Wind Sword

The Sword of Winds is the guarded weapon of the original Shatalin temple, meant to be wielded only by a virtuous person defending the temple from attack. When the ambitious Cruw Reon drew it to pursue conquest, he was blinded permanently, and the temple fell. The sword’s power and the knowledge needed to understand its consequence remain divided between the temple and the Book of Shatalin, making it both a weapon and the center of an unresolved history.

Place in the Shatalin Temple

The original Shatalin temple stood hidden in the mountains, distinct from the Bhikhu temple that Paedrin knew. Master Shivu revealed that the latter was only a poor replica. The original had been accessible only to Vaettir, and Shivu himself had come from it as a boy before leaving with a small group seeking to escape its fate.

Within that original temple, the sword had a restricted purpose. Only the most virtuous men sought its power, and only to defend the temple against attack. Its place in the temple’s tradition therefore depended on restraint: it was not an instrument for extending authority into other kingdoms, but a last defense for the community it belonged to.

Cruw Reon and the Sword’s Use

Cruw Reon had been a student who surpassed the masters. Shivu described him as ambitious and exceptionally fast, and said his pride corrupted the temple. His influence was not limited to the Bhikhu way; his speech itself carried power, and he sought to use that power alongside the Sword of Winds to conquer other kingdoms and rise to the heights of authority.

Cruw Reon took the sword from its casing and drew it from its sheath. The act ended in permanent blindness: he could no longer see, and would never recover his sight. He nevertheless refused to give up the weapon. Paedrin listened to Shivu’s account in silence, holding his breath as the story turned the sword from a revered defense into the instrument at the heart of a catastrophe.

The Book and the Unresolved History

The knowledge of how to cure Cruw Reon’s blindness was written in the Book of Shatalin. Shivu said that his own master had smuggled the book away, and that Shivu now possessed it and knew the secret. But the sword and the book could not be reunited: the book could not leave Kenatos, where it was kept in the archives, while the sword would never leave the temple.

That separation makes the sword’s history more than a tale of punishment. The means of understanding or curing its consequence survives, but cannot be brought together with the weapon that caused it. Shivu looked back on the lost possibility with regret, imagining how many lives might have been different if Cruw Reon’s ambition had been stopped earlier. The sword thus stands within a history shaped not only by a disastrous choice, but by the failure to prevent it and the lasting division of the objects needed to repair its harm.