The battered carriage creaked into a nameless village, lost within the black mists of Umbryss, at the edge of Ythrene's forgotten borders.
A place too small for maps, too forsaken for prayers.
Even the gods had abandoned it.
The village was little more than ruins: crumbling cottages of weather-eaten stone, barren patches of withered earth, and a choked well gasping under rot.
Yet amidst this graveyard of hope, life clung stubbornly on — thin, trembling, defiant.
It was here, in a crooked, half-collapsed hut on the village's edge, that Livia collapsed into labor.
The storm winds howled against the cracked timbers like wolves, and the black sun flickered behind the smoke-colored clouds.
The villagers, weathered by endless hardship, came without hope, yet with hands willing to aid.
Old midwives muttered fragmented prayers to dead gods, their voices brittle with dread.
Don knelt at the threshold, bloody and broken from travel, his forehead pressed to the frozen earth.
"Please, Aurelios... Spare my wife. Spare my child."
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Time unraveled into an endless, torturous thread.
And then — amidst the moaning wind and the broken sky — a cry split the night.
But it was not from the child.
It was from Livia, gasping through blood and pain.
"It's a boy!" the midwife cried, hoisting up the newborn.
But the infant did not scream.
He did not wail, nor flail.
Instead, his eyes opened — vast, crystalline, and ancient beyond comprehension.
He gazed upon the world not as one newly born, but as one who had already judged it.
Livia clutched the boy to her breast, tears streaming freely down her cheeks.
Don staggered forward, gathering Lucien and Amelia into his arms, trembling with relief.
"What shall we call him?" asked Don, his voice thick with awe and terror alike.
Livia, ignoring the freezing shudder wracking her body, kissed the child's brow.
A smile — radiant, desperate, fragile — broke across her lips.
"Froy," she whispered. "His name is Froy."
The name floated through the broken hut like a fragile prayer — and something answered.
Lucien clapped excitedly.
Amelia giggled, reaching out with tiny, unknowing hands.
For a moment, fleeting as breath, there was peace.
High above, in the places beyond stars and sanity, something stirred.
It did not stir with joy.
Nor anger.
Nor desire.
It stirred because it had been waiting.
From beyond the veils of reality, Sethvyr watched — an ancient shadow weaving between dimensions unseen.
It had no temples.
No priests.
No scriptures.
It needed only one thing: a piece upon the board.
And tonight, it had chosen.
Froy.
The heavens would weep before long.
The earth itself would fracture.
And all would wonder — too late — what had been set into motion.
Sethvyr lingered but a breath longer, its formless essence whispering across the newborn's soul.
A scar unseen.
A curse irrevocable.
The board was set.
And the game — merciless, eternal — had begun.