CHAPTER 1:THE RED BANE
The room was small. Moonlight poured through the crooked wooden window, laced with dust and frost, painting the pale walls in silver and sorrow. A faint draught slid in through the cracks.
Siah sat hunched at a crooked desk pressed against the stone wall. The chair beneath him groaned with every shift of his legs, his elbows resting beside a crumpled piece of parchment already ruined by ink smears and frustration. His fountain pen trembled in his fingers, casting long shadows over the blank page.
Behind him, on the bottom bunk of the old, rusting bed frame, his brother Theal lay dozing, one hand loosely wrapped around a cloth-draped blade, still gleaming from his last stroke. His black hair spilling over his pillow like oil, his blood-red eyes gleaming faintly in the dark like twin embers
Siah glanced at him, then turned back to the parchment. His heart thudded in his ears. Sixteen years of wondering what it would be like to write to you.
He dipped the nib of the pen in ink again, tapping the edge gently.
The silence was unbearable.
"Mother?"
Too stiff.
"To the Red Bane?"
No.
He pressed the tip of the pen down—and stopped.
He tore the parchment in half, crumpled it, and let it drop to the floor beside the last two attempts.
His hand trembled.
Why was it so difficult?
The moonlight had shifted by now. He inhaled deeply, steadying the rush of nerves in his chest, then reached for a fresh sheet.
Mother,
I recently had a fortuitous encounter.
My dream to free you is now within reach.
Before now, I couldn't write to you—not because I didn't want to, but because I was too weak. My words would've been hollow, my promises meaningless.
Now, I can bear your burdens.
Those around me loathe you.
Father and Theal want nothing to do with you.
It's said that my blood-red hair and eyes mirror yours—a stain that reminds the village of your vile deeds.
The empire calls you the Red Bane.
The Eidolon Pantheon marked you as an eternal sinner.
Theal seeks to restore the village's honor—to erase what they call your stain. He graduated from the Academy. He's a Squire now, sworn to the Blood Covenants—the knight order of the Empire that hurt you. When he becomes a Knight, he will be bestowed with Stillness and break the restraints of mortality. He's the most skilled swordsman and fighter of this generation. I envy his talent.
But he has no interest in freeing you. In fact, he wants to kill you.
I had nothing going for me.
But now—because of the fortuitous encounter— I have completed the required sacrifices to the mysterious spirit.
Soon I will obtain stillness.
When I free you we will bring the great Empires who punished you to heel.
Your sword and crown,
Siah
He put the pen down, jumping on the top bunk of the bed into his sheets laid his head on the pillow.
The air was thick and cold. A murky void stretched in every direction, an endless black sea. Silence reigned, until a voice — faint and chilling — whispered through the dark.
"O, what dread forge hath shaped so cruel a beast?"
Siah spun on his heel, trying to pin the source of the voice. It felt as if it had brushed against his very thoughts, not his ears.
"What's with this darkness… I must be having a nightmare," he muttered, holding out his hands. His feet felt no ground beneath him, yet he stood.
"This is no dream... Perhaps the spirits I fed now claw at my soul." he thought, uneasy. "I did commit atrocious acts… for the sacrifice."
A deeper voice answered him — smooth, yet ancient — vibrating with a timbre that seemed to stir the marrow in his bones.
"What dost thou yearn for?"
Siah's breath caught in his throat. He looked around frantically, his chest tightening. Nothing but darkness.
"I must be possessed… or haunted by the evil spirits I sacrificed to," he said, yet the words fell dead against the void.
"Thou bid'st me hither, yet Art blind."
The voice was closer now. It didn't echo — it wrapped itself around him, a whisper beneath his skin. Siah grunted and pinched his cheek, hard. A sharp pain stung his cheek.
"It seems I can't wake from this nightmare …" he muttered. "Show yourself!"
Just as despair began to gnaw at him, a figure emerged from the dark.
At first, it was a smear in the shadows. Then it sharpened — tall, statuesque, and grotesquely beautiful. His face was long and unnaturally precise, carved like the bust of a forgotten god. His cheekbones jutted like blades, severe and sunken, lending him a skeletal elegance that bordered on the divine.
His skin — ashen-gray, smooth like polished stone — held the hue of moonlight dipped in soot. From his brow and temples rose jagged horns, black as voidfire. They twisted in broken symmetry, curling inward and downward, forming a crown made not of bone — but of black shards.
Amber eyes glowed with vertical and narrow pupils from beneath the obsidian crown, burning with unnatural life. His thin lips were cracked at the corners, vein-like fractures crawling outward like the roots of a dying tree. His armor, if it could be called that, was alive — jagged red scales protruded from his body, shifting slightly, as if breathing.
Siah's face paled. His words came out barely above a whisper. "You… you're not a human spirit… What kind of evil spirit are you?"
The figure said nothing at first. He raised his hand slowly, and though distance lay between them, his palm pressed firmly against Siah's chest — the space between them was no more.
"I am KUSHIM, the guest thou didst receive with open heart."
Siah stumbled back, his breath ragged. He hadn't stepped — he had flinched.
"Thy mind do stray far from the man thou art."
A chill sank into Siah's spine, anchoring deep in his soul.
"Thou hast chosen a path of sacrifice; 't shall prove both grievous and gladsome."
Those words struck him in the center of his being. His frown deepened.
"You're not human…" he muttered, voice trembling. "You… can't be."
He tried again to wake himself — to will his body from the dream — but nothing changed.
"Ere ever the mortal realm drew breath, I stood 'against the father of thy kind."
Siah drew a long, shaky breath. His fingers stopped trembling. Some part of him — curious, hungry — steadied.
"So… you're a Critten… from the First Rishon?" he asked. "What should I do… to become a Stillness… to obtain power?"
Kushim turned his back to him, walking calmly into the dark. His form dissolved like smoke.
"Thou know'st not the snare wherein thou art. Yet thy nature is laid bare — thou hold'st the makings to fulfill mine ends."
Siah lunged after him, driven now by something deeper than fear — a rising pulse of longing. But the darkness swallowed Kushim whole. Only his voice remained, echoing.
"Mark well my prophecies and do as thou art bidden. Thy will shall be wrought upon this Civilization."
Siah jolted awake, drenched in sweat, his breath shallow and quick.
The dim moonlight dripped through the window like silver blood. The room was silent save for the soft breathing of his brother, Theal, asleep on the bottom bunk, undisturbed.
Siah stared at the ceiling for a long time.
The cold nightmare clung to his skin.
He touched his chest, still cold where Kushim had laid his palm.