The stench of death clung to the battlefield like a cruel reminder of war's hunger. Broken swords jutted from the earth, marking graves unclaimed by the living. Beneath the blood-soaked sky, a figure lay motionless—a man clad in shattered black armor, his gauntleted hand still clutching the hilt of a blade cracked down its center.
Then, he breathed.
Pain flared through his body as his lungs filled with air thick with rot. His eyes snapped open—one a deep, stormy gray, the other glowing with an eerie crimson light. Memories flooded back like a nightmare stitched together in broken fragments: betrayal, slaughter, and the burning sigil seared into his flesh.
He was Kael Varenth, once a knight of the Dawnspire, now a forsaken soul. The curse carved into his skin pulsed, sending whispers into his mind—inaudible yet suffocating. He staggered to his feet, gazing over the field of corpses. Something unnatural had occurred here. None of these men had died clean deaths. Their bodies were twisted, flesh burned away as if some unspeakable magic had devoured them.
Then, he saw it.
A black sun hanging in the sky, its sickly light painting the world in shadow.
Kael's heart pounded. He remembered the last thing before his fall—standing before the High Council, accused of treason, branded with a sigil of exile. But this… this was no ordinary battlefield. Something had awakened him. Something called him back from the abyss.
And in the distance, beyond the fog and the ruins of war, a single structure stood tall—the ancient city of Varethis, long abandoned, rumored to be cursed.
Kael clenched his ruined blade. If he sought answers, they lay within those forsaken walls.
With a final glance at the battlefield of the damned, he set forth into the unknown.