Long before his name was spoken with fear or reverence, Cyg was simply a child with eyes too pale and a silence too heavy. He grew up in the glacial fortress of Thalven Keep, a citadel perched above an endless sea of ice. The northern winds were unkind, but colder still were the hearts of those who called him kin.
"You will amount to nothing," his father often spat, voice thick with contempt. The Duke of Thalven had expected a son who laughed and dueled and boasted, not a boy who preferred solitude and the study of unfeeling numbers. Cyg never replied. He would only lower his gaze to the flagstones and retreat to the archives, where no one demanded he pretend.
The day the Abyss Emperors came, Cyg was twelve. He sat cross-legged in the scriptorium, tracing a chart of Gaia's ley lines. Outside, bells tolled the alarm, and soldiers rushed through the corridors shouting orders he did not heed. Only when a door slammed open did he lift his eyes.
"Cyg!" His elder brother, Alistair, stood there panting, his face pale. "They're taking hostages—children, mostly—to hold the keep. You have to come."
Cyg blinked slowly. Taking hostages. For an instant, he thought of pleading to be left behind—what did it matter if he vanished into the dark? But something unnameable flickered in his chest, and he rose.
They fled through the halls already shuddering from Cthon's approach. As they neared the main gate, a shape loomed in the corridor: an Abyssal knight, armored in tarnished plates that oozed black mist. Alistair drew his sword with a shaking hand.
"Stay behind me," he hissed.
Cyg stepped past him instead. He looked up at the monstrous helm, studying it with the same detached curiosity he once gave old tomes. When the creature raised its blade, Cyg lifted his hand—instinct, not thought—and the air itself crystallized in a wave of cold so deep the walls screamed as they split. The Abyssal knight froze mid-strike, entombed in clear blue ice.
Alistair gaped. "What…what did you do?"
Cyg lowered his hand and watched the frost creep across the stones. Inside him, the same emptiness remained, but now it felt as though it had found its purpose.
"I don't know," he whispered, "but I think I was born for this."