CHAPTER ONE: The Day They Burned My Name
They did not announce Liam Vaelor's death in advance.
In Azeroth, executions were either celebrated or hidden. His fell into the second category. No bells rang across the capital. No priests walked the streets calling citizens to witness justice. There were no declarations nailed to tavern doors. His sentence moved quietly through sealed corridors and private chambers, carried on wax stamped parchment, delivered by messengers who were ordered not to speak his name aloud.
It was not justice.
It was erasure.
He was taken from the underground holding cells before dawn, when the palace district still slept beneath silver fog and dying torchlight. Cold stone bit into his bare feet as two royal guards dragged him through the narrow passageways carved beneath the citadel. His wrists were bound behind him with devil iron chains, their black links engraved with suppression runes that gnawed constantly at his bones.
He recognized the metal.
He had designed it.
The irony was sharp enough to taste.
Liam did not struggle. He did not curse. His breath remained steady, measured, controlled. He had spent the last three nights replaying every decision he had made during the past six years. Every order he had signed. Every alliance he had trusted. Every name he had allowed close enough to speak in his presence.
He had not miscalculated his enemies.
He had misjudged their patience.
They brought him out into the High Square through a concealed gate normally reserved for condemned nobles. The city had begun to stir. Vendors were arranging their stalls. Soldiers were changing shifts. Academy cadets crossed the far side of the square in neat lines, laughing, arguing, unaware that a man who once lectured their commanders on battlefield logistics was about to be removed from existence.
New banners had been raised overnight.
Fresh wood framed the execution platform. The royal sigil had been repainted in brighter crimson. Even the stone steps had been scrubbed clean.
They were not merely killing him.
They were preparing the ground for his absence.
Liam was forced to his knees before the platform. The devil iron chains clinked softly as they locked him into position. A hush rippled through the nearby onlookers as some recognized him.
Whispers followed.
That is him.
Wasn't he the one who designed the western defense grid.
My father said he saved three border cities.
Why would they execute him.
Treason.
Demonic corruption.
He is dangerous.
Liam lifted his eyes.
Across the platform stood King Albrecht III of Azeroth, draped in ceremonial armor polished to reflect the rising sun. At his side stood High Inquisitor Morvain, hands folded calmly in his sleeves. Behind them stood several familiar faces.
General Theron, who had once toasted him after a successful campaign.
Archmage Selvar, who had requested his strategies for siege countermeasures.
Lord Kaelric of House Draeven.
The family that would inherit his estates before nightfall.
And further back, among the royal guard, stood his younger brother.
Aden Vaelor.
Aden would not meet his gaze.
His fiancée was absent.
She had delivered the sealed testimony three days earlier.
That knowledge no longer carried weight. The moment had already passed when betrayal could still hurt.
The royal herald stepped forward and unfurled a scroll.
By decree of His Majesty King Albrecht the Third, Liam Vaelor is hereby found guilty of treason against the Crown, demonic contamination, and conspiracy to undermine the stability of Azeroth.
His voice echoed clearly across the square.
No evidence was read. No witnesses were summoned.
The verdict had already been carved into stone.
Liam breathed in slowly.
So this is the shape of my ending.
High Inquisitor Morvain stepped forward next, holding a slender staff carved with purification runes. Its crystal tip glowed faintly.
You were accused of harboring forbidden blood.
You were accused of plotting rebellion.
You were accused of opening demonic channels beyond the western frontier.
Morvain's gaze was cold, clinical.
You have nothing to say in your defense.
Liam raised his head fully now.
His voice carried easily across the square.
If you were going to erase me, you should have burned my bloodline first.
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
The king's expression tightened.
The executioner stepped forward.
He was massive, his shoulders wrapped in sanctified steel plates, his blade humming softly with holy fire. The weapon had been reforged specifically for today. Liam recognized the enchantment lattice etched along its length.
He had written half of it.
Any final words the herald asked.
Liam did not look at the king.
He did not look at Morvain.
He looked straight ahead at the banners of Azeroth snapping in the morning breeze.
Innocence is irrelevant here, he said calmly. Only power decides what is remembered.
The blade descended.
White fire tore through his spine.
There was no scream.
There was no time.
For less than a heartbeat, Liam felt his nerves ignite. His vision fractured. His thoughts scattered.
Then the world collapsed inward.
Darkness swallowed sound.
He did not die in peace.
He died with a single clear realization locked inside his fading mind.
I was not defeated.
I was removed.
And the removal was deliberate.
Silence stretched.
Then something moved.
He became aware of heat.
Not the burning heat of holy fire, but something deeper, heavier, like molten stone flowing beneath the skin of the world. It curled around him, not as pain, but as pressure.
His thoughts gathered slowly.
There was no body.
No breath.
No heartbeat.
Yet he existed.
A presence stirred around him.
Thick. Ancient. Watching.
You were not erased, a voice whispered.
It did not speak in sound. It pressed meaning directly into his awareness.
You were interrupted.
Liam did not panic.
Even here, he did not beg.
He formed a thought carefully.
Who are you.
The presence rippled.
You are standing in the shadow of your own forgotten origin.
Your blood was sealed before you were born.
Your lineage was cut from records.
Your inheritance was buried beneath the Crown itself.
You were never human.
Memory fragments surged.
Symbols carved beneath royal foundations.
Blood rituals recorded in censored archives.
A forbidden name whispered once by his mother when she thought he slept.
The voice continued.
Your enemies sensed what you carried. They did not know its nature, but they feared its awakening.
So they removed you.
They thought death would end the blood.
It will not.
Pressure built around his awareness, heavy and slow, like a mountain shifting.
You will return.
Not as the man they erased.
But as the heir of what they buried.
Dark heat surged.
Something ancient inside him answered.
For the first time, Liam felt his blood move.
It was not warm.
It was deep.
Patient.
Hungry.
The presence withdrew.
Darkness folded inward.
And the world prepared to turn.