The scent of blood lingered in the cold night air, not merely as an olfactory presence but as a memory made manifest—copper and salt intertwining like old friends reunited after a long absence.
A body twitched on the damp ground, each labored breath a diminishing argument against the inevitable. The flickering lanterns lining the alleyway cast long, dying shadows across the cobblestone streets, their light fragmenting against the darkness like shattered prayers. Amidst this chiaroscuro tableau stood a lone figure—a specter clad in a long, dark coat, his hair slick with sweat and the crimson confession of violence.
Lucien Valefor slowly withdrew his blade from the man's chest, the steel singing a soft, wet hymn as it emerged. The dying noble, his face a canvas of disbelief, grasped weakly at Lucien's sleeve, his eyes harboring questions that his lips could barely frame.
"You... You're supposed to be dead..." he choked, blood bubbling from his lips like dark wine from an overturned chalice.
Lucien regarded him with a stillness that spoke of winters endured in solitude. "Death is not what men believe it to be," he said softly, almost tenderly. "It is not an ending, but a transformation—a moment when one self is shed so another might emerge." He tilted his head slightly, studying the noble's fading light. "Then what does that make you?"
The question lingered unanswered as Lucien wiped his blade clean against the noble's cloak—a final intimacy between executioner and condemned. He stepped back with quiet reverence, allowing the body to slump lifelessly into the filth-ridden street. The night remained still—a congregation of shadows bearing silent witness to his communion with vengeance.
"Seven years," he whispered to the darkness, as if confiding in an old companion. "Seven turns of the seasons while I dwelled in the underworld of memory and pain."
It had been seven years since the night his world had not merely crumbled but had been methodically dismantled, brick by privileged brick. Seven years since his father's empire was torn apart by the architecture of betrayal. Seven years since he had been thrown into the abyss, left to rot in a nameless prison at the bottom of the world—a place where time ceased to flow and instead pooled like stagnant water.
Yet, in that terrible stillness, he had found something unexpected: himself.
"We are never more truthful than when we believe we are forgotten," he murmured, his words vanishing into the night like smoke. "Stripped of pretense, we finally see the reflection that has always been there."
Lucien walked calmly through the city's underbelly, his gait deliberate and unhurried. The capital had changed, yet remained fundamentally the same—a different mask worn over the same corrupt face. The once-proud banners of his house had been stripped from the walls, replaced with the sigils of usurpers who understood power but not the responsibility it conferred.
"They adorned themselves with the trappings of nobility without comprehending its essence," he thought, studying the new architecture of authority that surrounded him. "They collect titles like trinkets, not realizing each is a promise written in blood."
The streets, once bustling with genuine nobility, now teemed with figures who had mistaken cruelty for strength and greed for ambition—maggot-ridden power-hungry parasites wearing crowns they had neither earned nor deserved.
He paused at a crossroads, letting the thought form fully in his mind: "Thrones built on stolen blood crumble faster than they rise. Not because of some cosmic justice, but because those who steal power rarely understand the foundations that must support it."
He turned a corner, stopping at a decrepit wooden door that seemed to lean against the night as if for support. Behind it lay The Black Thorn, an establishment where secrets were currency and men whispered of things they dared not acknowledge even to themselves. Here, truth was both commodity and contaminant.
Lucien knocked twice—not a request but a statement. A small slit in the door slid open, revealing a pair of beady eyes that widened slightly in the dim light.
"No business with beggars," the voice sneered, though uncertainty threaded through the practiced disdain.
Lucien lifted his hand, revealing a single ring—the insignia of House Valefor. Not merely a symbol of status, but a tangible reminder that some legacies refuse the grave. The doorkeeper's breath caught in his throat, recognition dawning like a cold sunrise.
"I-Impossible..."
Lucien did not smile so much as acknowledge the inevitability of this moment. "Impossibility is merely the refuge of limited imagination," he said quietly. "Open the door."
The heavy iron locks yielded with reluctant clicks, and the door creaked open—a threshold between his past and the future he would craft from the ruins of betrayal. The scent of cheap ale and desperation greeted him, familiar yet strange, like returning to a childhood home now occupied by strangers.
As he stepped inside, Lucien felt the weight of eyes upon him—curious, fearful, disbelieving. He welcomed their scrutiny, for in their recognition lay the first threads of the tapestry he would weave.
"The game has begun," he thought, not with triumph but with the solemn acknowledgment of a pilgrimage resumed after long pause. "Not a game of thrones or power, but of truth—of forcing this world to face what it has become in my absence."
He moved through the tavern like a shadow given purpose, each step a declaration: He would burn this world to the ground before he lost again—not out of spite or vengeance, but because some corruptions run too deep for reformation. Some gardens bloom most vibrantly after fire has purged the soil of ailments no medicine could cure.