Prologue: The Ash Crown

The night the Verath Dynasty fell, the skies wept blood.

Smoke coiled over Vernal Keep like funeral shrouds, choking the stars as flames devoured the paintings of House Verath—once proud banners of golden wheat now blackened to ash. The screams of Kaelen's family echoed through the corridors, but he did not run to them. 

He couldn't. 

Not when his legs had been shattered by the warhammer of Duke Vorian, the Xarnis lord who'd smiled as he broke the prince's knees.

"Look at you," Vorian sneered, his armor glinting with rubies plundered from Caldris' vaults. "The Ash Prince. Not even sparks left in you."

Kaelen spat blood, his fingers clawing at the cold stone. Twenty years of scorn condensed into this moment: the drunken japes of foreign princes, the pity of his own people, his father's hollow eyes as their kingdom rotted. 

He'd been a fool. A coward. 

He'd hidden in brothels and wine, pretending not to see the rot in his court, the knives poised at his family's backs.

Now, he crawled.

Through the slaughter. Past the butchered guards, the maids slumped like broken dolls. He dragged himself to the throne room, where his father's corpse sat propped on the Ash Crown, its silver thorns driven into the dead king's skull.

A message. A mockery.

The Shadows had done their work well.

But Kaelen did not weep. 

He laughed—a raw, broken sound—as he pried the crown free, its points slicing his palms. "This is what you feared?" he whispered to the ghost of his father. "This rusted joke?"

A shadow moved behind him. Emperor Kaelith emerged, flanked by his Umbra Heralds, their faces half-rotted, eyes voids of flickering starlight.

"You were never meant to rule, boy," the emperor said, his voice honeyed poison. "Caldris was a weed. I merely… pruned it."

Kaelen's grip tightened on the crown. "And the innocent? My sister? Were they weeds too?"

The emperor tilted his head, amused. "Sacrifices for a greater garden."

Something snapped.

Kaelen lunged, crown raised like a blade—but the Umbra Heralds moved faster. Black blades punched through his chest, pinning him to the throne. As his vision dimmed, the emperor leaned close.

"Die as you lived, Prince of Ash. Forgotten."

But,

Death was not the end.

Kaelen awoke in darkness, the crown still fused to his hands. Before him yawned the Voidwell—an abyssal vortex of screaming souls, its edges clawed with Zalathi runes. It called to him. 

A voice like collapsing stars.

"Hunger… Power… Vengeance."

He resisted. Until he saw them: fragments of his life flickering in the void. His sister's laughter. His mother's lullabies. The day his father had called him "son" without flinching. All burning away like parchment.

"Feed us… and we will feed you," the Voidwell crooned.

He stepped into the storm.

He was revived a new man days later.

Kaelen went on a quest for vengeance.

Souls poured into him—bandits, traitors, the Shadows who'd slaughtered his family. Their memories became his weapons. Their magic his flesh. He rebuilt himself bone by bone, a king of rot and wrath, until even the Voidwell trembled.

But the light in him dimmed.

His mother's face blurred. His sister's voice faded. And when he stood at last before Emperor Kaelith, Eclipse-tier magic crackling in his palms, he felt nothing. 

No rage. No sorrow. Only hunger.

He lost.

Not to the emperor's magic, but to his own hollow heart. As imperial blades carved him apart once more, the Voidwell laughed.

"Again."

———

A foolish king once said:

Regret was a luxury. Revenge was a compass.

Kaelen opened his eyes.

Seventeen again, his knees unbroken, the Ash Crown a distant nightmare. Moonlight streamed through his chamber window, and the voice of his drunken friend Garron echoed outside, urging him to "stop brooding and find a tavern."

But on Kaelen's vision, a System flickered:

[Welcome, Host.]

[The Eclipse Protocol has begun.]

[Primary Objective: Reclaim your crown.]

[Secondary Objective: Do not become the monster.]

He smiled.

This time, he would burn the garden to its roots.