Chapter 1 : The Knight Who Stayed
No one visits Duskhollow Reach unless they're desperate, dead inside, or looking for something the rest of the world told them doesn't exist anymore—
Hope.
Fog drapes the land like a funeral shroud.
The woods sing in forgotten tongues.
Even the roads seem to shift when no one's looking.
But the people here?
They endure.
They plant crops in cursed soil.
They raise children under storm-colored skies.
And above them all, guarding them with blade and fire, stands one man—
Count Alaric Ophirein.
They call him the Iron Fang of the Reach.
Not because of how many beasts he's slain.
Not because of his serpent-clad armor.
Not even because of his noble title.
But because he stayed when everyone else left.
When plague came, he didn't lock himself in the manor.
He rode house to house with healing potions and fire magic borrowed from his wife.
When monsters breached the forest line, he fought at the front—
One man against a tide of teeth.
When winter swallowed the harvest, he shared his stores…
And went hungry with the rest.
The people love him—not out of duty, but gratitude.
The way you love a father who works until his bones crack just to keep the roof from collapsing.
And somehow, in the middle of that storm of leadership, responsibility, and quiet grief…
He loves them back.
He knows every farmer by name.
Reads bedtime stories to orphans.
Repairs fences when no one's watching.
"Other nobles have gold," they say.
"We have Alaric."
The higher nobles scoff.
"Too sentimental."
"Too soft."
"Too loyal to peasants."
But none of them dare face him in the field.
His class—Oathbound Serpent Knight—is a force of nature.
A fusion of knightly resolve and ancient divinity.
When he moves, his shadow stretches long, and serpents follow him like ghosts.
Under his reign, House Ophirein changed.
The manor breathes life again.
Black marble floors, torch-lit halls, laughter of six children.
A fire mage for a wife.
A cradle-bound secret beneath the shrine.
A grandfather too ancient to walk—but who speaks in riddles and remembers wars the world forgot.
The Reach is no longer a backwater wasteland.
It is a city-keep.
Ten thousand soldiers serve beneath his banner.
Not a place of glamour—
But a nest full of purpose.
They still kneel to a forgotten god, in a forgotten shrine.
A statue stands tall:
A divine knight, wrapped in a black serpent.
Sword raised to the stars.
Eyes carved in silent defiance.
The people call it The Forgotten Flame.
Alaric calls it Ancestor.
House Ophirein is rising.
Not on gold.
Not on politics.
Not on courtly lies.
But on grit.
On scars.
On loyalty—
And a power old enough to bite back.