"Everyone cries when someone dies. But the gods were silent when my father fell."
The wind howled through the ridges of Asael's Vigil, whistling through amethyst-laced trees like a mourning hymn. High atop the frost-covered hills overlooking the village, a boy sat beneath the skeleton of a once-mighty tree, its bark blackened from lightning or perhaps some old magic long forgotten. The branches were heavy with violet crystal growths—natural formations that shimmered faintly in the overcast morning light, casting delicate hues of indigo and silver across the snow-packed ground.
The boy's name was Kael. He was thirteen winters old, though his eyes had already started to lose their softness. In his lap rested a cloth-wrapped bundle, thick with strange weight. It oozed warmth and quiet menace, despite the cold around him. Occasionally, the fabric would twitch, as if something inside still remembered how to move.
Gaelus was dead.
His father.
More than a father—a mentor, a protector, a contradiction. One of the few in Thalrador who remembered love wasn't just for songs and stories.
The funeral had taken place three nights ago. In Asael's Vigil, mourning was a private affair. The villagers offered tight-lipped condolences, but no one cried—not really. There were no wails or screaming in grief. Just bowed heads, the scent of incense, and ceremonial lanterns floated into the night sky like dying stars.
Kael had cried until he couldn't breathe.
Then he stopped.
He wasn't allowed to cry anymore. Not now. Not with what had awakened inside him.
The Allseer hovered above the village square like a crystal moon—an enormous surveillance artifact left behind by the Eldrinthian Order. The sphere, faceted like a gem and etched with runes of sight, rotated slowly above the statue of a blindfolded mage. One hand held a tome, the other a sword that pointed toward the ground—a symbol of judgment, tempered by knowledge.
"Truth through order," it said in Old Glyph.
A lie.
That same order had ignored Gaelus when he begged for reinforcements.
That same truth had allowed Kael's father to be buried without honor, called a traitor to the kingdom.
Traitor. That word echoed like bile in his mouth. His father had tried to protect Asael's Vigil from a roving blood cult—a remnant from the southern deadlands. But when he acted without waiting for Eldrinthian sanction, the punishment was swift.
Abandonment.
Slaughter.
Now, Kael walked through the streets of the village like a shadow, each step measured, each breath tightly controlled. He was polite. He bowed to elders. He smiled at the merchant's daughter. He even nodded when that pompous apprentice from the temple threw a rock at him.
He was always polite.
But behind the smile, his mind boiled.
I don't deserve kindness. I don't want forgiveness. I want to remember this pain forever.
He stopped in front of the bakery.
Inside, she was laughing again. The girl.
Kael didn't speak her name—not even in thought. It was sacred. She was the last piece of something human in his life. She hadn't looked at him in days.
After Gaelus died, she stopped visiting. Maybe out of fear. Maybe because she'd seen what Kael did that night—the night his blood boiled and moved on its own.
The scythe wasn't forged. It was born.
He had taken the blood left from the battlefield and shaped it, screaming in agony, every drop a memory, every swing an echo of Gaelus' last breath. The weapon drank sorrow like wine and sang to him in whispers.
He told no one.
Later that evening, he climbed back up the ridge. Snow fell gently, covering his footprints in silence. Below, Asael's Vigil glowed softly, its Victorian rooftops crowned with icy lace, chimneys exhaling coils of blue mana smoke into the clouds.
He knelt beneath the tree and unwrapped the bundle. The scythe unfolded like a spine, cracking into form. It was massive, taller than he was, the edge curved like a crescent moon. Veins of red pulsed inside it. Not magic. Memory.
His.
He gripped the handle.
"I'll make them remember him."
He wasn't sure if he meant the kingdom, the cult, the Allseer, or maybe even the gods.
Everyone is a slave to something.
Some to laws. Others to guilt.
I'll chain myself to her memory.
Even if it breaks me.
A voice stirred in his mind—a soft whisper, not entirely his own.
One man army... one mind broken...
He ignored it.
That night, he dreamt of fire.
He stood on a battlefield, grown, taller, cloaked in black. His scythe carved through hundreds. His enemies screamed. Around him stood soldiers—no, reflections of himself. A dozen versions, some weeping, some laughing, some staring coldly at the sky.
She stood at the end of the field.
Eyes full of sorrow. Or was it pity?
He walked to her.
She disappeared.
He woke up with blood dripping from his ears and a sharp pain behind his eyes.
The cost of focus. Of keeping the voices still.
The next day, he stood before the temple of Asael.
He wasn't allowed inside.
Children with no parentage, no faith, and no blessing were not welcome past the gates. The stone walls glowed with runes of repulsion. Behind them, children of proper bloodlines learned to channel their first mana spells, protected by priest-knights and overseers.
He watched through the gate. Memorized the incantations.
He mimicked the hand gestures behind closed doors.
He taught himself to bleed for power.
He never failed to smile when the priests looked his way.
They thought he had accepted his fate.
But I will rise. Alone, if I must.
Let them keep their gods.
I have my own truth.
The scythe whispered in agreement.
That evening, at the edge of the forest, he knelt before the frozen pond.
He stabbed the blade into the earth. The pond cracked. Mist curled upward.
He poured his blood into the reflection.
A face emerged.
His.
And not his.
Another self.
The voice was clearer now.
"You're not alone," it said.
"You have us."
"We are you."
He smiled, for real this time.
"Then let's begin."
The resistance began with whispers.
A dead boy's promise.
A blood-soaked scythe.
And a love he could never hold again.
The first step in a spiral of vengeance.