Umbrael did not crave worship. It craved reflection.
Where light spread itself with proud radiance—building statues, forging legends, illuminating banners that shouted the names of heroes—Umbrael moved in silence. It searched not for the mighty or the bold, but for the broken. The ones who looked at starlight and felt it slipping through their fingers. The ones who had once carried hope like a torch, only to be burned by it.
It was among these shadows that Umbrael chose its first vessel.
His name was Solin—a name nearly lost in time, barely whispered by storytellers who favored stars over silence. Once, Solin was a Cartographer of Flame, tasked with mapping the paths of Lightbearers across the world. He had walked beside them, celebrated their triumphs, even chronicled their dying words.
Until one day, he followed a bearer named Reveth into the charred valley called Ashwake. And only Solin returned.
When he spoke of what happened—that Reveth had chosen not to carry the light, but to release it back into the earth—he was silenced. Branded heretic. Shunned.
In exile, Solin wandered into the Gap Between, a region too twisted by ancient magic for maps to survive. There, amidst saltwind and ruins erased from every tongue, Umbrael found him—not with thunder, but with memory.
At first it came as a voice inside dreams. Then as a shadow that didn't match his steps. Finally, as an obsidian mirror—a surface that reflected not his face, but his truths.
"They made you forget who you were. Let me help you remember."
Solin accepted.
And Umbrael did not grant him powers. It returned to him everything he had denied himself: rage, grief, softness, wonder. Through those, the first Darkshard was born—honed not from hatred, but from remembrance.
Solin walked the world again, now veiled in dusk. He did not burn cities or raise armies. He simply listened. To every bearer who faltered. To every hero who doubted.
And when one Lightbearer laid down her shard beside his feet and whispered, "I am tired of shining alone," he did not judge. He held her hand.
Umbrael had found its voice—and the echo would only grow.
Ready to follow Solin into Chapter 3? We could explore his first meeting with a young Anara—though she doesn't recognize him—or witness the creation of the Second Darkshard: born not of defiance, but forgiveness. The dark has begun its patient work… 🕯️🖤