The wind carried the scent of iron.
Not rust… but blood.
In the heart of a barren plain, beneath a crimson sky twisted with swirling clouds, stood a barefoot boy. His clothes were torn, soaked in his own blood—and the blood of others. His right hand trembled, not from fear, but from a raw hunger burning through his veins.
Before him lay nine corpses, forming a perfect circle. He stood at its center—silent, motionless, empty.
Each of them had once carried a powerful bloodline.
Now… they belonged to him.
He dropped to his knees, breathing heavily, as a river of red crept beneath him, dragging traces of his sins behind. His once-dull eyes now shimmered with a silver gleam—an early sign of corruption.
Then it appeared.
A shadow, pitch black and formless, emerged before him. The air thickened, the fog darkened. The world itself seemed to recoil, as if trying to flee from its presence.
The shadow didn't speak aloud.
Its voice arrived directly in the boy's mind:
"With every bloodline you claim… you take another step into the abyss."
******
Between four towering black walls, inside a square of total darkness, lay a silence too sharp to forget. No light ever touched this place. The void was absolute.
Chains shifted.
In the deepest corner of the cell—darker than the rest—a child slowly opened his crimson eyes.
"The same dream," he thought, without speaking a word.
Then came a voice—one he had known for years.
It didn't echo.
It invaded.
"Still breathing?… Disappointing."
He didn't flinch. He was long past that.
This voice didn't belong to him, yet somehow… it lived within him.
He sat up slowly. The iron cuffs bit into his wrists. His body ached from disuse, but pain had become an old friend.
He didn't know how long he'd been here. Only that he was born inside this place. And this was no ordinary cell.
There was no bed.
No light slit.
Not even a number on the door.
It lay beneath the earth—beneath the lowest level of the prison.
They called it "the Cell That Must Not Be Remembered."
They said he was cursed.
A child with no bloodline.
Empty.
In a world where power bloomed in blood, where every child awakened to a gift inherited from their ancestors… he had nothing.
Not a flicker.
No glow.
No warmth.
No trace.
Only silence.
And yet, they didn't kill him.
No… they feared him too much for that.
So they chained him.
Fed him through metal slits.
Whispered prayers behind bolted doors—as if his breath alone could poison the world.
But he wasn't hungry anymore.
Hunger was something he had outgrown.
What he felt now wasn't physical.
It was a void.
The kind of void no food could fill— Only truth.
He hadn't been born ordinary.
He knew that.
But he didn't know why.
All he knew…
was that the prison had been a safer choice
than letting him roam free.
He was different.
He felt it.
Even if no one had told him.
Even if he'd never seen the world beyond this darkness.
Because everyone who saw him… feared.
Everyone who touched him… recoiled.
And those who tried to understand him…
fell silent within minutes.
Years ago, a priest in crimson robes entered his cell.
The man held a holy book and said:
"I want to test the purity of your blood, child."
He didn't say much else.
He pricked his finger and let a single drop fall onto the book's page.
The page caught fire.
The priest… ran.
He was never seen again.
And from that day forward, no one ever asked him anything again.
The child flexed his fingers slowly.
The chain groaned.
Sometimes, he didn't feel his hands at all.
Iron lasts longer than skin.
Harder than pulse.
He closed his eyes.
Expecting to see only blackness.
But this time… he saw something else.
A flicker.
A deep crimson light.
So small it could be missed, floating within the void like a whisper no one else could hear.
And then… the voice.
Not the familiar one.
Another.
Deeper.
Slower.
True.
"Zek'arun… The blood hears. But it waits."
He didn't open his eyes. He wasn't surprised.
He had known, for years,that something inside him did not sleep.
Something watched his silence.
Fed on his solitude.
He just… hadn't understood it.
"Waits for what?" he asked.
"For a drop."