The Birth of Hope Beneath a Bleeding Sky
Long ago, beneath a bruised and endless twilight, a child was born under the fire of a comet. Seers, blind with awe, proclaimed him the savior of a crumbling people. His cradle was a throne; his breath, the hope of an entire realm.
Yet hope is a vessel easily cracked. As he grew, adoration curdled into envy. When death stole his father, the same hands that once crowned him cast him into the dust, accusing him of betrayal most foul.
Exile and the Seed of Hatred
Stripped of name and home, the boy wandered desolate lands, where the bones of ancient kings littered the ground like shattered dreams. Hunger gnawed his body; sorrow hollowed his soul.
Hatred, silent and patient, took root within him. It whispered comfort where love had withered. In a forgotten ruin drowned by despair, he found the forbidden words etched in blood. From them, he learned the sorcery that tears, that sunders, that unbinds the world itself.
Years devoured the man he had been. Only wrath remained.
The Rise of a Shadow King
On a night when even the moon hid her face, he stood atop a crown of broken stone. Behind him rose the citadel he wrenched from the bones of the earth, its spires clawing at the heavens.
With a single gesture, he summoned the ancient fury buried beneath creation. The sky wept fire and from its wounds spilled shadows darker than death. They marched to his will, and he led them into the world.
The cities fell like brittle leaves before a winter storm. Rivers turned to ash. No banner, no king, no prayer could stand against the vengeance he unleashed.
The Hollow Triumph
Yet as the world crumbled under his heel, the emptiness within him grew vast and bottomless. Victory tasted of ash. No fire warmed him; no ruin filled the void gnawing at his soul.
Amid the blackened remnants of his homeland, where only death dared linger, he knelt and wept tears darker than ink. The storm within him raged unanswered.
The Child and the End of the Circle. From the ruins came a boy, no more than a whisper of life, bearing a sword too heavy for his slight frame. His eyes, twin embers of rage, met the prince's hollow gaze.
The blade struck—a shallow wound, yet deep enough to bleed away centuries of sorrow. The prince smiled, a broken, terrible smile, and whispered his last benediction:
“Hate me well.”
Thus he fell—not to armies or kings, but to the very hatred he had sown.
Hatred's Eternal Legacy
The circle closed. Another heart, young and wild, now carried the curse. Hatred blossomed once more beneath the ashen sky, strangling hope where it tried to rise.
And so, the wheel of sorrow turned again, in a world where hatred proves stronger than memory, than stone, than death itself.
Remember, wanderer: hatred, once born, lives longer than empires. In its shadow, all things wither.
