It’s very easy to lose the Soul Reaver, especially early in the game, so I decided to share the best way to quickly recover it for anyone searching Google for this solution like I did before figuring it out.

After losing the sword, an NPC will pick it up and if they use it, you’ll get a notification at the start of the month showing which city they’re in (it may take a while to happen). Search for them in that city or nearby areas (I’ve already found the NPC 7 spaces away from the city) and kill them to recover the sword.

Since the chance of retrieving the sword isn’t 100%, I discovered you can save before confronting the NPC and reload if it doesn’t work (I needed almost 15 attempts to make it work). If successful, you’ll see the recovery notification on your screen.