Year 928 of the White Flame Calendar. Sealed transcript from the Archives of Arcaen Hollow.—Copied from the last writings of High Seer Malrek Varn, executed for treason against the Order of Purity.
"There are beasts beneath the skin of men.""Some whisper. Some slumber. And some… remember."
I was ten when I saw my first Beastbinder—a woman cloaked in bones, her eyes glowing violet, her breath steaming in the snow though the day was warm. She called lightning to her fingertips, and wolves leapt from her shadow.
They tore through an entire platoon before vanishing into the mountain mist.
We were told she was a demon.
But that was a lie.
Beastbinding is not evil.
It is primordial.
It predates the Flame. It predates the gods you worship.
Before cities rose, before man carved his name into stone, there were Ancients—not kings, not priests, but those who bound themselves to the essence of creation.
They did not summon beasts.They became them.
Dragons with human eyes.Stags with voices that sang in dreams.Wolves with memories older than time.
And with them came power beyond comprehension—but also cost.
The early binders did not tame their beasts.They were devoured by them.
Mad kings. Flesh-changers. Soul-twisted monsters.Thus came the wars. The purges. The great silence.
And from the ashes rose the Order of Purity.
The Order preaches cleansing, unity, and divine flame. But behind their golden symbols are archives blackened with ink and blood. They know the truth.
They fear it.
So they hunt binders.
They teach children that beasts are sin made flesh.
They brand those born with affinity marks—a silver ring around the pupil, or a whisper in the blood. They bury those who resist beneath churches built on leylines, the energy veins of the world.
They steal beast cores—crystallized power left behind by slain familiars—and use them to power their holy relics, their engines, their false miracles.
But binding is returning.
The signs are clear:
Nightbeasts howling in daylight.
Totem stones bleeding when the moon rises.
Children born with the scent of shadow in their breath.
And then there is the prophecy.
📜 The Seven-Blooded Reign
"He will crawl from the pit not as a man, but as a vessel of old wrath.""He will speak with the voice of a beast and walk where no god dares tread.""He will bind the first seven and unchain the Eighth.""And when the chains break, the world shall remember what it is to be hunted."
Cain.
If that is his name, then he is the first echo of what we buried. The first howl of a coming storm.
You will try to kill him. You will fail.
He will not come as your savior.
He will come as your reckoning.
These words were found carved into Malrek Varn's cell wall in blood, three days after his execution. His body was never recovered.