The wind carried the stench of charred timber and blood. The once-proud banners of House Kael fluttered limp, blackened by fire. Ash rained down like snow, covering the cobblestone streets in a gray, suffocating shroud.
A child crouched amid the ruins, his small hands trembling, face streaked with soot and tears. His eyes-too old, too hollow for one so young-watched as the soldiers of the rival kingdom tore through the last remnants of his family. His father's final cry echoed in his ears, a voice swallowed by flames:
"Survive... no matter the cost..."
The boy swallowed the cold, jagged metal ring his father thrust into his mouth, choking back panic. The taste of iron and ash burned on his tongue, a permanent mark of the bloodline he alone would carry forward. Around him, the world screamed in chaos; around him, life had ended.
He ran. Through forests soaked in twilight, over jagged rocks that tore his feet and arms, he ran until his legs bled and his lungs begged surrender. Hunger gnawed at his belly, thirst clawed at his throat, yet fear-raw, searing fear-propelled him onward.
It was in the darkness of a ruined temple, abandoned to memory and shadows, that he found the cult. They were whispers first, then figures cloaked in black. Their eyes glittered with cruel knowledge as they circled him, speaking of power and death in the same breath.
"You are broken," one said, voice like shattered glass.
"Good. Broken things bend," said another, placing a hand on his shoulder. "We will make you strong."
The boy did not resist. He could not. By then, resistance was meaningless. Pain became a teacher, torment a sculptor, and death a companion. He learned to endure the unendurable, to anticipate betrayal, to weaponize fear itself.
Yet in quiet moments, when the fire died down and the shadows slept, he heard them: whispers of a family he could not save, faces he would never forget. They did not pity him; they did not comfort him. They fueled him.
The boy, once small, once innocent, was gone. In his place stood the beginning of a force the world would soon learn to fear.
And the world had no idea.