The first thing Raen Valor ever heard wasn't a mother's lullaby.
It was the sound of a sword dropping to the ground.
And a voice—deep, choked with something between awe and grief—murmuring, "He's... alive."
Rain tapped against the wooden rooftop of the old farmhouse like nervous fingers drumming on stone. The room was dim, lit only by a flickering oil lamp that cast long shadows across the blood-soaked floor.
In that flickering half-light, a man stood over the newborn child with trembling hands. His skin was scarred, his armor dented and smeared with blood. He was no noble. He was no hero. Just a soldier—one who had buried too many comrades and kept too many secrets.
And now, he was a father.
His name was Halrik Valor. A man once known on the battlefield as the Butcher of Veilward. But in this moment, with the newborn in his arms, his hardened eyes softened.
"He has my eyes," Halrik whispered. "But that silence... that silence isn't mine."
The boy didn't cry. Didn't wail or flinch. His eyes, pitch black with a strange sheen of silver, simply stared at the ceiling—as if waiting for something.
No. As if remembering something.
Five Years Later — Varhollow Village
The village of Varhollow sat at the edge of civilization—too poor to matter, too stubborn to die. Dirt roads. Rotten fences. Men who drank too much and women who carried more than they should. The gods had long since stopped listening to this place, if they ever had at all.
Raen Valor was different.
He didn't play with the other children. He didn't laugh. He listened.
He listened to the wind. To the arguments between his parents behind thin walls. To the way the birds flew differently before a storm. To the way silence sometimes pressed on his chest like a memory that refused to die.
His mother, a quiet herbalist named Elana, often watched him with a kind of tired concern.
"Why don't you smile, Raen?" she asked one night, brushing his hair by the hearth.
"Because I've seen what happens after the smile," he said, flatly.
He was five.
She didn't ask again.
By age six, Raen knew how to track wolves. By seven, he'd memorized the taste of every herb in his mother's cabinet—both those that healed and those that killed. He watched people more than he spoke to them. He noticed things no one else did.
Like how the village priest's left eye always twitched when he lied.
Or how the baker's daughter flinched every time her father raised his voice.
One day, he sat alone by the river, watching the current. Another child—a boy named Bram—shoved him from behind.
"You think you're better than us?" Bram sneered.
Raen didn't respond. Just stared at him, unblinking.
Bram shoved him again, harder.
Raen fell. Mud splashed across his shirt. But he didn't get up.
"Pathetic," Bram said, turning to leave.
That night, Bram's dog disappeared. Days later, they found its body near the river. Its throat was slit—clean and precise.
No one could prove anything.
But Bram never came near Raen again.
On Raen's eighth birthday, the dreams returned.
He stood in fields of ash. Walked barefoot through valleys filled with bones. A throne stood in the distance—cracked, ancient, and bleeding shadows.
A figure waited there. Horned. Vast. Wings folding around its throne like a coffin.
Raen could never reach it.
But each time he woke, his body ached as if he'd walked for miles. And a voice whispered from beneath his skin:
Soon.
His father taught him to fight.
Not with pride, not with ceremony—just with grim necessity. Wooden swords at first. Then blunt iron. Then real steel.
"You fight dirty or you die," Halrik said. "There's no honor in a grave."
Raen didn't ask questions. He learned. Quickly. Efficiently.
His strikes were silent. His footwork perfect. His eyes, cold.
Halrik stopped calling it training after that.
He called it preparation.
At age nine, Raen stood at the edge of the forest, alone. Something pulled at him—a memory not his, a name he hadn't heard yet.
The trees whispered.
He reached into a hollow tree and pulled out a sword.
Not forged. Not crafted. But grown—dark, obsidian, pulsing faintly with hunger. A blade not of this world. It felt right in his hands, like it had waited for him.
But he dropped it.
He wasn't ready.
Not yet.
That night, Raen dreamed again.
This time, he reached the throne.
The Demon God turned to him, one burning eye fixated on the child he once remade.
"Soon," it said. "But not yet. Grow. Learn. Feel. Lose. Kill. Then come back to me. Come back with your own name. Not one you stole."
Raen awoke with tears on his face.
He didn't know why.
To Be Continued…