The wind cut through the trees with a sharp, mournful wail, its icy fingers clawing at Damian's skin as he trudged through the dense forest. The landscape around him was a desolate expanse of grey and brown, a world where life had been dulled into shades of sorrow. The sky was heavy with clouds, its once-blue expanse smothered by the lingering smoke of distant fires—fires that had burned for generations, leaving their mark on both land and soul.
He had walked this path before, though it was never easy. The path was narrow, winding, and treacherous. It led from the small cabin his mother had built with her own hands to the cliffside that overlooked the valley below. There, in the distance, the city of WellBerg sat like a smudge on the horizon—a place from which he had fled as a child, a place that had once been his home.
Damian's heart tightened as he remembered the stories his mother used to tell him. She'd speak of the city with a quiet reverence, a mixture of love and pain, of a life that had been ripped apart by betrayal. She had always warned him about the dangers of returning, but now—now there was no choice. She was gone.
Her death had been slow, a silent sort of fading, as if her body had known long before her spirit that the end was inevitable. The fever had claimed her, but it was the years of fear, of running, of hiding, that had worn her down. In her final days, she had barely spoken, but when she did, her voice was sharp, cutting through the fog of her illness with one last plea: Find your father. Go to WellBerg.
Damian clenched his jaw, fighting the rising swell of grief that threatened to overtake him. She was gone, and now he was alone. There was nothing left for him in this forsaken forest except memories and the burning question she had left him with: Who was his father?
He had spent years convincing himself that the past was irrelevant, that it no longer mattered who his father was or what legacy he had come from. He had been raised by the belief that it was the survival of the fittest, that bloodlines were as dead as the trees that surrounded him. But now, with nothing left to hold him to the life his mother had given him, he found himself on the brink of a revelation that could change everything.
The city loomed closer now, its towering walls beginning to take shape against the dark sky. The scent of metal and stone mixed with the smoke of burning wood, a grim reminder of the wars that had ravaged the land. The city was no longer the bustling center of life it had once been. It had become a fortress of power struggles and corruption, a place where the only law that mattered was the one who could wield the most influence.
Damian paused at the edge of the forest, his heart pounding as he stared at the gates of WellBerg. His breath came in shallow gasps, each step forward a battle against the flood of emotions that rose inside him. This was no longer just about a man he had never met; it was about a legacy—his legacy—that he knew nothing about. And now, it seemed, it was about survival once more.
His father's name had never been mentioned, not once in all the years of his mother's stories. But now, with the note in his pocket, he could not ignore the truth: the answer to who he was—and what he might become—was buried in WellBerg.
Taking a deep breath, Damian stepped forward. His boots crunched softly against the ground, the only sound in a world that had long forgotten peace.
Damian came to a stop at the outer gates of Wellberg, upon requesting entrance, the gates slowly opened. Standing in the middle of the entrance stood one man, glaring down on Damian.
The man slowly approached Damian, wearing casual clothes with a sword at his hip and what looked to be a gun on the other side. He spoke to Damian, "Who are you?"
Damian responded with clarity, even with his emotions boiling inside him, "Damian, sir. I came to find some work."
Damian pounder for several days thinking of ways to get into the city, as it seemed seeking out a man, he never heard of inside a ginormous city seemed silly. So, he just asked for work.
The guard looked Damian up and down and nodded. In an authoritative command he said, "Come in. We always need laborers!"
Damian stood firm, resolved in doing whatever it took to get the answers he felt entitled too.
The guard stopped Damian as he approached him, "Shit, almost forgot, do you have identification on you?"
Damian shook his head, "No, sir."
The guard, exasperated, looks at the nearest guards and yells out, "Get the identification papers ready!" And then points at Damian, "And you, come with me!"
Damian follows closely to the guard as they enter a small room where another guard sits at the table which is in the center of the room. The guards escort Damien to the chair facing the guard who is sitting.
The guard shifts over a small stack of papers to Damian, and commands, "fill these out."
He quickly goes over the papers filling out as much data as he can. The guards look over the papers and then one of them leaves.
A few moments pass before he comes back in with a small card with Damian's information etched on it. He hands the card to Damian, "Now don't lose this and be careful, things are going to be getting pretty heated here."
Taking the ID card Damian stands and thanks the guards.
The guard he met at the gate escorts him out of the small room.
As they moved through the streets of WellBerg, Damian couldn't help but feel the weight of the city pressing down on him. The once-great city had become a shadow of itself, its grand structures now decaying, its streets a grim reflection of the kingdom it had once been.
Damian's heart raced, his mind spinning with the implications of what he was about to face. He had come to find his father, but what he found here could change the course of Warneck's future—and his own. And he wasn't sure yet if he was ready for the game he had just stepped into.
But one thing was certain: there was no turning back now.