The scent of decay clung to the air, sharp and metallic, laced with the distant wails of the damned. My boots echoed in the hollow vastness of the Scryforge—a place where time did not pass, only unraveled. I had walked these barren halls a thousand times, each step identical to the last.
But today, something was different.
The silence pressed tighter. The walls, once indifferent, felt watchful—waiting. It could have been nothing. Or it could have been the beginning of everything.
I had a task, as I always did: to collect the souls demanded by the gods. Mercy had no place here. It never had. The gods fed on fate, and I was their blade, honed by centuries of service. The souls cried out, but I no longer heard them. Their grief, their terror—it was all just noise against the endless churn of duty.
There was a time, long ago, when I felt something. Before I was remade. Before the god of death had stripped away who I was and filled the void with shadow.
Now, I moved with the precision of a blade. Cold. Silent. Unyielding.
And then—it came.
A summons.
Faint, but insistent. A thread winding its way through the shadows, pulling at something deep within me. At first, I thought it was just another soul—another scream in the dark.
But it wasn't.
Seraphina.
The name rippled through my thoughts like a spark in dry ash. Not just a soul. A memory. A presence I hadn't felt in ages—if ever. Her name didn't belong here, not in the dead cold of the Forge. And yet, it refused to fade.
A strange warmth stirred within me, foreign and unwelcome. I stopped. The air felt thicker. The emptiness, heavier. Her soul clung to the edge of the ether, close yet out of reach—as if resisting.
And that was impossible.
No soul resisted the call.
But Seraphina's did.
Her name didn't just echo—it resonated. Familiar. Sharp. Like a thread to a past I thought long severed. I didn't remember why. I didn't even know how I knew her.
Only that I did.
This wasn't another task. This wasn't fate.
It was something else.
And whatever it was… it was about to change everything.