Karos awoke in the Echohold to the soft hum of time-charged wards. Silver runes pulsed along the walls like the heartbeat of a sleeping god, and the floating hourglass at the room's center cast strange shadows that moved against the light.
He had dreamt again—a mountain fortress swallowed by snow; of titans made of brass and bone; of blood on frozen stone. But most vividly, he dreamt of home.
Karos Belfier was born among the Stormpeak Goliaths, a nomadic tribe hardened by the brutal elements of the mountain tundra. From an early age, he had proven himself a fierce warrior, excelling in contests of strength and endurance. The cold bit others like wolves; Karos embraced it like a brother.
He'd once thought the mountains unshakable. Eternal. But fate was a crueler storm than any winter.
Everything changed the day the sky cracked open.
The Time Breach that tore across the Stormpeak Range had been unlike anything the world had ever seen—a jagged wound in the heavens pouring chaos into the mortal realm. From the rift came creatures that defied all reason and rule: primordial behemoths, twisted aberrations, clockwork horrors that hissed and clicked with language older than stars.
The Goliaths fought. Gods, they fought but their axes and strength meant little against things that slipped between seconds or screamed in voices from futures that never came to pass.
Karos lost everything in the first wave—his people, his friends, and his mentor: Thalgar Stoneward, the elder warrior who had carved his name into the mountain winds.
But Karos did not flee.
He rose.
Wielding the blade he had recovered from his mentor—a black iron, two handed great sword carved with storm-runes—he led the last of his kin through their final stand, a story that would become the legend known as The Final Gale. He learned as he fought, the muscles memorizing the riftspawns movements as his body reacted, his brute strength matching their tempo, adapting to their chaotic nature. He severed clockwork limbs; He crushed bones of beasts that hadn't yet existed; And in the heart of one breach, as the sky rippled above him and time buckled, something woke inside him.
He became something more.
For now, he wielded scavenged weapons; an axe humming with the unstable tempo of a fractured timeline and a shield that flickered between bronze and bone. He was silently kicking himself for leaving his great sword behind now that he so desperate needed it; often times he would stare into the blade, able to hear the wisdom of his master echoing in its cold blackened steel but he did not have that comfort now. He did not care for the speculation of mages or the questions of scholars. Let them draw their glyphs and measure the flow of time like water from a jar.
Now, seated in the Echohold's armory beneath a skylight of ever-shifting glass, Karos examined his weapons. Each one had a story. He traced the edge of his axe and felt the tension in the air.
A new breach was forming. He could sense it as the Anchor pulsed around his neck— rhythmic pulses like a thunderstorm that hadn't yet come to pass.
Lysaria entered the chamber, armored and solemn. She didn't speak at first. She simply watched him, as if seeing him not for who he was now—but for who he would become.
"There's a ripple in the Valean Marshlands," she finally said. "We intercepted a vision: a spire of glass rising from the water, surrounded by corpses walking backward into life."
Karos stood. No hesitation. No questions.
"Then it's already begun."
"Let me come with you," Lysaria said, stepping closer. "There are others we can call. We—"
"I walk alone because I must," Karos interrupted. "The Rift Reapers won't wait for councils."
Lysaria studied him. "You've seen something again, haven't you?"
Karos paused, then nodded. "A future where everything burns. Where I'm the last one left."
"And you still want to go alone?"
He met her gaze, calm and cold as the mountains that birthed him. "They don't belong in this world. And as long as I draw breath…"
He slung his newfound weapons across his back, the runes along the axe's edge pulsed in sync with the Anchor on his chest.
"…I'll be their executioner."
With that, the now fully awakened Voidwalker began his slow and arduous journey, ready to carve his legend across the shattered years. But unbeknownst to him, he would soon find there are more than just breaches to deal with.