It had been three weeks since the last light truly touched Asael's Vigil. The clouds hadn't parted, and the violet haze clung to the mountain village like grief refusing to lift. The amethyst crystals, once refracting every passing sunbeam into a dance of radiant color, now pulsed only with residual mana—a slow, somber heartbeat.
He walked the streets unnoticed. Not because he was stealthy, but because he was forgettable. Or perhaps people just learned not to meet his eyes anymore. When they did, they saw something unsettling—an intensity wrapped in apathy, like a blade sheathed in velvet but pointed inward.
He kept his scythe hidden.
People in the village had started calling him "The shade of Gaelus."
At first, it hurt. Then he took comfort in it.
He was the shadow of someone noble. That meant he could do what nobility could not.
His body was changing. His aura frayed at the edges like parchment too often burnt by candlelight. Every spell he cast, every drop of blood he manipulated—it was all getting easier. Too easy. And that frightened him more than it thrilled him.
His first test came without warning.
A knight—drunk, arrogant, and armored in arrogance rather than steel—confronted him near the well.
"You. Boy," the knight slurred, placing a gauntlet on the boy's shoulder. "You look like you're hiding something."
He said nothing.
"I said, speak."
He smiled politely. "You said enough for both of us."
Then, a blink. A flick. The knight staggered back, not realizing his blade arm was bleeding until the crimson splatter hit the cobblestones.
He had cut him. Just a shallow wound. Just enough.
The blood floated in the air like it had purpose.
"Don't. Ever. Touch me," the boy whispered, stepping away, his scythe unformed, his fingers twitching with stored will.
People watched. No one spoke. The knight didn't pursue.
He wasn't famous.
He was feared.
That night, he returned to the edge of the Vigil, where the ruins of his father's home still stood. He sat on the remnants of the threshold, now a broken arch framing a view of the mountainside.
He pulled out his blood-vials, held each one to the starlight. Each had a purpose. Some to bind. Some to burn. Some to preserve.
Each one a fragment of his war.
He didn't hear the voice at first.
"You always talk to your vials, or just tonight?"
The girl. The only one who ever laughed without fear around him. The one he thought was gone.
"You're back," he said.
"Were you waiting for me?"
"No," he lied.
She sat beside him. Not close enough to touch, but closer than anyone else dared.
"You hurt a knight today."
"He hurt himself."
She stared at the blood glinting in his palm.
"Your father wouldn't want this."
"My father is dead."
The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was necessary.
She didn't argue. She never did. She just let him exist without judgement.
He wanted to hate her for it.
He couldn't.
Later that week, he left Asael's Vigil.
Not with a declaration, or even a note. Just a whisper of mana and the hush of wind as he crossed the barrier warding the Vigil from the rest of Thalrador.
The mountains were cruel in the dark. But he was crueler.
By the third night, he reached the outskirts of Azkaris.
The City of Unseen Chains.
His mana flared the moment he stepped near. The illusions began instantly. Faces shifting in windows, voices in his mind whispering doubts he already believed.
He walked through them like they were fog.
He found an inn with no name, paid with a drop of blood that shimmered too brightly to be mere currency. The keeper bowed without asking his name.
That night, he dreamt.
Of a hundred voices calling him commander.
Of a girl whose face he could no longer remember.
Of chains breaking, not from rebellion—but because they were never real.
The cult began the next morning.
A boy with no name but whispers, who bled for magic, who spoke in half-truths and promises wrapped in grief.
He found the ones who had nothing left.
Runaways. Orphans. Failed knights. Disgraced mages.
He didn't offer them redemption.
He offered them purpose.
He told them, "We are the cracks in the mirror. We reflect the parts they want to forget."
And they believed him.
Even if they were only ever figments of his fractured self.
He trained them.
Taught them aura control, blood magic manipulation, battle tactics warped by cruelty and necessity.
He whispered their names into the wind, and it answered.
They weren't real.
But they were loyal.
One morning, the girl appeared in his dream.
"They aren't real," she said, eyes like judgment, voice like mourning.
"Neither are you," he replied.
She smiled. "Does it matter?"
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
Because she was right.
He began striking supply convoys.
Stealing weapons, relics, vials of pure mana.
His name became myth. Some called him the Blood Revenant. Others, the Crimson Commander.
But none saw his face.
None realized he was alone.
Until the day they captured one of his followers.
And there was no one to interrogate.
Just a cloak, soaked in blood, shaped like a man.
He returned to Asael's Vigil after a year.
No one recognized him.
He stood at the same well where he had once cut a knight, now clean and calm.
The girl was there.
He didn't approach.
She looked at him.
"You're him."
He said nothing.
"You did all of it alone, didn't you?"
Still silence.
She walked toward him, slowly.
"Why?"
He looked up. Eyes hollow. Smile polite.
"Because I thought I had to."
She reached out to touch his face.
He flinched.
Not from her.
But from the realization.
He couldn't remember her name anymore.
He turned away.
And the crystals around the well shimmered softly, weeping mana like tears.
He left again.
Some say the resistance still grows. Others say it was always one man.
A one-man army.
A boy who bled too much and loved too hard.
Who lost everyone.
Including himself.