He wasn't born into this world. He forced his way in.
When Vault died in 2026, he didn't pass gently. He didn't rise with grace. He clawed his way back with blood under his fingernails, rage in his chest, and a prayer of conquest still burning on his lips.
The world he returned to—cold, quiet, distant—was a gift. But it came with chains. He was just a baby. Helpless. Weak. Surrounded by men of God who mistook his silence for innocence.
He let them believe it—for a time.
But from his first breath, Vault remembered everything. The system was there, buried deep within him like a sleeping god, whispering numbers, buildings, meat totals. It told him what he was: not a man, not a boy—a conqueror with purpose.
He bided his time.
At the age of six, he slit the throat of the priest who had named him. Then he did the same to the rest. Nuns. Acolytes. Choir boys. He slaughtered them all—not for justice, not even out of hatred. Just because he could.
He took the gold, the food, their weapons. Then he burned the chapel down while it was still red and wet. His first fire. His first "sacrifice" to the world that would one day kneel to him.
From there, he vanished.
Vault stowed away on a ship bound for the colonies, hidden deep in the bowels of the hull. The stench of salt, filth, and rot surrounded him. He gnawed on stale bread meant for rats and drank rainwater through the cracks in the wood above. He did not complain. He was a predator in a cage, sharpening his hatred into steel.
When he emerged weeks later, barely thirteen, the age of innocence had long since rotted from his soul. The New World was young, raw—and Vault could smell the blood beneath its polished marble steps and powdered wigs.
His next acts weren't just brutal—they were legend.
George Washington. Dead.
Vault infiltrated the Commander's camp during the bleak heart of winter. The guards never saw him. A shadow cloaked in rags and frostbite, Vault moved with terrifying purpose. He had watched Washington for days—his habits, his timings, how he always dismissed his aides just after midnight to sit alone by the hearth and write.
That night, Vault slipped beneath the tent flaps, silent as snowfall. Washington looked up only once—and in that brief moment, Vault saw no myth. Just a tired old man scribbling noble lies.
He crossed the floor in three steps and drove a bayonet into the man's chest. Then again. And again. Until the candlelight flickered out under a curtain of arterial spray. He carved a crude "V" into Washington's chest, not for vanity, but for clarity.
Thomas Jefferson. Throat slit.
This one was different.
Jefferson lived in stone and paper, in debates and dusty books. He fancied himself a man of vision. Vault despised him. His words were weak, bloated with idealism. Vault posed as a servant, one of many anonymous faces in Monticello's halls. For three days, he served tea and wine, studied routines, listened. He never blinked.
Then, on the fourth night, Jefferson retired to his study. Vault followed silently behind him.
He spoke only once, just as the blade drew across Jefferson's throat.
> "Your dream was soft. Mine is carved in bone."
The blood soaked through parchment and spilled across pages of future philosophy.
Others followed.
A merchant in Boston—pushed off a rooftop into the sea during a public celebration.
A general in Virginia—strangled in his own tent, his body hung as a warning.
A banker in New York—burned alive in a cellar Vault had rigged with stolen powder.
Each was calculated. Each was cold.
Each removed another brick from the foundation of the world that had once failed him.
Vault didn't kill for justice. He didn't kill for revolution. He killed to clear the field—because weeds grow in every empire, and Vault had no interest in pruning. He would burn them all down and build on ash.
The colonies whispered of a ghost—The Orphan Butcher, The Devil Boy, The Reaper in the Trees. No one had a name. No one had a face.
Only rumors.
And then Vault vanished again, just as silently as he had come, leaving behind the corpses of the architects of a future that would never come to pass.
He rode south with his horse and the stolen tools of empire clinking in his pack—toward Texas, toward a hill, toward a new beginning.
Toward dominion.
By the time Vault reached Texas, he was no longer a man.
He was a myth.
A whisper carried by deserters and drunks in dim-lit taverns. A curse muttered by dying scouts in swamps. A fear spoken only behind closed doors.
"The Devil Boy rides south."
"He's got a demon's soul and a warlord's heart."
They said he had the eyes of a wolf and the smile of a butcher. They said he was born under a burning cross and would one day drown the world in ash.
They weren't wrong.
He rode alone—his only companion a silver-coated monster of a horse, stolen from a Virginian noble's estate after Vault crushed the stable guard's skull with a brick and fed the man's teeth to the pigs. The beast was wild. Untamable, they said.
But it never bucked him.
Vault didn't tame Shadowfax. He owned him.
The animal bowed only to strength—and Vault had plenty to spare.
For years, Vault wandered the southern wilds. He hunted without rest, murdered without hesitation, and stole without guilt. Every act had purpose: to stockpile resources, test his skills, and rid the frontier of anything that might stand in his way.
He saw the system in his mind like divine scripture: buildings, upgrades, weapons, barracks. It whispered to him in code, in numbers. But none of it mattered without one thing.
A hill. The hill.
The place where his empire would rise.
He found it just as he turned eighteen.
It was everything he had envisioned. A high ridge with steep sides, a forest to the north for wood and game, a winding river below for water and trade routes. It was a throne overlooking a kingdom not yet born.
He named it Sanctum Primus.
The First Sanctum.
The heart of what would become The Imperium.
But the land didn't welcome him. Not quietly. Not easily.
It tested him first.
That night, as the fire crackled low and Shadowfax stood eerily still, something massive moved in the darkness.
A bear emerged—if you could still call it that. A beast twisted by age, disease, and countless battles. It limped into the firelight, its hide matted with scars, its breath steaming like a furnace. One eye was missing, the other was pure hate.
Vault stood slowly. His knife gleamed in one hand. His rifle in the other.
The bear roared.
Vault grinned.
He didn't run.
The fight that followed was less a battle and more a slaughter. Vault shot the beast twice—once through the eye, once through the mouth—but it still came. It slammed into him like a freight train, claws raking across his coat, teeth snapping inches from his throat.
Vault stabbed it again and again, each thrust filled with primal fury, each strike deeper than the last. He bashed it with the rifle's stock until the weapon cracked. Then he used fists, elbows, his boot, even his teeth—until the beast finally collapsed, twitching, gurgling, broken.
He stood over it, face soaked in blood, laughing like a man who had just baptized himself in death.
And then he saw them.
Eyes in the trees.
Dozens. Maybe more.
Natives. Silent. Watching. Judging.
Vault didn't wait.
He charged.
The forest lit with screams that night. Not his. Theirs.
He hunted the scouts first—those closest. Quick kills. Knives to the throat, hatchets to the spine. Then he found their camp. Women. Elders. Children.
Vault didn't hesitate.
It wasn't war. It was cleansing.
He torched the longhouses. Poisoned the wells. He hung the bodies from trees and carved warnings into their chests. He shattered bones with stones, desecrated their sacred sites, and pissed on their idols.
When they fled, he followed.
When they begged, he laughed.
It was The Culling.
A campaign of total extermination that lasted for nearly two years. Villages were erased from maps. Trails turned to graveyards. The rivers ran red, and the crows grew fat.
By the time Vault stood again atop his chosen hill, there was no one left to defy him.
No more watchers. No more scouts. No more tribes whispering in the trees.
Just silence.
And bones.
He was eighteen.
His rifle was clean. His knife was sharp. His meat stores were filled, his inventory system loaded. He had furs, tools, iron, and powder. He had everything he needed.
Everything but the throne.
So he built it.
He didn't place the Town Hall in the valley like some farmer building a village.
No.
Vault placed it at the summit, overlooking the world below like a fortress above the weak. The clearing was cleared by fire, the ground blackened and smoothed with ash. The stone circle shimmered beneath his feet as the system awaited his command.
He raised his hand—and the runes responded.
The first foundation of his empire was laid.
It would not be a kingdom of democracy or peace.
It would be a monument to fear, blood, and dominion.
And Vault?
Vault would sit at its heart, grinning like a devil—king of a world that would never be allowed to forget his name.