Thomas Gray was born in the stench and struggle of the lower north side—a place the wealthy called the Beggar’s Maw. They weren’t entirely wrong. The air hung thick with the smell of unwashed furs, rotting teeth, and despair. What passed for clothes were little more than soiled rags, crusted with the grime of survival.

In the Maw, hunger was a constant companion, and disease a frequent visitor. But the one thing that truly festered in the hearts of its people was a deep, abiding hatred for those who lived on the eastern bluffs, where the air was sweet and the silks shimmered.

Among the beggarly, Thomas was an anomaly. While others wasted their breath cursing the wealthy, his mind was a whirlwind of silent creation. He dreamed of a hat that could cool a fevered brow, glasses that could see the truth behind a smile, boots that would make one light as dandelion fluff. His most prized—and secret—creation was a pair of gloves with magnets sewn into the fingertips, possessing a strange, almost eager affinity for any coin that came near.

People found him strange, yet they were drawn to the sparks of wonder he carried in a world of damp shadows. He played games, claiming his “truth-seeing” glasses let him know when someone lied. He was a cheat, of course—a keen observer of flickering eyes and tight throats—but the laughter he pulled from tired faces was real. He could lie with a radiant smile, a skill honed from a lifetime of swallowing his own pain.

He was a ghost of a family. The name “Gray” was a gift from an old man who’d shared a damp corner with him until a winter cough took him. By eight, Thomas had learned to quiet his gnawing stomach with things that would make a rat hesitate: bitter weeds, boiled leather, sour mushrooms. Survival in the Maw was a daily gamble with death.

At sixteen, a fire ignited in him—a resolve to make the name Gray echo across all kingdoms. He began venturing to the eastern bluffs, carrying his bizarre contraptions in a sack. Crossing into the wealthy district was like stepping into a painted dream. The air lost its weight, carrying scents of blossom and baked bread. The citizens floated by in silks that whispered, their faces smooth and untouched by want.

Their looks of disgust—like he was a foul stain on their perfect tapestry—rolled off him. He found a busy corner, laid a patched cloth on the pristine cobblestones, and arranged his inventions with care. Then he stood, hands clasped, an enthusiastic smile fixed on his face as the river of wealth flowed past.

Hours bled away. Not a single person paused. As the sun dipped, staining the sky the color of a fresh bruise, a sharp crack echoed. A small stone struck his forehead. Warm blood trickled into his eyebrow.

Two men emerged from the crowd, their fine features twisted in contempt. One looked down at the cloth and spat a glob of phlegm onto his magnetizing gloves. The other, with a polished boot, methodically crushed the delicate frame of his truth-seeing glasses, then stomped on the light-foot boots. The crunch of splintering wood and metal was deafening.

Thomas stood perfectly still. His hands hung at his sides, his fingertips rubbing against the rough, torn fabric of his trousers—a self-soothing rhythm. The smile never left his face. It was a mask of such perfect calm it was more terrifying than any snarl.

But inside, a vital part of him shattered. The fragile hope he’d carried, the belief that his ingenuity could transcend his station, was ground into the dust alongside his creations. This humiliation was not new, but it was final. It severed the last thread connecting him to the boy who dreamed of hats and games.

For the name Gray had not always been beggarly. In whispers, the old ones said his parents had been wealthy, their great sin an unseemly compassion for the Maw. They were found dead days after his birth, their murders filed away as “unfortunate incidents.” The very people they’d tried to help had smuggled their infant to safety, raising him in the gutters they’d once pitied.

Walking back to the Maw that night, Thomas saw not individuals, but a monolith. Every sneer, every averted gaze from the wealthy felt like a brand. The pain was no longer personal; it was systemic, a poison in the kingdom’s veins. He didn’t speak. He didn’t cry. But in the quiet, dark chamber of his mind, a plan began to form—cold, hard, and sharp as a blade.

At seventeen, Thomas left the Kingdom of Wolves. His journey was not one of discovery, but of forging. Over five long years, something in the wilderness—or perhaps something that had always lurked within him, fed on injustice—coalesced. A shadow stepped into his soul, a patient, sinister thing that slowly rewired his heart and mind. He became an instrument, honed for a single purpose. The change was so gradual he never saw it in the reflections of cold mountain streams.

Five years later, he returned.

The man who walked into the eastern district was a stranger. His voice was a low rasp, his face lean and hardened by weather and witness. He wore fur that glowed with health, clothes of dark, expensive wool. No trace of a smile touched his lips. He took a room at a quiet inn, a ghost with heavy coin.

That night, he sat in a bustling tavern, the sharp, unfamiliar burn of grog in his throat. His ears, trained by years of listening to survive, plucked a conversation from the din. A group of men, their cheeks flushed with drink, laughed uproariously.

“...stupid little rat, tracking filth right into Mother’s shop!” one slurred.

“Begging for heartbloom herb! For some whelp in the Maw!” another roared, sloshing his mug. “The sign says no beggars! Mother shoved her right over. My brothers and I gave her a proper education with our boots. She won’t be walking back to beg anytime soon!”

Their laughter was a physical blow. Thomas saw it: the girl, small and desperate, being kicked on a polished floor. The memory of a stone striking his own forehead flashed, white-hot.

He waited. When two of the men stumbled into the lamplit street, he followed, a deeper shadow among shadows. In a narrow alley where the light did not reach, he moved. There was no anger, no cry—only a terrifying, efficient silence. A small, cruel blade flickered once, twice. It was less a fight and more a harvest. Flesh parted, throats opened clean and deep.

The following morning, a tremor of primal fear shot through the kingdom. Two men were found in an alley. Their faces were… altered. Their eyes were gone. Their throats were not just cut, but meticulously laid open. It was not a robbery. It was a message, carved in flesh.

Whispers began, frantic and hushed. They spoke of a creature, not a man. Something that had climbed out of the Maw’s deepest shadows. They called it the Gray Shadow. The Untold Creature.

And in a quiet room on the eastern bluffs, Thomas Gray listened to the fear ripple through the streets below. He looked at his hands, clean and steady. He thought of a young girl, beaten for wanting medicine, and of a shop where a sign in the corner justified cruelty.

He had a list. And the creature in the shadows had only just begun to feed.

Nath Sky was born and raised on the western fringe of the Kingdom of Wolves—a land carved rigidly into four castes: the royal Gewels, the noble Fangs, the merchant Pawns, and the common Beggars. Nath, a Beggar by birth, was a man of many talents but a trickster at heart. Slick with words and confident in his lies, he lived life by chance, never fearing to risk everything for more.

He was nothing like his peers. While others sought wealth, status, and secure futures, Nath cared little for such things. His obsession was chance itself—the roll of dice, the turn of a card, the fleeting moment when luck tipped in your favor. Yet, ironically, he had no chance, especially in the game called Meno. For most of his life, Nath lost more games than he could ever win. Time and again, he believed he’d crafted a flawless strategy, only to watch his coins slide across the table to another. For five straight years, his losing streak deepened, stretching into his early twenties without a single thought of quitting.

To fund his habit, he worked as a salvager—a harsh job under a burning sun, with long days on the open sea. For Nath, it was worse. He suffered from a rare, persistent form of motion sickness; no matter his age or time aboard, his body never adjusted. Months at sea left him pale and shaky, but he had no choice. He needed the coins for Meno.

Then came the storm.

No one predicted the terror that unfolded that evening. Howling winds tore through sails; the ocean itself seemed to rise and splinter the hulls of ships and boats alike. Nath clung to debris, salt, and rain blinding him. When dawn finally broke, only a handful of survivors washed onto the rocky shore of the kingdom’s edge. Nath lay gasping, his glasses lost to the depths.

As the high tide retreated, swallowing the last remnants of the wreck, a shaken voice called out. One of the crewmates had found a pair of spectacles further down the beach. They were bent, one lens cracked—but they were glasses. Nath took them without a word. The walk home was silent, heavy with the memory of screams and the weight of the lost.

That night, under the steady drum of rain, Nath sat in the dark of his rented room. A single candle flickered as he tried to bend the frames straight. His hands trembled—not from cold, but from the echo of waves and the faces of those who hadn’t made it. He felt no hero’s relief, only a numb, hollow guilt. He had survived. Again.

The next morning, heavy knocking jarred him awake. Authorities—doing a headcount, collecting names of the dead. Nath gave his statement mechanically. Minutes after they left, another knock: his landlady. He was behind on rent, and now he was jobless. With only three copper coins in his pocket, he was two days from homelessness.

He paced, clueless, desperate. He needed air. As he lifted the salvaged glasses to his face, he paused. Something felt different. The frames were darker than he remembered, etched with faint, swirling markings he hadn’t noticed before. The lenses, though scratched, seemed clearer—sharper. He shrugged and stepped outside.

He went from shop to shop, asking for work. Every keeper gave the same answer: “No.” But Nath found their responses oddly vivid. It wasn’t what they said—it was what he saw. A faint, crimson glint in their pupils as they spoke, a quick flutter at the corner of an eye. Almost like a… tell.

By sunset, only one tavern remained. Exhausted, Nath sat at a sticky table, watching the keeper struggle—serving drinks, wiping counters, sweeping the floor. Nath approached. “Need help?”

The keeper didn’t look up. “Not at all.”

There it was again—that quick, red gleam in his irises, like a spark in shadow. Nath’s pulse quickened. He’s lying.

That night, Nath tested his theory. He spoke to a Pawn, a beggar, a guard on patrol. Each time someone lied, however small, the red flicker appeared. By morning, he was certain: it was the glasses. These weren’t his. They must have washed ashore from the underground tunnels—the kingdom’s secret veins, where strange, lost things sometimes surfaced.

With three coins and one day until eviction, Nath made for the alleyways. He found a Meno game in the back of a smoky stable. He bet his last coppers.

This time, he didn’t play the odds. He played the players.

He chatted, told small tales, and asked harmless questions. And with every reply, he watched their eyes. A crimson glint meant a bluff. A clear gaze meant truth. He folded when they were strong, raised when they were weak. Within an hour, his three coins had multiplied into a heavy pouch.

He paid his rent. Then, with careful hands, he reshaped the glasses—polishing the lenses until they shone, gilding the frames in bright, alluring gold. They looked new. Respectable. Like they belonged to someone going places.

And Nath was going places. Week after week, he played. He moved from alley games to shadowy parlors, then to polished halls where the air smelled of wine and wealth. His winning streak became legendary. Before long, he found himself sitting at velvet-lined tables with the wealthiest Pawns and even a few curious Fangs of the Kingdom of Wolves.

But as he stacked his winnings, a new thought began to itch at the back of his mind: if the glasses could see everyone’s lies…What could’ve pushed someone to create such a conception?

A champion has no bounds. A champion has no fear. A champion wants nothing but victory. And so it was for Leon.

The Colosseum was alive as never before. With the crowd roaring “Death!”, their champion cut down five opponents, one after another—a sword in one hand, a dagger in the other. They all fell before him.

For over a decade, Leon had held the title of the finest swordsman in the Kingdom of Wolves. But his ideal set him apart from any warrior who had ever lifted a blade. Blessed by the Gods and unmatched in skill, he had no equal.

Yet he had sworn an oath: never again to take a life.

For that oath, the wealthy called him a warrior fallen from grace. They watched only in hope of his defeat.

But the beggars, the farmers, the unseen—saw a hero. As did the emperor himself.

Even as the shadows of Leon’s past clung to him with every breath.

Eight years before, Leon and twenty guards had been escorting members of the Gewels family when a hundred Red Ruin warriors ambushed them. Half a day from the kingdom’s walls, Leon ordered a messenger to ride for help while the rest held the enemy in a narrow cave.

By the time reinforcements arrived, Leon was on his knees, soaked in blood, despair carved into his face.

The Gewels were unharmed.

Every Red Ruin soldier lay dead.

That day earned Leon the title of hero. It also burdened him with ghosts.

His only family—a younger sister, known for her oddly spiced pastries, never watched him fight. She knew his oath. She feared not just his death, but the day his love for battle might finally break the man she remembered.

And yet, he could not lay down his blades.

Each victory was more than a fight; it was a raging war within his own heart, a search for direction he could not yet name.

Every three years came the Champion’s Games.

Seven kingdoms. Seven warriors each. Trials of mortal ordeal.

With the Games only a month away, the Kingdom of Wolves began its selection. From a thousand soldiers, only seven would be chosen by the emperor—the elite, each with a legend already written in blood and glory.

Leon wanted no prize. No fame. Only the challenge.

He had refused all previous invitations.

But this time, he would enter. His blade would become his compass. Though his purpose remained shrouded, he had begun to accept a hard truth: perhaps he was not a man with a weapon, but a weapon in the hands of the Gods.

Everyone knew Leon would be the emperor’s first choice.

On the day of the announcement, he was summoned to the palace.

When Leon arrived, the emperor dismissed the guards.

He had watched Leon since he was a boy—this warrior they said was touched by the divine. Leaning forward, his tone shifted from regal to personal.

“Does that day still haunt you?” the emperor asked.

Leon did not flinch, but his silence was answer enough.

“And if so… why join the Games now? You know death waits in every trial.”

“I fight to understand why I was spared,” Leon said, his voice low. “And to see if a blade can be more than a tool for killing.”

The emperor studied him, then sighed softly.

“When I was young,” he began, “my father spoke of you. ‘The weapon of the Gods,’ he called you. He believed that as long as you drew breath, this kingdom was safe.”

He paused, his gaze distant. “My sister told me of the ambush. She said you slew ninety Red Ruin warriors alone. She called it a miracle—said you fought like something more than a man.”

That memory hung between them—a moment of slaughter turned legend.

When Leon left the palace, he went straight to the Colosseum.

Alone in the empty arena, he looked up at a starless sky. Memories swarmed him: the smell of blood in the cave, the weight of his oath, the silence after killing.

The air grew cold.

Will the Games bring me more than glory? He wondered. Or will they finally show me what I am?

From the shadows of the night, a figure emerged.

Clad in foreign armor, a scar cutting across one eye, he moved without sound. In his hands gleamed a blade and an ax.

Leon’s stance shifted instinctively—not into battle, but into watchfulness. He did not recognize the armor, but he knew intent when he saw it.

And then the rain began, a sudden downpour in the dead of night.

Thirty years ago, the previous emperor of the Kingdom of Wolves banished a small group of people for reasons sealed within the imperial archives. While many vanished into obscurity, the survivors nursed a bitter, festering grievance. They called their exile unjust.

The banishment came at the tail end of a long winter war. They were cast onto a nameless island perpetually shrouded in a thick, grey fog that tasted of salt and decay. This unnatural veil swallowed landmarks and confounded the senses; in these waters, compass needles spun uselessly. For anyone who sought it, the island was a ghost. For those condemned to it, survival was a desperate gamble.

It took ten years of backbreaking toil to carve a settlement from the stubborn rock and hostile forest—a place they could grudgingly call home. Yet, in that decade, a harder thing took root: a deep, communal hatred. They forged a new identity from their rage, calling themselves “the Red Ruin.” Under the banner of “No Kings, No Fear,” they were led by a ruthless man named Ulf.

The Ruin spent years mastering their prison. They learned to read the subtle, cold currents within the fog and built ships to match their cunning: slender, flexible vessels that cut through the waves with serpentine speed, unlike any galleon of the Seven Kingdoms.

Their numbers were few, but their unorthodox warfare gave them a predator's advantage. They became phantoms of the sea, sinking over a hundred imperial ships and slaughtering thousands. Clad in strange, lacquered armor fashioned from sea-beast hides, they were perceived not as men, but as foreigners, as devils.

~

Into this hard life, Erik Ruin was born. His father died before his first cry. His mother succumbed to a sudden, wracking illness when he was three. He was raised by his uncle, Ulf, with what some charitably called tough love. Others saw the truth: it was heartless indifference.

By seven, Erik was forced to fend for his own food. A boy with no skill was cast into the twilight forests, home to chittering, multi-limbed shadows and the low groans of unseen giants. He spent nights trembling in hollow logs, clutching a stolen knife.

But Erik adapted. The wild, for all its terror, became his sanctuary. By twelve, he preferred the forest’s honest peril to the village’s cold neglect. He stopped returning altogether, making a den in a high cave scented of damp stone and old bones.

He taught himself violence with stolen tools—a notched sword, a warped bow, a fisherman’s axe. His days became a brutal ritual: hunt, train, survive. He fought the forest’s creatures not for sport, but for the right to see another dawn.

His nights, however, belonged to another world. A voice haunted his dreams—a calm, resonant whisper that seemed to come from the island’s very mist. It spoke of times before him, of the threads of his blood.

The voice painted vivid tales of his father, Einar: a warrior of laughing courage who sailed to nations whose names Erik had never heard, who lived a life of honor and won a love so fierce it defied an emperor’s decree. It sang of his mother, Lyra: her kindness like a quiet hearth, her unwavering faith in the old gods, and the tragic fate that faith could not avert.

Every dawn, Erik awoke with a tear-track on his cheek and a burning hole in his heart. He never questioned the voice’s mystery; he felt its truth in his marrow. It filled the emptiness Ulf created. And it whispered a promise: Your path began here, boy. It does not end here.

Whether it was a god, a ghost, or the echo of his own blood, the voice forged his purpose. At sixteen, in a dream more vision than memory, it showed him the truth of his parents' end: not fate, but Ulf’s blade and a cup of poison, traded for the promise of sole leadership over the exiles. Erik awoke not with a tear, but with a silent, settled hatred.

At nineteen, he walked out of the forest. It had been seven years. Most in the village thought the wild had claimed him. But Ulf, standing before his rough-hewn hall, knew. He saw the boy was gone, replaced by a young man with eyes as cold and grey as the sea fog.

They did not speak. They did not need to. Three years after his return, Erik challenged his uncle before the assembled Red Ruin. The fight was short, brutal, and fought not with the flashy skill of warriors, but with the savage, efficient fury of two animals. Erik won. He took the title of leader, along with his uncle’s life.

~

Another three years passed. The Red Ruin, under Erik’s strategic mind, became more precise, more feared, and more patient.

Then, a letter sealed with a red wax sigil—a crashing wave—arrived in the Kingdom of Wolves, addressed to the new Emperor. It sought an audience.

The request, audacious in its simplicity, was granted.

Erik arrived alone. He walked the bustling ports of the Wolves, a stranger in simple travel clothes, greeting merchants and fishermen with a quiet courtesy that belied his name. He was escorted by a tense contingent of soldiers to the stark granite palace.

In the throne room, under the gaze of wolf-head banners, he stood before the Emperor.

“I am Erik,” he said, his voice clear in the vast hall.

A guard captain stepped forward. “Erik who?”

He met the Emperor’s eyes. “Erik Ruin.”

Steel rang as every soldier drew his blade, surrounding him.

Erik did not move. A faint, mirthless smile touched his lips. He slowly raised his empty hands, a gesture of calm, not surrender.

“Like you,” he said, his gaze locked on the throne, “I am new to my title. Three years ago, I killed Ulf. The Red Ruin is mine now. And I have come to talk.”

The air in the room grew still, heavy with the weight of history, vengeance, and a proposition yet unspoken.

The Kingdom of Wolves — once ruled by the iron fist of Emperor Rehema Atef, and later by his heir Dakarai — was a land carved from fear. Its history was written in the scars of the enslaved, a time the beggarly still called “the dark ages.” Though that era had officially ended, its shadow lingered in the cruel laws still etched into the kingdom’s stones, and in the silent suffering of its people.

Aten, the new emperor, did not wish to rule as his ancestors had. His heart was kind, his mind open. Yet the palace walls had shielded him. He knew laws from scrolls, not from the hunger in the streets or the hollow eyes of those broken by them. His world was marble and murmured counsel; his only glimpse beyond it was the roar of the colosseum.

Even as a boy, Aten had been captivated not by the blood spilled there, but by the one who refused to spill it: a warrior despised by the Gewels and Fangs. They called him the God-fallen, a champion who had forsaken divine grace by refusing to kill. But Aten saw what they did not — the weight of a life taken, the horror of a cycle that ended only in graves. This warrior fought not for gold or glory, but for something deeper. To Aten, he was the kingdom’s true champion.

Now, at seventeen, Aten had ascended the throne as tradition demanded. Yet true power eluded him. The Round Table of elders held the reins, governing in his name while he learned the ways of rule. For three years, he listened, advised by his shrewd older sister and soothed by his gentle younger brother — an emperor in title, but not in authority.

On the eve of his twentieth birthday, the night of a full moon, a stranger came.

Cold air whispered through the open window of the emperor’s chambers, stirring Aten from uneasy sleep. His eyes opened to a figure standing in the moonlight — faceless, silhouette blurred as if woven from shadow. Aten tried to rise, to call out, but his body was stone, his voice stolen. Confusion chilled him deeper than the wind. How? Guards stood at his door. The palace was impenetrable.

The stranger spoke, voice low and inevitable. They spoke of five events that would soon unfold.

First, a letter would arrive. Aten must accept it without delay.

Second, after the coming Games of Champions, a stranger would end the lies surrounding him.

Three more prophecies followed, each more dire than the last, a crescendo of coming ruin.

“Heed this warning,” the voice urged. “Only preparation can save you all. For a force approaches this world — one that seeks not to conquer, but to destroy everything and everyone.”

Then, the figure vanished.

Aten surged upright, breath ragged. Had it been a dream? But the window gaped open. And on the floor beneath it, dusted across the marble like a fallen shadow, lay a thin scatter of ashes.

---

The next day, his twentieth birthday was celebrated as a festival of power. The kingdom buzzed with change — some hopeful, some fearful. With the three years of regency now ended, Aten’s first true act as emperor was to disband the Round Table.

And as the months unspooled, the prophecies began to breathe.

The letter arrived.