what looked like academy students engaged in an animated debate about rune theory.
A few heads turned as they entered, eyes lingering on Kaelen's battered appearance and the sword at his hip. He'd wrapped Soulrender in a torn piece of cloth from his coat, hiding the blade's distinctive appearance, but he could still feel it pulsing against his side like a second heartbeat.
*So many souls*, the sword whispered. *So much life energy just waiting to be harvested. One swing. That's all it would take. One swing and we could feast—*
"Not happening," Kaelen muttered under his breath.
Lia shot him a sharp look but said nothing. She led him through the crowd toward the bar, where a massive man was pulling pints with the efficiency of long practice. He had to be six-foot-five at least, with shoulders like a bull and arms covered in scars and faded tattoos. His head was shaved, and his beard was shot through with grey, but his eyes were sharp and alert.
Those eyes found Lia, and his expression shifted from welcoming innkeeper to something harder.
"Back room," he said without preamble, his voice a deep rumble. "Now."
"Good to see you too, Ronan," Lia replied, managing a tired smile.
The big man—Ronan—jerked his chin toward a door beside the bar. "Don't 'good to see you' me, girl. You look like death warmed over, and your friend there..." His gaze shifted to Kaelen, and something flickered in those sharp eyes. Recognition? Fear? "Your friend's carrying something that shouldn't exist."
"You can see it?" Kaelen asked, surprised.
"I can *feel* it, boy. Same as anyone with a lick of sense who knows what to look for." Ronan wiped his hands on his apron. "Mira! Take over the bar. I'm taking an extended smoke break."
A woman with bright red hair and more piercings than seemed structurally sound nodded and slid behind the bar without question. Ronan lifted a section of the bartop and gestured impatiently for Kaelen and Lia to follow.
The back room turned out to be a storage area filled with barrels and crates, lit by a single runelight hanging from the ceiling. But Ronan didn't stop there. He moved to the far wall, pressed his palm against what looked like ordinary stone, and whispered something Kaelen couldn't quite catch.
Runes flared to life, and a section of the wall swung inward, revealing a staircase leading down.
"Of course there's a secret basement," Kaelen said. "Why wouldn't there be a secret basement?"
"Because the secret basement is where we keep all the illegal things," Ronan replied dryly. "Like forbidden artifacts, unregistered rune weapons, and apparently, former Valorian knights who should know better than to pick up cursed swords. Get down there before someone sees."
They descended into a surprisingly spacious room carved from the bedrock beneath Eredor. Unlike the tavern above, this space was all business—weapon racks along one wall, a table covered in maps and documents, shelves lined with bottles and jars that glowed with various colors of magical energy. A pair of chairs and a worn couch completed the furnishings.
Ronan sealed the entrance behind them and immediately rounded on Lia. "Explanation. Now. Starting with why you're half-dead from mana exhaustion and ending with why you brought a bearer of Soulrender to my door."
Lia collapsed onto the couch with a groan. "The Cult of the Shade tried to sacrifice me at the East Canal. He saved my life. That's the short version."
"And the long version?"
"Involves at least five dead cultists, one transformed shadowfiend, and some truly inadvisable use of forbidden magic." She looked at Kaelen. "You can unwrap that sword. Ronan already knows what it is."
Kaelen hesitated, then unwound the cloth from Soulrender's hilt. In the confined space of the basement, the blade's presence seemed even more oppressive. The runes along its length pulsed with that sickly purple light, and shadows gathered around it like moths to a flame.
Ronan whistled low. "Son of a bitch. That's really it. Soulrender, the Soul Eater, the Midnight Fang. Haven't seen that blade in thirty years, and I hoped to die without seeing it again."
"You've encountered it before?" Kaelen asked.
"Not this one specifically, but..." Ronan pulled out one of the chairs and sat heavily, suddenly looking every one of his years. "I used to be a Shadow Hunter. Back before I retired, back before I decided drinking myself to death was preferable to hunting things that wanted to eat my soul. Part of that job was tracking down Forbidden Artifacts and either destroying them or sealing them away."
He fixed Kaelen with a hard stare. "Soulrender was lost three hundred years ago, after the Shadow Lord was sealed in the Netherveil. The legends say it was thrown into the Deep Ocean, beyond the reach of men. So my first question is: where the hell did you find it?"
"In the East Canal," Kaelen said. "I was drowning, and it just... appeared. Like it was waiting for me."
"It was," Lia said quietly. Both men turned to look at her. She was sitting forward now, her hands moving through the air as she traced temporary runes—diagnostic symbols that glowed softly as they circled Kaelen. "The Forbidden Blades aren't just weapons. They're semi-sentient artifacts bound to the Shadow Lord's will. They call to people in desperate situations, people with enough potential to wield them but also enough darkness in their hearts to be corrupted."
"Hey," Kaelen protested. "I don't have darkness in my—"
"You were ready to die an hour ago," Lia interrupted. "You were drowning, hunted, alone, convinced you were worth less than nothing. That's not insult, that's just fact. And that desperation? That darkness? That's what Soulrender needed to manifest."
The runes circling Kaelen flickered and changed colors—blue, then green, then an alarming red. Lia's expression grew more troubled.
"Just as I thought," she muttered. "Ronan, look at this."
The former Shadow Hunter moved closer, studying the diagnostic runes with practiced eyes. His face darkened. "Shadow Scars. Already? This fast?"
"What are Shadow Scars?" Kaelen demanded, a cold weight settling in his stomach.
Lia dismissed the runes with a wave of her hand. "Think of them as... spiritual wounds. Every time you use Soulrender's power, it carves a little piece away from your soul. The sword absorbs that piece and replaces it with shadow energy. It's how the Forbidden Blades control their wielders—gradually replace the human soul with shadow until there's nothing left but a puppet."
"And then you become what that cultist became," Ronan added grimly. "A shadowfiend. A creature of pure dark magic, no longer human, controlled by the Shadow Lord's will even from beyond his seal."
Kaelen looked down at his arm, where the black veins had been. The skin looked normal now, but he could still feel something wrong beneath the surface—a coldness that went deeper than flesh and bone.
"How long?" he asked quietly. "How long before I turn into one of those things?"
Lia and Ronan exchanged glances. It was Lia who answered.
"It depends on how often you use the blade's power and how deeply you draw on it. The cultist leader transformed himself deliberately, channeling massive amounts of shadow magic to gain a temporary boost. You..." She gestured at the diagnostic area. "You have maybe a dozen Shadow Scars from tonight alone. A normal person becomes a shadowfiend at around fifty Scars."
"So I have four more fights like that one, and I'm done." Kaelen laughed, a hollow sound. "Great. Perfect. Fantastic."
"It's not that simple," Lia said. "The Scars can be temporarily suppressed with purification rituals—that's what I did after the fight. But they can't be fully healed, not by any magic I know. They'll always be there, a permanent mark of the power you used."
"There might be a way," Ronan said slowly. "The old Shadow Hunter archives mentioned something about the Forbidden Blades—a technique for using them without incurring the full corruption cost. But it was considered heretical knowledge even among Hunters. Most of the texts were destroyed or locked away in Valorian's restricted vaults."
"So I need to break into Valorian's secret library to find out how to not turn into a monster," Kaelen summarized. "The same Valorian that branded me a heretic and drove me out of the kingdom."
"Pretty much, yeah."
"And if I just throw the sword away? Walk away from it?"
Lia shook her head. "Soulrender has bonded with you. It's marked your soul. Even if you physically discard it, the Scars remain, and the blade will try to return to you. That's the trap—once you pick up a Forbidden Blade, you're bound to it until either you die or the blade is destroyed."
"Can it be destroyed?"
"Maybe," Ronan said. "But you'd need to take it to one of the original forges where it was created. The Sky Citadel, probably, or the Deeps beneath Kazad-Dûr. And those places are either lost to history or controlled by people who would try to claim the blade for themselves."
Kaelen slumped into the other chair, suddenly feeling every bruise, every ache, every bit of exhaustion from the day's events. He was trapped. Bound to a cursed sword that would slowly eat his soul, hunted by both cultists who wanted to claim the blade and authorities who wanted to destroy it—and him along with it.
"I didn't ask for this," he said quietly.
"Nobody ever does," Ronan replied, not unkindly. He moved to the shelves and pulled down a bottle of amber liquid and three glasses. "But here you are anyway. The question isn't what you asked for. It's what you're going to do now that you have it."
He poured three generous measures and slid glasses to Kaelen and Lia. "I can offer you shelter here. For a few days at least, until the heat dies down. But you need to understand something, boy. That blade you're carrying? It's a target painted on your back. The Cult of the Shade will hunt you to claim it. Valorian will hunt you to destroy it. And every two-bit power-seeker in three kingdoms will want to either use you or kill you."
"So what do I do?" Kaelen asked. "Run? Hide? Throw myself into a volcano and hope it takes the sword with me?"
"You learn to control it," Lia said. She'd taken the glass but hadn't drunk from it yet. "You learn to use the blade's power without letting it use you. And you..." She hesitated. "You find someone who can help suppress the Scars. Someone who specializes in purification magic."
"Someone like you," Kaelen realized.
"Someone like me," she agreed. "I'm not strong enough to purify the kind of corruption that blade can generate, not regularly. But I know people who might be. And in the meantime, I can teach you the basics of magical control—how to use minimal amounts of the sword's power instead of letting it run wild like you did tonight."
"Why?" Kaelen asked bluntly. "Why would you help me? You don't know me. I could be a terrible person. I could turn into one of those shadowfiends and kill everyone in this building."
Lia met his gaze steadily. "Because three years ago, my master was killed by a bearer of one of the other Forbidden Blades. The wielder had lost control, become a monster, and slaughtered seventeen people before the Shadow Hunters brought him down. And I've spent every day since then studying forbidden magic, learning everything I could about those cursed weapons, swearing that if I ever encountered another one..." She took a breath. "I would do everything in my power to make sure history didn't repeat itself."
Silence fell in the basement room, broken only by the distant sounds of revelry from the tavern above. Kaelen looked at the sword in his hand, at the woman who'd just offered to help him, at the former Shadow Hunter who was offering them both sanctuary.
He thought about the cultists' threat. *The Shadow Lord rises.* If that was true, the world would need defenders. Even tainted ones.
"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. I'll learn. I'll try to control this thing. And if I start to lose myself..." He looked at Ronan. "If I start to turn into what that cultist became, I need you to promise you'll put me down before I hurt innocent people."
"Deal," Ronan said without hesitation. He raised his glass. "To foolish choices and the poor bastards who make them."
"To second chances," Lia added, raising hers.
Kaelen raised his glass and tried to smile. "To not becoming a monster."
They drank, and the liquor burned going down, warming the cold place in Kaelen's chest where the Shadow Scars lived. Outside, the storm raged on. Somewhere in Eredor's dark streets, the Cult of the Shade was regrouping, plotting their next move. And deep in his hand, Soulrender whispered promises of power and doom in equal measure.
But for now, in this hidden room beneath a tavern, Kaelen Voss had allies. It wasn't much. But it was more than he'd had when the night began.
It would have to be enough.