Blade of Woe

This spell is a part of the Trepidatious Bracing spell chain and is found in the Trepidatious Bracing rune stone.

Woe is not a single thing. It does not arrive complete. It builds - one weight added to another, one shadow darkening the one before it, until what began as a heaviness becomes something the target can no longer carry and continue fighting beneath.

Blade of Woe is the timoramancer reaching through Dread, finding the thread of sorrow that runs through all living things, and pulling it into the target's weapon. The weapon itself does not change in appearance. It does not glow or darken. It simply becomes a conduit. Every strike now delivering not just physical damage, augmented by the timoramancer's Arcana, but a layer of woe that settles into whoever is struck and does not leave.

The first strike brings Depression - the heaviness, the sudden dimming of everything that drove the target into this fight. The second brings Anxiety - distress mounting, the mind beginning to work against itself. The third brings Restlessness - the inability to find stillness, calm, or focus even for a moment. The fourth brings Loss of Purpose - woe in its fullest expression, the complete erosion of the will to continue. Each layer compounds the ones before it. A target carrying all four is not simply hindered. They are a person who has forgotten, entirely, why any of this was worth fighting for.  The benefactor of Blade of Woe will also experience Anxiety for the duration of the empowerment, even if they are the timoramancer, for to hold Dread's power as a weapon leaves no one unchanged.