Snow swept across the frozen cliffs like knives of ice. Karos ran with his tribe, the Stormpeak Goliaths, across windswept plateaus and beneath jagged ridgelines that scraped the sky. Their tents were made of drake hide, and their traditions were as unyielding as the mountains they roamed.
From an early age, Karos had been known for his strength. He wrestled rimewolves, climbed ice-cracked cliffs with bare hands, and never backed down from the challenges thrown at him during the rites of coming of age.
The Goliaths were not gentle.
They were forged from stone and snow and centuries of survival. And among them, Karos thrived raised under the stern eye of his father and the brutal guidance of his mentor: Gorhald Ironscar, a war-scarred veteran who had taught Karos to fight not just with blade and brawn, but with discipline.
"You think strength is enough?" Gorhald would growl. "Then your corpse will be strong when they burn it."
Karos hated him. He admired him more.
The breach came without warning.
One moment the tribe was moving through a glacial pass. The next, the sky tore open.
No thunder. No storm. Just a crack a wound in the sky, jagged and impossible, pouring out monsters from time's forgotten corners.
The first to fall was a youngling.
The second was Karos's brother.
The third was Gorhald.
Karos remembered standing frozen as a thing of iron and bone descended from the breach, its form shifting between a scorpion, a man, and a beast with a thousand teeth. Its limbs moved like clock hands gone mad.
He had screamed.
He had charged.
And his spear shattered on its hide.
The creature knocked him aside like nothing, and as Karos landed in the snow, winded, bruised, bleeding he saw the bodies of his kin falling all around him. The Stormpeak Goliaths were mighty, but they had been born for battles of earth and steel not against creatures from time's fractured womb.
It should have ended there.
But something ignited in Karos.
He reached for Gorhald's sword, still embedded in the ice where the elder had fallen.
A greatsword, forged from black iron, its length etched with the storm-runes of their ancestors. The blade was too heavy for most, but Karos lifted it.
And when he swung…
Time cracked.
He awoke three hours later, surrounded by bodies some Goliath, some not of any world he knew. His breath steamed in the air, and his skin was etched with glowing marks that hadn't been there before.
His eyes could see movement before it happened.
His ears could hear the echo of a heartbeat just before it beat.
And his hands trembled not with fear, but with resonance.
Something had changed in him. Something deep. Something permanent.
The survivors called him marked. Cursed.
Karos called it a second chance.
He became a warband of one.
While others fled to the valleys below, Karos climbed higher into the world's fractured wounds. He hunted the riftspawn, following the scent of twisted time wherever it spilled. Behemoths from forgotten epochs, aberrant nightmares from the deepest depths, clockwork horrors from distant futures they fell beneath his blade one by one.
With each fight, his mastery deepened.
He learned to feel weak points in enemies that shouldn't have any. He could strike where bone had not yet formed, where metal had not yet cooled. His movements were followed by afterimages ghosts of future strikes that hit before his blade even landed.
He was no longer fighting alone.
He fought with his echoes.
And so, a warrior was born.
Now and again his mind still wandered back to the Echohold. The chamber felt sacred. Pillars of marble rose around them like the trunks of ancient trees, carved with runes that shimmered faintly beneath the golden light of suspended lanterns. A silver chalice stood atop an altar at the room's center, filled with a clear liquid that reflected no flame. Behind it, a massive circular relief carved into the stone wall depicted a broken hourglass.
Captain Lysaria Veltharn stood before it in ceremonial armor silver and pale blue, etched with the sigil of the Order: An Hourglass wrapped in ivy and flame.
She stepped forward with measured grace, her gauntlet resting lightly on the hilt of her sheathed sword.
"Karos Belfier," she said, voice resonant, "step forward and kneel."
Karos obeyed, his broad frame lowering to one knee, his gaze unwavering.
"I am ready," he said.
Lysaria studied him, her expression calm but searching. "Readiness is only part of the path. What lies ahead is not glory, but duty. Not conquest, but service. Once the oath is spoken, you become more than a man. You become a shield between realms. The weight is great, and the reward is meager."
"I was raised to endure storms," Karos replied. "I've seen what comes through the rifts. If I can stand against it and hold the line for even a moment longer, then that is reward enough."
A glimmer of approval passed through Lysaria's eyes. "You speak like one who has already lost. And that, in truth, is how every Knight of the Veil begins — not with pride, but purpose."
She drew her sword, a long ceremonial blade with a pale blue edge and a single white gem set into the cross guard. She held it before her, between them.
"Our order does not swear allegiance to kings or crowns," she said. "We serve the Veil itself — the boundary that separates the realms. Where it weakens, we stand. Where it tears, we mend. Where it shatters… we fight, and we fall."
"I understand," Karos said quietly.
"Then speak the vow and bind yourself to the path eternal."
Karos placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head, his voice steady and clear.
"I swear my breath, my blood, and my blade to the Keepers of the Shattered Veil.
I shall stand where the world thins.
I shall guard the threshold, though no one watches.
I shall bear the flame, though darkness calls.
And should I fall, let me fall as a stone in the wall—silent, steadfast, and unbroken.
This I vow."
Lysaria touched the flat of her blade to each of his shoulders in turn, then finally to his brow.
"Rise, Ser Karos Belfier," she said. "Knight of the Shattered Veil.
Your name may fade in the halls of men,
but it will be carved in light beyond the breach."
Karos rose, a subtle weight settling across his shoulders—not the burden of armor, but of meaning.
He looked to her, voice low. "What do others call us?"
Lysaria gave a rare, gentle smile.
"Guardians. Wardens. Relic Knights. But among ourselves…" She turned to the wall relief, where the veil rippled in stone.
"We are simply the Keepers. The last promise between order and unraveling."
She turned back to him, her voice solemn but proud.
"And now, you are one of us."
Karos swore himself to the Keepers of the Shattered Veil. They were a scattered brotherhood who sought to understand and close the breaches and the time-warped horrors they spawned.
"I now have a purpose and a reason to use this gift that was given to me. Now is the time for action to ensure others do not experience what I have. The pain I felt. I shall be retribution for those who cannot fight for themselves. I am a Knight of the Shattered Veil."