The Sword was forged in the Fourth Time out of pure skymetal. The forgemaster at Drangstaff spent fourteen days honing its blade till its black edge shined like a star. He offered it to a farmer, Alfrik, as his daughter’s dowry. Alfrik put it above his hearth and never had need of it. He died happily in his sleep, aged fifty-six.

Alfrikson was called up to fight for his king, aged nineteen. The Sword left the hearth with him. In the war four people fell to Alfrikson’s hand. The fifth pulled Alfrikson’s guts from his belly and The Sword from his hand. This soldier, Yeomer, aged twenty-five, traded it to Urik, First Prince of Northdawn, for two women and a sack of copper. Fifteen days after, one of the women brained Yeomer with a rock.

Urik valued The Sword highly. He drew it twenty-one times. Each time its black point drunk his opponent’s blood and returned safely to the silvered scabbard he commissioned. Aged forty, King Urik was smothered by his most impatient son, Udoris, who stole The Sword to sink into each of his brothers while they slept.

Shortly after Udoris broke The Sword in two during his fifteenth birthday celebration, conquerors arrived. Ettermarch the Bloody concluded his nine month siege of Northdawn by adding The Sword’s bottom half to his belt while he watched Udoris bleed out. Ettermarch honed The Sword into a knife, which he used for everything from fending off would-be assassins to carving his daily meat. A bone choked Ettermarch to death in his forty-fifth year.

Ettermarch’s lieutenant, Memburn the Swift, chose The Sword as part of his spoils. He used it for the last time cutting the stirrups of his paramour’s paramour. A horseshoe caught The Sword and broke it in half again as it trampled Memburn, aged thirty-five.

The glinting shard of The Sword caught the eye of a crow, who added it to her nest. Her four hatchlings were born with the power to speak all tongues. They served the witch Remowe for many years. It is said they still fly from village to village, telling stories of a black blade.