The wind tore through the skeletal ruins, carrying with it the scent of ash, dust, and something older—something that smelled of secrets long buried. Kael crouched behind the toppled remains of a crumbling wall, eyes scanning the horizon with the careful calculation of someone who had learned to survive among the dead and the forgotten.
The Shattered Lands were no place for the weak. Only the cunning, the cruel, or the lucky survived here. Kael was none of the first two—but luck had a way of favoring those who understood danger.
His fingers brushed over the hilt of a rusted dagger strapped to his side. Hunger clawed at him, gnawed at his bones like a relentless parasite. But he had learned long ago that desperation was a luxury he could not afford. Survival demanded patience. Observation. Sometimes, it demanded cruelty.
As he moved through the rubble, something unusual caught his eye. Beneath a pile of shattered stones, a faint pulse of silver light shimmered like the heartbeat of the earth itself. Curiosity pricked at him. Danger and opportunity often came hand in hand—and Kael had always been drawn to opportunity.
He knelt and swept the stones aside. There it was: a dark, polished stone veined with silver, pulsing faintly, almost imperceptibly. The air around it felt heavier, charged, as if the ruins themselves were holding their breath.
Kael reached out, fingers trembling—not from fear, but from something far older, a recognition that his life was about to change.
The moment he touched it, a chill ran through him, deep and invasive. And then came the voice.
"Finally… you see me."
Kael jerked back, heart hammering. The voice was not loud; it did not need to be. It was inside him, intimate, probing, a shadow brushing along the edges of his mind.
"What… who's there?" he demanded, though the sound of his own voice felt strange, distant.
"I am Nyxar. The truth you refuse to see… lies within your grasp."
Kael's mind raced. He had heard rumors of relics before—artifacts left behind by the fallen gods, fragments of their power, often deadly to the touch. But this… this pulse, this energy, it promised something more than survival. It promised power.
He hesitated. Every instinct screamed to leave it alone. Yet every scar on his body, every night spent shivering in these ruins, every betrayal, every humiliation, pushed him forward.
He grasped the stone fully. Darkness flowed along his veins, sharp and cold, like ice melting in fire. A vision struck him suddenly: a world layered in lies, faces of friends and enemies blurring together, truth bleeding into falsehood until nothing was certain.
"You are mine… or I am yours. Choose wisely," whispered the voice, silky and cold.
Kael staggered back, clutching the stone, breath uneven. His reflection in a pool of stagnant water trembled back at him—but it was wrong. The light in his eyes flickered, shadows twisting just beneath the surface. Something ancient stirred inside him.
The wind carried distant echoes: footsteps, soft but deliberate. Mercenaries. Hunters. Survivors, perhaps. Kael tightened his grip on the stone, dagger in the other hand. He could run, he could hide—but he knew better. Survival was more than fleeing; it was taking control of what you could.
"I will not be yours," he whispered under his breath.
"We shall see," Nyxar murmured, and the voice pressed closer, weaving through his thoughts, teasing, promising, questioning.
Kael swallowed hard. He could feel it now—the pull, subtle but insistent. The voice offered knowledge, power, revenge, freedom from the harshness of the world… all at a cost he did not yet understand.
He looked at the ruins around him. Broken walls, twisted metal, ash-choked skies. This world had never cared for him. Maybe it was time he learned to care for himself, no matter the cost.
And somewhere, deep inside him, a whisper promised:
"Welcome to the truth, Kael… welcome to the damned."
A distant scream cut through the wind. Something was coming. Kael squared his shoulders, tightened his grip, and stepped forward into the shadows of the Shattered Lands. The game had begun.