Hana knew she made a mistake from the moment she drew the sword from the cloth sack. The cave was dark and then it wasn’t. That was the blade’s doing. It shone with the glow of a dozen suns. But not the happy sun that rose above Riti Peak every morning, that bathed her tranquil valley with light even in the winter months. No, the sword’s light was red in quality and in emotion. Hana felt her hand pulse as she gripped the hilt, like the weapon had a heart of its own. But that was stupid. Swords weren’t alive, they didn’t have hearts or minds or souls.

  Later that night, after Hana had stashed the sword away in the sack under her bed, she considered the peculiar adventure into the cave for a moment before drifting off to sleep. Tomorrow she would seek out the village elder. He would know what to make of the weapon because he knew many things about many weapons.

  But sleep never came. Instead, it was more like a waking dream. The sword was there, but so was a boy. He looked to be a few years older than Hana, but she couldn’t be sure, as she never saw his face. When she awoke the next morning, she felt completely drained, like she had been up all night.

  She downed her morning porridge and ran out the door, the sword secured in its sack and tied around her back. The Elder considered the blade for a moment before shooing her out of the meeting hall.

  And that was the last Hana thought about it.

  Until four years later, when she was summoned to the hall. In just a few days time, she was to undergo her Trial, the rite of passage every child of the Arris Valley was expected to complete, in one manner or another. Because those of the Valley knew there were many ways to contribute, not only physical prowess, but also craftsmanship, husbandry, and farming. They had little need of the outside world, save for the Merchants, who traveled beyond the mountains once a season to trade goods and bring morsels of news. This is how it had always been, ever since the Founding, hundreds of years ago.

  The Elder sat in the middle of the table on the dais, along with a representative of each Discipline. Hana was slightly confused, as her Trial was not permitted to begin even a second before the clock struck midnight on her 18th birthday.

  “Hana.”

  He spoke her name with a note of resignation and sorrow, as if he was not about to proceed over one of the most important days of her life.

  “Yes, Elder? Is my Trial going to begin early? I thought that wasn’t allowed.”

  “No,” he said. “And there will be no Trial, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Hana. “Everyone must complete their Trial. Even in failure we learn our true Calling, to serve the Valley. If I cannot complete my Trial, then...”

  She didn’t want to say it out loud. There was always a couple of kids every so often who refused the strict lifestyle demanded of those who made their home here. They were given a month’s provisions on what would have been the day of their Trial, and were escorted up to the Pass, never to return to the Valley again.

  “... you must leave the Valley,” said the Swordsmaiden. She had trained Hana ever since she was strong enough to lift one of the wooden practice blades.

  “Immediately,” said the Blacksmith. He has crafted Hana her first weapon: a small dagger, good for both combat and for skinning game. And she had become his youngest apprentice ever at just 11 years old, which seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “I don’t understand,” said Hana, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “You discovered the Bane,” said the Sower. She managed the Valley’s fields and worked with Hana’s mother. The two had been childhood friends.

  “What? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The sword. From the cave,” said the Elder. “We have studied it. We have studied the Scrolls of Founding. It is as they have described.”

  “That was four years ago! What have you been doing this whole time?”

  She felt the rage build up from inside. Her entire life, which she had so perfectly pictured, was falling apart within seconds. She would join the Guard or the Tillers for a spell before taking over the Smith’s shop. She would pair with the Sower’s oldest, Leras. They had already kissed on more than one occasion. Behind the old red barn. It was a good match, and their offspring would be hearty citizens of the Valley.

  Finally her anger reached a crescendo, and she let out a primal scream. And as she did, the blade’s metal shone to meet her, a crimson red to match her fire.

  Hana clapped her hand over her mouth, unsure of what she had done. Deep down though, she knew that everything was about to change.

  “You see now, don’t you?” asked the Elder, quietly, and Hana nodded. “We were tasked with keeping the Bane a secret, our village founded on that principle. Everything we have ever done here was in service of that mission. And were anyone ever to come try to claim it, we would spill their blood without a second thought. For any price would be worth paying to ensure that the sword remains hidden.”

  “But now?”

  Hana didn’t want to ask what was so horrible about this sword that her entire village had been created because of it. She didn’t want to think of what would happen now that she had extinguished its purpose. She didn’t want to be the Bane of her home. And that was why, she realized, she needed to leave and never return.

  “Now you must go,” said the Swordsmaiden.

  “OK,” said Hana.

  “And you must take the Bane with you,” said the Sower.

  “Wait, what? Why am I to take it? You can just put it back in the cave. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” said the Smith. “The blade is now awake. It won’t be long now before someone comes for it.”

  “I’m so confused. Whose sword is that?”

  The men and women stared at each other, before the Elder finally nodded.

  “Some call her the Scourge of the Continent,” said the Sower. “Others, the Red Death. But we know her true name. Lyrazesque, Demoness of the North. Holder of the sword that bears her name. With that blade, she smashed the armies of the Great Cities, before staking claim to the Seat of Ayre.”

  “Wait,” said Hana. “You mean the tales we were told as whelps around the fire about the Demon Wars, they were…?

  “It’s true. All of it,” said the Elder. “And after her conquest, she turned over the sword to the kingdoms of men, to hide it from her.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “But why?”

  “That we were never told,” said the Smith. “The Founders weren’t supposed to survive. After they returned from hiding the blade, their escorts were to have killed them and then themselves, so that the sword would have been truly hidden.”

  “Obviously, the gods had a different fate in mind,” said the Sower. “Because before the deed could be done, a bolt of lightning descended from the heavens and killed the escorts. The Founders entered into the Pact the next day, and our village was born.”

  “And now?”

  Hana didn’t have to think hard to figure out that her home, founded on a secret purpose, would likely collapse once that purpose was gone.

  “That is unknown,” said the Elder. “But enough talk, for now. We need to get you ready.”

  “For what?”

  “For your journey,” said the Swordsmaiden. “Now that the Bane is yours to bear, you must finish what the Hero That Failed could not do.”

  “You cannot mean…”

  The Elder nodded his head slowly, a defeated look on his face, and Hana felt her body start to rebel.

  “You must destroy the blade once and for all.”

  Hana fainted.

  Hana’s 18th birthday began with a downpour.

  She was about halfway down the mountain trail when she stopped for the night. Two days had passed since she had been summarily exiled, and the anger coursing through her body had not yet relented. The Village Council had given her a generous set of supplies for the journey to Porrezan, but other than a few minutes to write a letter to her parents, they had not allowed her any additional time to say a proper goodbye to the only home she had ever known.

  And so, instead of an anxious night spent in her warm bed waiting for her Trial to begin, she was alone in a cold tent, the wind howling outside. At some point, she drifted off to a dreamless sleep, only to awake early in the morning to the pitter-patter of rain drops sounding on the canvas walls. The gentle timber soon gave way to a deluge, and Hana debated whether to strike camp now or wait for the storm to relent.

  She chose the former, not wanting her only shelter to be soaked through for days on end. The elements battered her as she trudged further down the slope, but Hana supposed this day was always going to be an arduous one. At around midday, the sun peeked out from behind the cloud, and she quickly made a fire using the dry kindling in her pack, only for the heavens to open back up and soak her all over again.

  Finally, as night fell, the rain stopped. Hana withdrew a scope from inside her cloak, trying to locate any signs of humanity in the forest that brushed up against the mountain. But all she saw through the glass was darkness.

  A salty meal of smoked meat later, and she was ready for another horrid day to be over. But her body was still shivering and her stomach was still growling, and the last thing she wanted to do was lie down and let her anguish overtake her.

  She lit a tiny fire and took out a map of the lands beyond the Valley, hand-drawn by the 17th Librarian, according to the messy signature in the corner. Her studying was cut short, however, by tiny drops of rain splashing against the parchment. Hana looked up at the sky to confirm that the storm had returned, but was only met by the sight of the glittering stars and an unusually full moon. It took her a moment to realize that the drops were not from the rain, but from her own eyes. With no one to shame her into silence, she let out a guttural cry that echoed through the wood.

  Although it felt good in the moment, Hana regretted the outburst almost immediately, when a slime bear emerged from the brush. It looked like a regular bear, if a regular bear had globs of green mucus all over its body instead of fur. Hana knew of the creature only from a bestiary in the Village library, as such disgusting animals were not something that ever made their way into the Valley.

  The bear began sniffing frantically, leaving green slime everywhere as it moved closer to Hana. She contemplated a dozen different ways of dispatching it (except using the Bane), but before she could make a decision, the creature caught her gaze, staring right at her with disgusting dark green eyes, its mouth full of razor sharp teeth.

  Hana reached for her pack in a panic, but the first thing she felt was that stupid sword wrapped in its stupid cloth sack. Her fingers fumbled, looking in vain for the set of throwing knives she knew were also inside. Night’s End, her own would-be sword, was still a dissembled mess, tucked away at the very bottom. She had planned for another season of tempering before she was going to attempt the runecast that would have imbued the implement with ability to blot out even the darkest of nights. Of course, that plan, like so many others, was forever lost to her. Instead, she had resigned herself to merely attaching the hilt to the blade at the first smith she came across.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she finally managed to pull the largest knife free. It probably could have killed a were-hawk, if her aim was true, but Hana doubted it would have much success against the mucus-covered monstrosity on front of her. But what other choice did she have?

  “Back, back!” she cried out, waving the knife in quick arcs through the air. The bear regarded her with a look of curiosity, as best she could tell, because its face was hardly a measure of simplicity.

  But then it pushed itself up onto its hind legs with a graceful speed Hana didn't think it was capable of and scrunched its nose before letting out a blast of green disgustingness from its mouth. The first shot extinguished the fire, the second Hana sliced through at the cost of the snot covering her strong hand, leaving her defenseless against the third, which hit her square in the chest.

  “Ahhhh!” she cried, trying to keep her balance. She staggered backward before regaining her composure, as she had been trained to do.

  Breath in, breath out.

  What is, is.

  What will be, will be.

  Those were the mantras that had been drilled into her head over countless hours and countless months and countless years. Except that as soon as she took that first breath in, the putrid smell of the slime reminded her that it was a lie. It had always been a lie.

  She had played the part of the dutiful daughter of the Valley, done everything and more that had been asked of her, and in the end they had tossed her out like tepid bathwater just the same.

  “I’ve had enough!” she screamed. She didn’t care that her shout might attract another slime bear or something worse. She didn’t care that she was covered in disgusting globs of bodily excrement. She didn’t care that there was a good chance she wouldn’t even make it down the mountain at all. All she cared about, in that moment, was unleashing her rage.

  And that was what she did.

  The pent-up emotion flowed out of her like the gushing hot spring water that poured out of the mountain every spring, and for the first time in a while, Hana felt at ease with herself and the world.

  In that moment, she didn’t notice the eerie glow emitting from her pack, or from her own body, for that matter. All she noticed was that the bear finally had a look of fear on its miserable face, and she was going to press the advantage.

  Hana took a few steps back before breaking into a run, and just before she reached the creature, she bent her knees and launched herself into the air. She collided with the bear’s midsection and swung her knife arm upward, slicing off a piece of slime that she hoped was at least one of its ears. The animal roared in pain, swinging its body violently from side to side. Unfortunately for Hana, she remained stuck to the bear, like a helpless hungry little cub being carried along in the forest.

  With nothing to get purchase on, it was only a matter of seconds before the slime bear decided to redirect its fury onto the idiot girl who had thrown herself into its grasp. It was then that, against all better judgment, Hana surrendered herself to the mercy of the wild. She let her body go slack, she exhaled all of the anger inside her, and she waited for the next hard swipe of the bear’s paw.

  But it never came. Because the next thing Hana heard was not the growl of the animal’s voice, but a boy shouting. It wasn’t so much a shout, more like a request, that the bear let her go. If Hana’s face hadn’t been stuck to the slime, she would have laughed. Except that a moment later, a clawed hand was pulling her free and depositing her on the ground.

  She gave the bear one more look, but it immediately tore off into the woods from where it came, and Hana turned to face her rescuer.

  He looked to be not much older than her, with a light scruff covering the bottom third of his face. He wore a simple red cloak, which stood out against the dark green of the forest, and his hair was messily unkempt but in a deliberate sort of way. And hooked to his belt was what appeared to be a sword, although the cloak was covering its hilt.

  “Hi!” said the boy.

  “Thank you,” said Hana, finally feeling her heartbeat slow down to normal. “I thought I was a goner.”

  “I barely had to do anything,” said the boy. “I think you tired it out with all your flailing.”

  “Hey, I had a perfectly good plan of escape, if you must know.”

  She didn’t appreciate being chided by the stranger, but she really couldn’t complain, as he had just saved her life.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  “I’m Hana, of Bevellar.”

  The Elders had impressed up on her to never reveal where she was actually from, lest word spread throughout the Continent about the young exiled girl from the secluded Valley. Maybe on her journey she would actually get to the visit the great City of Passage, that separated the the eastern and western spans of the Continent. But for now, she was content that her new “home” had not engendered any reaction from the boy.

  “Nice to meet you, Hana. I’m Mati.”