The battlefield was silent, save for the rain.
Kael Ardyn staggered through the mud, his breath shallow, every step dragging like he carried a corpse on his back. In truth, he carried the memory of many. His team was gone—torn apart in minutes, their screams already swallowed by the night.
The beasts had come without warning, shadows streaking out of the Abyssal Rift, faster than thought, hungrier than fire. His comrades had fought, had bled, had died. Kael had only survived because he had hidden beneath their corpses when the tide of monsters swept over them.
Cowardice had saved him where courage had failed the others.
But now the Rift pulsed still, a gaping wound in the world, leaking violet light that turned the air heavy. From its depths came whispers, clawing at his mind, dragging him toward madness.
He collapsed against a shattered stone, vision blurring. His chest burned from a claw mark that refused to heal. His blade lay broken in the muck, as useless as he was.
"Am I… the last?" he rasped, voice drowned by the storm.
The answer came not from heaven, nor man—but from the ground beneath him.
A shard of obsidian, slick with unnatural light, pulsed where the blood ran thickest. It shaped itself like an eye, unblinking, staring into him.
The whispers surged.
*—Do you want to live?*
Kael's body shook. The Rift's monsters prowled closer, circling. His teammates' corpses littered the mud, eyes glassy, blood steaming in the unnatural cold. He knew he would be next.
Unless…
His hand moved of its own will, clutching the shard.
The world shattered.
Pain screamed through his veins as black fire raced beneath his skin. He fell back, convulsing, as the shard drilled itself into his chest. His blood boiled, then cooled, then changed. He felt something rip from the nearest beast—a thread of essence, a sliver of power.
It slammed into him, searing itself into his very marrow.
The monster shrieked, its body crumbling into ash. But Kael rose, the wound on his chest knitting closed, his eyes glowing faint red in the stormlight.
He looked at his trembling hands, then at the field of corpses around him.
*—Feed me, and I will make you eternal.*
The Eye whispered again, hungrier now.
Kael exhaled, his fear burned away, leaving only a cold, searing will. His clan was already dust. His comrades already rotting. Nothing tied him down. Nothing bound him.
"Then I'll take everything," he muttered, voice as sharp as a blade. "The strength of beasts, the talents of men, the legacies of the fallen… If bloodlines define fate, I'll make mine the graveyard of every bloodline in existence."
The Eye pulsed, sealing the pact.
And in the ruin of death and rain, Kael Ardyn was reborn.