Xolaani's Blade

Xolaani's Blade was the weapon of Xolaani, one of the first Ascended of Shurima and among the most powerful and ancient of the Darkin. During the Darkin War she led a faction that sought to dominate the world rather than merely survive it. Her twin blades, the Bloodletters, were the focus of her blood magic, capable of reshaping flesh and binding others to her will. When the war ended and each Darkin was sealed within their personal weapon, Xolaani was imprisoned like the rest, her very being bound to the Bloodletters. For centuries the blades lay hidden in Ionia at Mistfall, a sacred site guarded by Master Yi and his Wuju disciples. But such power cannot remain dormant forever. Their presence eventually drew the shadow warrior Kayn, who, driven by the ambitious Darkin Rhaast within his scythe, sought to claim a second weapon. His assault on the Wuju temple was a massacre; Master Yi fought valiantly, but his untrained students were unprepared for the onslaught. In one telling the Bloodletters undo Kayn himself, as Rhaast overwhelms his will and seizes Xolaani's blades, folding their hemomancy into his own power. He howled in triumph, finally free after millennia, and lifted the blades to his tongue to taste fresh blood as the reaping began. In a divergent telling, Xolaani's story continues through Yi's most promising student, Jun. Wounded and ringed by the bodies of her friends, desperate to save her master, Jun gave in to the voice that whispered she would never be allowed to die. As she took hold of the weapons her humanity fled, and a hateful essence filled the emptying vessel that had been Jun, washing out into the world to stir the slumbering Darkin. These branching tellings all circle the same close, for Xolaani's blade was ultimately destroyed with her defeat, silencing the Bloodweaver at last.