Chapter: The Birth of the First Weapon Spirit
As Hephaestus journeyed through the wild lands beyond Olympus, he felt a strange presence in the air—an echo of something ancient, something dying.
He followed the pull of his instincts and soon came upon a massive willow tree, its bark scorched black, its branches thin and lifeless. The ground beneath it was littered with splintered wood, as if the tree had once been mighty but had suffered a terrible fate.
Then, he saw the remnants of divine energy flickering along its cracked trunk—Zeus' thunder.
This was no ordinary tree. This was once the Titan-Willow, a sacred tree that had stood since the days before Zeus' reign. In the brutal war against the Titans, Zeus, in the heat of battle, had unleashed a divine thunderbolt upon his enemies. The bolt struck the tree instead, wounding it beyond recovery.
Yet, it had lived—barely.
For centuries, it had stood in silent agony, its divine nature keeping it from fully perishing. But now, as Hephaestus watched, the last remnants of its life faded.
And at the very heart of the tree, he found something even more tragic.
A Stillborn Nymph
Inside the hollow of the tree, curled within the core of its dying form, was a small, unmoving figure—a nymph, a spirit meant to be born from the tree's soul. But because the tree was struck before it could fully mature, the nymph never truly came to life. A child that had never taken its first breath.
For a moment, Hephaestus simply stood there. He had been cast aside by his own kin once. Left crippled, unwanted. He understood the sorrow of being abandoned before having the chance to prove oneself.
"No."
He clenched his fist. This nymph would not be forgotten. This tree would not be lost to time.
Hephaestus carried the massive tree trunk back to his forge inside the serpent monster's cave, his mind racing. Wood was not a common material for divine weapons. It lacked the weight of metal, the resilience of stone. But Hephaestus saw potential—a weapon that could move like the wind, strike like lightning, and never break.
First, he burned the wood down to sacred ash.
The remnants glowed with power, filled with the last divine sparks of Zeus' thunderbolt.
Then, he shaped the ash into a spear—long, elegant, yet unyielding.
The essence of the Titan-Willow lingered within it, making it both flexible and durable.
Finally, Hephaestus took the stillborn nymph in his hands. His heart was steady. His soul was firm. He would give her a purpose.
With a deep breath, he fused the nymph into the weapon.
The moment the fusion was complete, a divine tremor shook the world. The sky rumbled, the ground shivered, and the air seemed to come alive. A new race had been born.
From the spear, a soft glow emerged—a delicate, almost ethereal form. The nymph, once lifeless, now hovered beside the weapon, her body made of light, her hair like flowing willow leaves, her eyes filled with newborn wonder.
She looked at Hephaestus, and for the first time in her existence, she breathed.
The world cheered.
The gods, the spirits, even the forces of nature felt the birth of something new. A being that had never existed before—a Weapon Spirit. A soul born not from the land, not from the sea, but from the very heart of a weapon or item.
And Hephaestus, standing before his creation, gave it a name.
"The Pelian Spear."
A weapon like no other. A spear that danced with the wind, struck with the might of thunder, and carried within it the first soul of its kind.
Hephaestus held the spear in his hands, feeling its warmth, its presence.
"You were never meant to be forgotten." He spoke softly. "Now, you will carve your name into history."
The nymph-turned-weapon spirit smiled.
And the Pelian Spear was born.