PROLOGUE: A PRELUDE TO MADNESS AND BLOOD
Ellywe: Ød'vath Aia Mín Aθin'ea
The air in Ichor was thick with the scent of death, not the fresh tang of recent battles but an ancient reek that clung to the earth as though refusing to dissipate. Jagged remnants of what were once towering spires jutted upward, their cracked surfaces etched with half-legible runes that told forgotten stories. The sky hung low and grey, a lifeless canopy that offered neither warmth nor light, leaving the ruins cast in perpetual twilight. A lone wanderer moved through the devastation, each step stirring ash and dust that danced in lazy spirals before settling again. Beneath the hush, he could sense the city's unspoken condemnation, a silent judgment from the bones of a once-revered metropolis. His breath caught in a soft rasp, and he murmured in Ellywe, "Elthára mýnn," which meant "All is undone," letting the words echo across rubble-littered streets. Something within the darkness seemed to respond with a faint hiss, as though acknowledging his presence and daring him to press on.
He recalled how the annals spoke of Ichor as a beacon of divinity, a place where mortal devotion once shaped miracles, yet now it lay gutted by the Great Reset's mute verdict. Blackened altars, toppled statues, and broken mosaics hinted at a grand tapestry of worship unravelled by forces beyond mortal ken. In the shadows, creeping abominations lingered: the Akelastos—Ør'syntha, fused flesh and bone leaking tar-like fluids, and the Pyrehearts—Yr'vaskehn, whose half-burned torsos smouldered in an endless cycle of torment. Farther afield, he glimpsed silhouettes of the robed Drekk'hæn, wax-veiled faces bent in perpetual prayer or condemnation, though he could not say which. A quiet voice in the back of his mind urged him to unsheathe his blade, to end these twisted remnants before they ended him, but he swallowed that urge with iron resolve. "Þarnúm di söll," he growled—"Silence your spite"—addressing the unwelcome fervour rising in his thoughts. Even as the wind carried the stench of rot and old ashes past his nostrils, he knew the fragile calm would soon shatter beneath something far more terrible.
His head pounded with echoes of a memory he could barely recall: a temple ablaze, a voice calling out a name he could not quite hear, and warm blood trickling over his trembling fingers. A second voice within him—distant and pleading—clashed with another more savage, demanding violence and carnage to fill the void. He paused at a colossal archway, half collapsed and coated in black soot, peering into the courtyard beyond where bones crunched underfoot like brittle twigs. "I'm still here," he murmured, uncertain if he spoke to the phantoms of his past or the creatures lurking in the gloom. A strangled hiss from behind a fallen column rattled through the silence, prompting the shriller voice in his mind to shriek, Kill them now, or they will kill you. Yet he held himself steady, refusing to draw his blade, though his grip trembled over its hilt. For a moment, he thought he caught the shape of a figure—gaunt and hollow-eyed—peering around the rubble, then it vanished as though devoured by the shadows themselves.
The ground quivered beneath his boots, and a resonance unlike any mortal footfall shuddered through the ruin, toppling loose bricks from precarious ledges. Far across the courtyard, a monstrous silhouette rose against the ashen horizon: Draskfyr—Uhl'drask Fyrva'toth, an ancient titan draped in obsidian plating like tectonic armour. Its many eyes—set in places no creature's anatomy should allow—glowed with shifting prismatic hues that made his temples throb. He felt a surge of dread and dark anticipation flood his veins, as though he had wandered centuries only to find himself before the jaws of a prophecy. It knows you… whispered a voice inside his mind, carrying both awe and contempt, inciting his heart to hammer in his chest. Unease curled along his spine, yet a twisted part of him welcomed it—welcomed the chance to confirm the monstrous secret carried in his nightmares. Slowly, his hand moved to the lacquered scabbard at his side, though he was not certain if he drew the sword of his own free will or in answer to a deeper command.
With a roar that tore the very air, Draskfyr lunged, its obsidian claws sundering the courtyard in a thunderous quake that ricocheted off the broken pillars. The wanderer leapt back in a swirl of tattered cloak, shards of stone exploding around him like razor confetti. In that heartbeat of stillness amid chaos, he drew Sezurai, the katana's obsidian edge gleaming hungrily in the half-light. The moment the blade cleared its scabbard, a single phrase whispered through his skull in Ellywe: "Sérathen amn dóth…"—("At last, you remember me…"). His breath caught, the chilling intimacy of that voice stirring both dread and relief, for some part of him had yearned to hear it again. Draskfyr swept another claw, forcing him to dive beneath the bestial arc, his boots skidding across dusty tiles as Sezurai hummed with savage anticipation. All is undone, all is undone, the voices chanted in unison, weaving a funeral dirge that matched the thunder of the titan's rage.
He sprang onto a tilted column and lunged at Draskfyr's flank, Sezurai biting deep into one of the titan's obsidian plates with a screech that rattled the world. Black ichor fountained forth, sizzling against the stone, and the beast let out a tortured shriek that reverberated in every ruinous corner of Ichor. Mid-slash, his vision cracked, and he saw fire licking temple walls, a figure's face contorted in anguish, blood on his hands while a voice—so familiar—choked out syllables of a name: "Ve…xi…tal." The flashback vanished, replaced by Draskfyr's snarl as a colossal talon whipped around, striking him full in the side and slamming him into a mound of debris. Pain detonated through his ribs, and for a moment, starbursts of black and red danced before his eyes, threatening to drag him into oblivion. Then, from within the katana, a sharper voice in Ellywe snapped—"Dún'tahr dahlrí!"—("Do not falter!")—and an icy force seized his limbs, yanking him upright despite the agony. "Stop," he rasped in protest, but his body moved as though on puppet strings, heedless of the hot blood drenching his side.
With a mechanical grace that was not his own, he hurled himself at Draskfyr once more, Sezurai carving a molten path through scaled plating as if dissecting a grotesque puzzle. Limbs fell away under the blade's cruel artistry, each severed piece spraying thick ichor that hissed and corroded whatever it touched. A chorus of voices shrieked in his mind—some exulting in the carnage, others wailing in horror, all drowned by Sezurai's single unwavering cry for more. The titan reeled, eyes rolling in frantic terror, monstrous roars bending into a half-choked keening that signalled the death throes of once-absolute power. Reality wavered again, and he glimpsed that temple interior, the choking stench of smoke, a body refusing to die in his arms—then it snapped back to the courtyard's carnage. "Please," he gasped, uncertain if he begged the sword or the memory to release him, tears mingling with the gore staining his cheeks. Yet Sezurai's dreadful dance continued unabated, forging a masterpiece of agony upon Draskfyr's once-invincible frame.
In the final stroke of that morbid symphony, Sezurai plunged through Draskfyr's throat, shearing bone and sinew with an impact that echoed like a thunderous dirge. The titan collapsed in a convulsion of rending scales and seething ichor, its dying roar fading into a hollow rasp that reverberated through the city's dead streets. For an agonising moment, the swordsman stood transfixed, chest heaving, as the lesser horrors of Ichor shrank into the shadows, unwilling to witness what came next. Then Sezurai's hold on his body slipped away, and he crumpled to his knees, every nerve aflame with the aftermath of borrowed power. A fractured glimpse of the burning temple rushed through his mind, accompanied by a choking whisper—"We… found… you…"—before dissolving into a sea of blackness. The katana slid from his numb fingers, its obsidian edge dripping with the titan's dark essence, and for a brief heartbeat, it seemed to hum a satisfied lullaby in Ellywe. Darkness rushed in from all sides, and he surrendered to it without resistance, letting the prologue of his story end where all nightmares converge—in the echo of unanswered guilt and fleeting triumph.