Veil Of Deceptions
Amir is born into a family of assassins, a child of two warring clans. His father possesses a bloodline that disintegrates anything he understands chemically; his mother can replicate anything she sees. From them, Amir inherits the Overlord bloodline: a unique ability to alter, destroy, and reconstruct anything he perceives by sight or touch. Raised amid death and trained in precision, he grows calm, detached, and infinitely observant, a boy who sees patterns where others see chaos.
When a mission sends him and a team into the ruins of a long-collapsed city, Amir immediately perceives the hidden language of the environment. Spirals carved into stone, arcs in rubble, subtle gouges in the earth, and the curling fog all communicate movement and intent. The brash soldier moves with false confidence, the cautious soldier focuses only on immediate danger, and the philosophical one seeks understanding in every fragment—but none can interpret the deliberate signals that Amir reads with ease.
As they advance, it becomes clear that the ruins are not inert. Collapsed streets, broken towers, and scattered debris are arranged intentionally, forming traps, guiding paths, and leaving signals that suggest a deliberate intelligence. Observation alone becomes insufficient: Amir’s bloodline allows him to subtly manipulate matter, adjusting stones, dust, and debris to ensure safe passage, correct misalignment, and preserve the team’s survival. Yet even these interventions draw attention from forces within the ruins, an unseen adversary adapting to his manipulations, testing his control, and challenging his understanding of the environment.
Tension escalates as Amir traces arcs, follows spirals, and recalibrates probabilities with each step. The operative within the ruins moves with awareness and precision, countering Amir’s interventions without revealing their full intent. Each micro-adjustment becomes a battle of anticipation, where observation, patience, and timing are as lethal as any weapon. The team remains unaware of the danger they traverse, their survival entirely dependent on Amir’s interventions and strategic calculations.
By the end of Volume One, the team has passed through the central plaza, guided invisibly by Amir’s skill, but the adaptive adversary remains a looming presence. The ruins themselves demonstrate intelligence, bending to subtle forces yet resisting full control. Amir realizes that observation, intervention, and control are never absolute, and that the world he navigates is far more complex than he imagined. While the immediate threat to the team is neutralized, the presence of the sentient, adaptive force leaves him—and the readers—with the certainty that true mastery is not yet possible, and that survival requires constant vigilance, intelligence, and ruthlessness.
