Sunder

Sunder gleams with a weathered, obsidian finish, the edge whispering like steel wind. The surface bears a map of tiny scratches, each one a memory of duels and long nights under a harsh workshop lamp. Runes run along the blade’s fuller in a coppery glow, catching lamplight and throwing back hundreds of small suns. The hilt is wrapped in tight black leather, bound with cracked brass bands that smell of oil and smoke, and the pommel bears the crest of a broken shield, half-formed as if the weapon refused to forget the battles it endured. It sits in its sheath with a quiet menace, a blade that seems to wait for the moment the world forgets how to remember a strike. Lore clings to Sunder the way mist clings to a river bend. Some insist it was forged in a furnace hidden beneath a mountain spine, where smiths learned to listen to armor sigh as it yielded to steel; others claim it drank the fire of a defeated dragon and learned to bite through mail as if it were parchment. The true story, perhaps, is not one tale but many, stitched together by travelers who swore they felt the blade’s pulse when a group of mercenaries pressed in a corridor or a siege line began to buckle. Either way, Sunder carries a note of inevitability—the sense that a single edge can alter the arc of a skirmish and, by extension, the wider course of those who hold it. On the road and in the rattle of camps, Sunder is both myth and tool. In the hands of a practiced warrior, the blade is not flashy but precise; it strips away layers of hardened hides and plate, leaving the vulnerable warmth of breath and bone exposed where once there was armor. It is the kind of weapon that makes a commander pause, counting a few heartbeats more before committing a risky charge, because the sword’s bite has already rewritten the plan in the air. I found it again at Saddlebag Exchange, where a line of wagons creaks under sun and shade, and a trader leans on a crate as if it were a pedestal. He speaks of value in a way that makes the coins feel heavier: two gold pieces and a gleaming jade shard, and Sunder is yours—if you can persuade the blade to trust you with its memory. The exchange is more than price; it’s a dialogue with the past, a ritual where the blade’s story is weighed against the buyer’s intent. When I bought it, I didn’t purchase metal; I bought a continuation of a legend, a promise that courage and consequence can travel together. Sunder, then, is not merely a weapon. It is a witness—to vows kept, roads traveled, and the quiet, stubborn truth that some edges remember longer than their wielder ever can. If you listen, the blade will tell you where you belong, or at least where you’re headed next. And for those who heed its call, the road narrows to a single moment and a single choice.