The Darkin Bloodletters

The Darkin Bloodletters are a pair of cursed twin blades that imprison the Darkin warrior Xolaani. During the Aspects' campaign to end the Darkin War, a celestial fire severed the Darkin from their physical forms, and an Aspect taught mortal mages the art of soul-binding, sealing each Darkin's essence within its personal weapon. Xolaani was imprisoned alongside her brethren, her being bound to the Bloodletters. The blades hunger for combat and bloodshed, growing more powerful with each life they claim. The Darkin within whispers promises of strength to anyone who draws near, offering power to any wielder willing to take up the weapons. For centuries the Bloodletters were hidden in Ionia at Mistfall, a sacred site guarded by Master Yi and his Wuju disciples. Such power could not remain dormant forever, and the weapon's presence was discovered by the shadow warrior Kayn, who, driven by the Darkin Rhaast sealed within his scythe, sought to claim a second weapon. Kayn's assault on the Wuju temple became a massacre, and though Master Yi fought valiantly, his students were untrained and unprepared. The confrontation branches into divergent outcomes across Xolaani's saga. In one, Kayn seizes the Bloodletters and is consumed by Rhaast, who lifts the blades to taste fresh blood after millennia of waiting. In another, Yi's most promising student, Jun, wounded and surrounded by her fallen friends, heeds a whispering voice and takes hold of the cursed blades. In that instant her humanity fled, leaving an empty vessel for the hateful essence that filled her, and Xolaani was free once more. Freed within Jun's body, Xolaani returned to her place of power in Shurima, the Altar of Blood, an ancient temple kept for centuries by her devoted followers, the Darkinthralls, who prayed for her return. Absent such a wielder, the Bloodletters remain sealed, a slumbering Darkin biding her time.