Prologue:
Awakening the Forsaken King
The night bled around her.
Selene stumbled through the twisted remains of the Ruins, breath ragged, heart hammering against her ribs.Broken stone clawed at her skirts; thorns tore at her arms.Behind her, the hounds howled — not animals, but something darker, something summoned.
They were close.
Too close.
Fear drove her faster, slipping on shattered marble, weaving through crumbling archways where forgotten gods once reigned.The ground trembled under the weight of her pursuers, shadows flickering along the cracked walls.
A whisper in her blood told her she had crossed into forbidden ground — a place no soul should tread.
But it was too late to turn back.
A scream tore through the night — not hers — but the last sound of the mercenary who had tried to shield her.The scent of burning iron filled the air.
Selene's vision blurred as she stumbled into a vast clearing.
At its center stood a monument — a colossal black stone, broken open like a wound in the earth. Ancient chains, thick as trees, lay shattered at its base, dripping with an oily, pulsing mist.
She didn't think.
She moved.
Blind instinct drove her forward, toward the altar of despair itself.
Behind her, the shadows surged — the hunters spilling into the clearing, weapons drawn, mouths twisted with hunger.
Selene placed her blood-slicked palm against the broken stone.
The world screamed.
A thunderous crack split the air, knocking her to her knees.Light — blacker than night, deeper than void — erupted from the fissure, swallowing everything in silence.
And from that silence, he rose.
Not a man.
Not a god.
Something else.
Something terrible.
A figure stood before her — emerging from the heart of the stone as if torn from the marrow of the world itself.Hair blacker than midnight whipped around a face so unearthly beautiful it struck like a blade to the soul.
Eyes opened — and the heavens themselves seemed to recoil.
Silver, fractured by shadow.Light and abyss intertwined.
Selene's breath caught.She couldn't move.Couldn't scream.
The hunters behind her hesitated — a fatal mistake.
With a motion almost too swift to follow, the figure moved.
One by one, the assassins fell — not with grand gestures, but with terrifying, effortless precision.Bones snapped.Weapons shattered.Blood misted the broken stones.
And all the while, he barely glanced at them — as if swatting away insects.
Selene curled tighter against the ground, trembling.
He turned to her.
The storm of death around them fell away into silence.
Selene felt his gaze settle on her — branding her, binding her.
She had no words.
No plea.
Only the pounding of her heart and the sinking certainty that her life, whatever it had been before this night, was now over.
Or worse — rewritten.
A voice, low and cold, slipped into her mind without mercy.
"You should not have come here."
Darkness swallowed her whole.