"Sometimes, a king's crown is not forged from gold, but from pain."
In the north of the Sombrethorn continent, at the foot of cliffs veiled in ice, lay the village of Teladu, where silence seeped not only into the ears but into the soul itself. In these lands, the wind howled as if whispering that even the gods had forsaken this place. In Teladu, people did not grow up to live — they grew up merely to survive.
Once part of a great kingdom, this frozen land was now a silent grave of the past. Snowstorms raged like disasters carrying the memories of a long-forgotten king.
"They say every storm starts with a spark."
The spark of this storm was born with the silent cries of a child entering the world.
One winter morning, in one of Teladu's most crumbled huts, a child was born. His mother died in childbirth. His father had disappeared months earlier during an expedition and was presumed dead.
After the villagers found the baby, they whispered:
– "His mother died giving birth."
– "His father was already gone. This child is cursed."
– "The guards didn't even bother to name him. Maybe they thought he wasn't worth naming."
The villagers neither pitied nor embraced the child. They didn't even give him a name. His fate was sealed with his very first breath.
Years later, this child would be called "Karalius" — a title meaning "king." But as he grew up, he never truly had a name of his own. Because this world had not even allowed him to be a person.
After being found beside his mother's cold, lifeless body, Karalius was sent to the village's only orphanage: the Pale Moon Manor. In this village, orphans were seen as cursed and damned, and Karalius was no exception.
In the eyes of the villagers, Karalius was a worthless, useless orphan. He grew up under the cruelty of his own people. Hands that said, "Work, or you'll starve," shoved him to the ground and begrudged him even a scrap of bread. Karalius was silent. He buried his anger and sorrow deep inside, never putting them into words.
By the time he was five, he had no shoes on his feet but had calloused hands and a back bent from carrying heavy loads. He would rise before dawn, carry feed for animals, and chop wood for the elderly. His eyes were large, but there was no light in them. He never knew a world where children played or mothers sang lullabies.
One morning, an old villager named Eldram shouted at him:
"Hey, broken child! Don't think you're worth anything! Your mother birthed you as a curse!"
Karalius said nothing. He simply stared, trying to understand why such words were thrown at him. His eyes were fixed and silent. In that moment, something inside him cracked for the first time. But it did not shatter — not yet.
At six years old, he was first bathed in blood.
One day, while walking down a snow-covered street, he slipped, and the pieces of stale bread he was carrying fell onto another boy's freshly polished shoes. That boy was the son of the village's main butcher — cruel like his father, but not nearly as strong.
– "What did you do, you little rat! They're newly polished!"
– "Filthy beggar!"
The boy pushed Karalius down and beat him repeatedly with a stick he found. Karalius did not run. At the first blow, his eyes welled up. At the second, he lost his breath. At the third, he collapsed. By the fourth blow, he was staring at the red stains blooming on the snow.
But he only clenched his fists. He did not cry. That day, Karalius thought he would die — but he didn't.
Instead, he learned that pain was merely a trial. And those who survived carried not the screams of pain, but its ashes.
Years passed.
Karalius was no longer a child. But when asked his age, he would not answer. For tracking time meant nothing to him. There was no yesterday, no tomorrow. Only the present — and that present was always painful.
One night, as he gnawed on a stale piece of bread he had stolen from the pantry, one of the village's harshest guards set his sights on him from a distance. He came over and kicked Karalius hard in the knee. Then he leaned over the fallen boy and spat on him:
"Scum like you won't ever be a man — or even a servant!"
Karalius closed his eyes. As blood from his wounded knee soaked into the frozen ground, something different awoke inside him. He pressed his hands into the earth. The hardness of the snow was like the cruelty of the world itself. His gaze caught a small shard of glass half-buried in the snow. It looked as though it had sprouted from the ground, shining as if whispering to him.
He quickly grabbed the shard.
And without hesitation, he drove it into the guard's throat. The glass shattered; blood stained the snow. Silence turned into screaming in an instant. Karalius started running. He did not look back, diving into the frozen forests. There was no fear, no tears. For the first time, he had taken a life. Yet what echoed inside him was not guilt — it was a strange clarity. For the first time, the world made sense. And yet, he knew there was no turning back.
That night, a child did not survive — a human being was born.
He walked for days. The soles of his feet cracked; his stomach twisted with hunger. He ate snow, but no cold could quench the fire within him. In his dreams, he saw his mother, but her face was always veiled in mist.
Eventually, he encountered a group of mercenaries. They usually sold children. But when they looked at Karalius, they didn't see a soul for sale — they saw a warrior who would take souls. They took him in.
He lived as a mercenary for years. First serving small caravans, then fallen lords. With every battle, he grew stronger and more ruthless. His name became a whisper that echoed in the darkness: Karalius — Child of the Shadow.
Over time, he learned to speak more with his blade than his tongue. Killing became his language. He had no friends who understood him, but he had soldiers who followed him. Karalius was not just an executioner. He weighed justice by the weight of loyalty and punished betrayal without question at the point of his sword. He left a mark on every battlefield. Each night, he murmured the names of those he had slain as he fell asleep.
One day, he realized that this bloody cycle no longer held any meaning. He called out to his fellow mercenaries:
"Do you want to be not servants of a king, but an army that carries the marks of its own justice?!"
And so it was.
Over time, thousands of warriors followed him. And one day, standing at a summit, he looked down and saw a snow-covered hill. The Whispering Hill. A refuge, a beginning amidst endless white...
"Here... a kingdom will be born," he said.
Thus began the saga of Karalius.
Born of pain, blood, and smoldering hope.
But no matter how high he rose…
Inside him, there was always that shard of glass:
Broken. Sharp. Silent.
And because of that, the most dangerous of all.