The night was too quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but the suffocating silence that felt like a blade pressing against one's throat. Beneath the blood-red moon, the ruins of a city stretched endlessly. Shattered towers leaned against one another like broken ribs, and the air reeked of charred flesh and dust.
In the center of it all, a boy stood alone. His shadow was long, his posture straight, his eyes sharper than the steel of any blade. His name was Raven Arclight.
Raven was seventeen, though the scars across his body made him look older, harder. His gaze held no warmth, no spark of youth — only a chilling emptiness, as if the soul behind those eyes had long been burned away.
The whispers of survivors still echoed in his ears.
"That's him… the cursed one.""He survived when no one else did.""Stay away… his blood calls the monsters."
They were not wrong.
The Birth of a Curse
Years ago, when the Gates first opened across the world, portals of shadows vomiting beasts into human lands, Raven had been nothing more than a child. His family lived in a small village at the edge of the Western Dominion, far from the fortress-cities. Life had been quiet, simple — until the night the Gate opened above them.
The monsters came like a tide. Creatures of bone and fire, their roars splitting the heavens. Men, women, children — all torn apart in seconds. Raven remembered the smell of smoke mixed with blood, the shrieks, the hopeless cries.
But what he remembered most vividly was the fire in his brother's eyes.
His older brother, Cael, had stood against the monsters with nothing but a broken sword. "Run, Raven!" he had shouted, his voice steady even as death loomed. "Don't look back!"
But Raven looked back. He always looked back.
Cael was consumed in flame, his silhouette melting into ash. That moment carved itself into Raven's soul, leaving behind only two things: unbearable silence and unquenchable hatred.
That night, Raven should have died with the others. Instead, something awoke within him. A black fire, silent and cold, surged through his veins. His body trembled, his mind blurred — and when he opened his eyes, the monsters were gone, reduced to smoldering corpses around him.
The survivors didn't call it a miracle. They called it a curse.
The Outsider
Years passed. Villages rebuilt, cities adapted, Hunters rose to fight the creatures of the Gates. But Raven was never welcomed among them. The cursed black fire inside him terrified even the bravest of men. Hunters who once fought alongside him whispered behind his back:
"He's not human.""That flame of his… it devours souls."
Raven didn't deny it. He didn't explain. What was the point? People didn't want the truth — they wanted a reason to hate, to fear. So he gave them silence.
He wandered from city to city, always alone, taking on missions no one else dared accept. Dungeons filled with impossible odds, labyrinths rumored to devour entire guilds — Raven cleared them single-handedly. His blade moved like lightning, his flame reduced even the strongest beasts to nothing but ash.
Yet with every victory, his reputation only grew darker. "The Ash-Born," they called him. "The Harbinger." "The Cursed Hunter."
He didn't care. Titles were meaningless. All Raven cared for was strength — the strength to reach the one truth hidden beyond the chaos of the Gates.
The strength to find who — or what — had stolen his brother from him.
The Vision
On the night of his seventeenth year, Raven entered a dungeon unlike any other. The Gate had appeared within the ruins of an ancient cathedral, its archway pulsating with black mist. Hunters had refused the mission, claiming the air itself screamed of death. Raven accepted without hesitation.
The dungeon was silent at first, its halls stretching endlessly like a tomb. The walls were carved with runes older than the kingdoms themselves. Shadows crawled across the ceiling, whispering words he could not understand.
At the end of the hall, he found a throne of obsidian. Upon it sat no king, no beast — only a mirror.
When Raven gazed into the mirror, he did not see his reflection. He saw a man with the same eyes, the same black fire, seated upon a throne of bones. Behind him stretched a world drowned in darkness.
The figure spoke with a voice that rattled Raven's bones:
"You are my heir. My silence. My vengeance."
Then the vision shattered, and Raven found himself back in the cathedral, his heart pounding, his veins burning hotter than ever. From that day forward, his path was clear.
He was not cursed. He was chosen.
The Dawn of a Storm
The world outside had no idea. To them, Raven remained just another rogue Hunter, a cursed flame to be avoided. But in the shadows, he trained relentlessly. His black fire grew sharper, hungrier. His blade danced with precision born not of talent, but of desperation and fury.
He hunted not only monsters but secrets — fragments of history buried in ruins, whispers of ancient wars, forbidden scriptures. Slowly, a picture began to emerge: the Gates were not accidents, nor were the monsters mere beasts. They were soldiers. Pawns in a war waged across dimensions.
And somewhere within that endless war was the truth about his brother's death.
Raven swore an oath beneath the blood-red moon:
He would not stop until the Gates were shattered.He would not stop until the world that had stolen everything from him was burned to ash.He would not stop until silence itself screamed.
The Gathering Storm
The prologue of Raven Arclight's tale is not of triumph, nor of glory. It is of ashes and silence.
But the silence before a storm is always the loudest.
When the first city falls, when the first army of shadows marches, when the world realizes too late what has been born among them — they will remember the boy who walked alone beneath the blood-red moon.
They will remember his name.
Raven Arclight.The Ash-Born.The Shadow's Heir.
And they will tremble.