The cage door gave way with a strained, splintering crack.

Freedom.

But not safety.

Footsteps echoed somewhere beyond the corridor—distant, but not distant enough.

You didn’t have time to think. Only to move.

Barely steady on your feet, you slipped through unfamiliar halls until a heavy door loomed ahead, iron-bound and unguarded. You forced it open and stumbled inside— —and froze.

Treasure.

Not the glittering kind that invited awe, but the suffocating kind. Weapons lined the walls in silent rows, each one resting behind glass like a corpse on display. The air felt… wrong. Heavy. Watching.

You need something. Anything. You won’t survive without it.

Your gaze flickered from blade to blade—until it stopped.

One stood apart.

Dark. Elegant. Quietly imposing, even in stillness.

A name surfaced in your mind, unbidden, like a whisper brushing the inside of your skull—

Evernight’s Edge.

Your hand moved before your thoughts could catch up. The latch clicked.

The moment the case opened, the air shifted.

The blade rose.

Not dropped. Not lifted.

Rose.

It hovered before you, trembling—not weakly, but like something drawing its first breath after a long death. A faint hum threaded through the silence, low and resonant, like a pulse returning.

Then—

“You… freed me.”

The voice didn’t come from the room.

It came from everywhere at once. From the air. From your bones.

From the blade.

A cold awareness settled over you.

It wasn’t just floating.

It was looking.

The weapon tilted, ever so slightly, as though studying you in return.

“...Curious.”

A pause. Heavy. Measuring.

“Who are you?”