In those days there was spoken, in corners and in old songs, of the Grove of the King called Arthur, where the air was green with memory and the leaves listened as judges. Whether that grove lay in the waking world or in the folded places behind it, the chronicles disagree; but of this they are certain: Fencer went there alone.
And from that grove he took blades, not forged in any smithy now standing, but kept as relics of an elder vow. The boughs were said to have shivered, not in anger, but in recognition, as if the trees themselves had been waiting for a hand that would not tremble.
Yet the taking of relic-blades was not the height of his deed.
For beyond the grove there stood a stone... Plain to the unknowing eye, yet heavy with fate... And set within it was Excalibur, the sword of choosing and unchoosing. Many had laid hands upon that hilt for pride, for sport, for the applause of taverns, and the stone had suffered them with cold indifference.
But Fencer did not come for applause. He came as one who had seen what must be answered.
And he set his hand upon the hilt.
The wind stilled. The birds held their breath. Even mockery, that quick and nimble thing, forgot its lines.
Then, with a sound not of stone cracking but of destiny relenting, the blade came forth.
So Excalibur passed to him, and the world’s old stories shifted, as a tapestry shifts when one thread is pulled at last.