LYARA'S POV
They call it Eldorvale.
Foreigners—those rare, shivering souls who stumble in and crawl back out—call it the Wasteland. That name, at least, feels honest. The land isn't empty, but it's… wrong. The kind of wrong that sinks into your bones and makes you feel like you'll never be warm again.
Eldorvale exists because of one thing. Or rather, one corpse.
Azrath, the Void King. The day he was slain—if something like him can ever truly die—his body was left here to rot. His blood spilled into the soil, black as night and hotter than fire. That blood cursed the land and everything in it.
The curse didn't kill. It changed. It twisted. Creatures that had been merely dangerous became monstrous. Others were born from the blood itself, crawling out of the earth with no memory of a life before. Now, almost every living thing in Eldorvale bends to Azrath's will, even in death. His voice threads through their dreams, and his hunger never sleeps.
