A hundred years ago…
The world had fallen silent when Kharoth, god of death, first appeared before him. Vaelen had been just a man then—young, desperate, and shattered by helplessness. His sister, Elowen, was dying from a wasting illness no healer could name. Each day, she slipped further from him, and there was nothing he could do.
He had raged—not at her, but at the cruelty of the world. The gods. Fate. Life. All of it seemed designed to break him.
That's when the shadows stirred.
"I can offer you a way out," Kharoth had said, voice like dead leaves rustling in a crypt. "A bargain. A way to defy death and reclaim what you have lost. But there is a price."
The god had promised what no mortal could refuse: immortality, power, purpose. In return, Vaelen would serve. He would reap. He would ferry the dead into the beyond. His soul would belong to Kharoth, bound to his will for eternity.
He accepted. For Elowen, he would pay any price.
But the god lied.
When her time came, Elowen still died. Her screams still haunted him. Her soul was not spared—it was consumed by the void, her light extinguished as if it had never existed.
"You broke your vow," Vaelen had whispered to Kharoth, his voice splintered with rage.
The god had only watched, unmoved.
And so Vaelen became his second hand—a silent reaper bound to the will of a liar.
Now, centuries later, as he moved through the shifting dark of the Scryforge, he no longer remembered the sound of his own laughter, the warmth of sunlight, or the feeling of being someone other than a weapon.
But as the name Seraphina echoed again, something stirred—a whisper not from Kharoth, but from within.
Save her…
It was absurd. He didn't save people. He ended their stories.
And yet…
Seraphina was resisting. Her soul, unlike the others, burned with something he hadn't felt in years: will. Her existence pressed against fate itself, and for the first time since Elowen, he wondered if some things were still worth defying the gods for.
His fingers curled into a fist, and the shadows around him trembled.
He had made the deal. He knew the rules. There was no going back.
But maybe—just maybe—there was still a way to break them.