The night the Verath house fell, the skies wept blood.
Smoke coiled over Vernal Keep like shrouds, choking the stars as flas consud the banners of House Verath—once golden wheat, now blackened ash. The screams of Kaelen's family echoed through the halls but he didn't run to them.
He couldn't.
Not with his legs broken by the warhamr of Duke Vorian, the Xarnis lord who smiled as he broke the prince's knees.
"Look at you," Vorian sneered, his armor glinting with rubies plundered from Caldris' vaults. "The Ash Prince. Not even a spark left in you."
Kaelen spat blood, his fingers clawing at the stone. Twenty years of scorn condensed into this mont: the drunken japes of foreign princes, the pity of his own people, his father's empty eyes as their kingdom rotted.
He had been a fool. A coward.
He had drowned in wine and silk, pretending not to see the rot in his court, the knives at his family's throats.
Now he crawled.
Through the carnage. Past dead guards, maids slumped like broken things. He dragged himself to the throne room where his father's corpse sat propped against the Ash Crown, its silver thorns buried in the king's skull.
A ssage. A joke.
The Shadows had done their work well.
But Kaelen didn't weep.
He laughed—a raw, broken sound—as he pried the crown free, the points slicing his palms. "This is what you feared?" he whispered to the ghost of his father. "This rusty old thing?"
A shadow moved behind him.
Emperor Kaelith erged, flanked by his Umbra Heralds—wraiths with half-rotten faces and eyes like dying stars.
"You were never ant to rule, boy," the emperor said, his voice honeyed poison. "Caldris was a weed. I just pruned it."
Kaelen's grip tightened on the crown. "And the innocent? Were they weeds too?"
Kaelith tilted his head, amused. "Sacrifices for a bigger garden."
Sothing inside Kaelen snapped.He launched himself at the emperor, the crown held like a sword—but the Umbra Heralds were quicker. Black steel impaled him to the throne. As his vision faded the emperor leaned in.
"Die as you lived, Prince of Ash. Forgotten."
But death wasn't the end.
Kaelen woke up in the dark, the crown stuck to his hands. Before him was the Voidwell—an abyssal pit of screaming souls, its edges clawed with Zalathi runes. It called to him.
A voice like stars collapsing.
"Hunger... Power... Vengeance."
He resisted. Until he saw them: flickering mories swallowed by the void. His sister's laughter. His mother's lullabies. The rare mont his father had called him "son" without flinching. All burning away like parchnt.
"Feed us... and we will feed you," the Voidwell crooned.
He stepped into the storm.
Days later, he rose anew.
Kaelen hunted.
He fed on souls—bandits, traitors, the Shadows who had butchered his family. Their mories beca his weapons. Their magic, his flesh. He rebuilt himself, bone by bone, a king of rot and wrath, until even the Voidwell trembled.
But the light in him dimd.
His mother's face blurred. His sister's voice faded. And when he finally stood before Emperor Kaelith, Eclipse-tier magic crackling in his hands, he felt nothing.
No rage. No sorrow.
Only hunger.
And he lost.
Not to the emperor's power, but to the void in his own heart. As imperial blades carved him apart once more, the Voidwell laughed.
"Again."
>>>>>
A foolish king once said:
Regret is a luxury. Revenge is a compass.
---
Kaelen opened his eyes.
Seventeen again. His knees unbroken. The Ash Crown a distant nightmare. Moonlight stread through his chamber window, and outside, the drunken voice of his friend Garron echoed, urging him to "stop brooding and find a tavern."
But on Kaelen's vision, a System flickered:
[Welco, Host.]
[The Eclipse Protocol has begun.]
[Primary Objective: Reclaim your crown.]
[Secondary Objective: Do not beco the monster.]
He smiled.
This ti, he would burn the garden to its roots.
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