Kael'Vorn walked alone, cloaked in black, his boots brushing against the cracked earth as the road led him ever southward—towards the forsaken lands of Dour-Elheim.
The sky above was forever gray. Even as the days passed, no sunlight pierced through the veil of ash-colored clouds. Along the way, whispers drifted through every village, every traveler's camp, every flickering tavern candle:
"Dour-Elheim is cursed."
Once, it was a jewel of the southern realm—a land of gold-laced harvests, of bards and bountiful markets, nestled under the proud rule of Aeclipsar, the sovereign of the great continent of Tellanor. Its rivers glimmered, and its people thrived. But then, the decay began.
Kael heard the tale more than once.
The people's wealth vanished—not stolen, simply… gone. Fortunes turned to dust. Bread disappeared from tables, then the tables themselves collapsed. One by one, the people starved, wept, withered. No one knew if it was a curse, a punishment, or something far worse. And in the midst of the rot, a witch arrived—or perhaps had always been there.
She made no grand entrance. She simply was, like death beneath the skin.
Some said the land had drawn her in, as a corpse calls to carrion. Others claimed it was her who had consumed the land, draining the joy, the green, and the light from Dour-Elheim until only despair remained.
The rumors festered, until they reached the ears of the Aeclipsar himself.
Enraged, he dispatched a thousand Virelen warriors, silver-clad defenders of the continent, blessed by ancient rites and feared even by demons. They marched without hesitation to Dour-Elheim, determined to cleanse it by blade and flame.
But they never returned.
The moment the Virelen set foot upon the cursed soil, their bodies betrayed them. Blood erupted from their eyes, their ears, their mouths. Screams turned to gurgles. Even the strongest among them—the Glave-Bearer of Westreach—fell to his knees, choking on his own soul.
In minutes, the thousand had perished.
Dour-Elheim became a land soaked in warrior blood, its soil forever blackened. No army has dared approach it since. The Aeclipsar sealed its name from his tongue and struck it from maps. He called it not a land, but a "void that should never have been."
As Kael'Vorn listened to these tales, one truth pulsed louder than the rest:
"Only an Azurhein could do such a thing."
His journey was no longer just curiosity. If what they said was true—if such destruction was possible—then perhaps it was what he had been searching for.
And so, with the wind cold at his back and whispers hounding his steps, Kael'Vorn continued walking into the land the world had tried to forget.
Kael'Vorn approached the desolate borders of Dour-Elheim, the forbidden land where even legends were silenced. A thick, suffocating pressure bore down on him like a curse meant to break the mind and crush the soul.
But it faltered.
A crimson glow shimmered faintly beneath Kael's armor as Velmorith, one of his Azurhein spirits bound within him, whispered through his veins. A master of curses and mental dominion, Velmorith had already woven a shield within Kael's mind, rendering the curse useless. The moment the enchantment struck, it shattered like glass against obsidian.
"An Azurhein must dwell here," Kael thought.
His red eyes sharpened, not with fear—but recognition.
As he stepped into Dour-Elheim, death itself seemed to crawl. The land was blackened, twisted. Trees stood dead, like monuments of forgotten pain. The ground was painted crimson—fresh blood soaking into cursed soil—yet the bodies littered across the field were mummified, as though drained and decaying for decades. Thousands must have perished, and yet the blood was still warm.
It was not death that ruled here. It was something worse.
Through the stillness, Kael spotted movement—an old woman dragging a body swaddled in white cloth. She was barely more than bone herself, fragile and frail, yet moved with desperate strength. When her eyes met Kael's towering, cloaked form, she froze. At first, she took him for a Virelen, but his black armor didn't carry their cursed sigils. His skin was too pale, his presence too still. And those eyes—red as a dying sun.
The old woman fell to her knees, then bowed—her head pressing against blood-soaked soil, bones shaking from the effort.
Before she could speak, Kael'Vorn's cold voice cut through the silence.
"I am no noble. No warrior of the Aeclipsar. I am merely a mercenary."
Disappointment flickered across the old woman's face.
"Oh… so you are not here to save us," she whispered, her voice cracked with sorrow.
Kael read the grief in her sunken eyes. She had hoped.
"Then how did you step here and remain whole? Even warriors died the moment they crossed the threshold."
Kael stared down at her, his voice unwavering.
"Then how are you still alive?"
The old woman's face turned hollow.
"We are not truly alive," she said, her voice shaking. "The people of Dour-Elheim were not dying. That was a lie.
We are decaying. Slowly. Painfully. Day by day. We no longer die—but we never truly live. We breathe. We rot. We scream. But we do not die."
With trembling hands, she pulled away the white cloth. Beneath it lay a boy—skinless in places, his eyes long gone, ears and nose eaten away. His hands were nearly bone, his feet crumbling. Yet he breathed.
Barely.
A faint, pitiful cry escaped his ruined mouth—half-sobbing, half-gurgling.
The woman wept.
"This is my son. I tried to end it... I stabbed him once. He lived. I stabbed him again—he screamed louder.
The blade cannot free us. Only worsens the pain."
Her sobs shook the air.
Kael'Vorn stood silent. The curse on this land wasn't just magic—it was a design. A torment.
"Are there more?" he asked, his tone low but steady.
"Yes… hundreds. In hiding. Waiting to die… but never able to."
She looked at him through her tears, pleading.
"Will you help us? Will you end this suffering?"
Kael's eyes narrowed, glowing faintly like smoldering coals.
"Take me to them. I will find a way."
The woman stared at him as if daring to hope.
Then, wordless, she rose—dragging her son's still-breathing body behind—and led him deeper into the land where death was forbidden.