I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down the story of a rather ordinary blade with an extraordinary tale. Many years ago, one of the Sultan’s cousins was shipwrecked upon the Silver Sea, though she was fortunate enough to reach the safety of a lifeboat rather than the icy waters claiming her. An island, now known to be one of the Slumbering Twelve, was her refuge for over a year until another ship saw her signal fire and made a rescue. But in that time, she discovered a sword buried up to its hilt in relatively fresh magma that could not have seeped up more than a few months before her arrival. There was no sign that humans had ever set foot on the island, and yet there it was: an ordinary blade where it ought not to have been. It took a month to chip it out, and she gave it to the Sultan as a curiosity upon her return. But the mystery of how it came to be there runs deep, far deeper than she knew.

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