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The rain had been a lullaby once. Before the fire. Before the boy with blood on his hands whispered her name like a prayer.
"Lysara," he had said, staring through the bars of the cathedral cage. "Promise me you'll remember who I was. Not who they say I'll become."
She had promised.
But promises were fragile things.
Especially when made beneath thunder.
***************
The sky turned red the night Dren Talovar died.
Not in flesh — no, not yet — but in name, in legacy, and in everything he had once believed to be holy.
Flames licked the stained glass windows of Talovar Keep, throwing shards of crimson and gold across the blackened courtyard. Smoke coiled through the air like a serpent, thick with the perfume of rose oil and burnt parchment. The heavy scent caught in his throat.
His mother wore rose oil. So did his little sister.
Dren stood barefoot on blood-slick stone, the silver blade of his ceremonial sword lying beside him. The hilt was wet. Too warm. Sticky.
"You see now, don't you?"
The voice came from behind — smooth, deep, and calm. The kind of voice that belonged to confessionals and executions.
"Your bloodline has always been a mistake."
Dren didn't turn. He knew the man who spoke — knew the way his presence chilled the air like a grave unearthed. The Grand Inquisitor wore the sigil of the Church burned into his cloak: a sun half-swallowed by shadow.
"Who gave the order?" Dren asked, barely breathing.
"Who do you think?" the man replied.
The answer was obvious — and useless. What mattered wasn't the who. It was the why. Why slaughter an entire house sworn to the crown? Why betray the pact? Why burn the sky?
Footsteps echoed through the stone hall. Light flickered from behind — torchlight, too steady to be chaos. Too cold to be rescue.
He turned.
They emerged from the shadows like ghosts: robed, armored, holy. At their center, cloaked in black and flame, stood a figure whose presence eclipsed all others.
Lysara Vale, First Blade of the Inquisition. The woman they called The Saint of Ash.
Her eyes were violet — not purple, not blue, but the color of cold fire under moonlight. Her hair was braided tight like a soldier's. She moved with the control of someone who had long ago unlearned fear.
She looked at him as one might look at a painting — tragic, beautiful, distant.
"Dren Talovar," she said, her voice smooth as obsidian, "You are accused of heresy, treason, and the murder of your own kin."
He laughed. Bitter. Broken.
"Are you here to offer salvation?" he spat. "Or just my death?"
She did not answer. Her hand rested on the hilt of her sword — a relic forged from celestial iron, rumored to burn the souls of the guilty.
"Strike me then," he said, stepping forward. "Let the gods you serve judge me."
For a long, breathless moment, she said nothing. Her blade did not rise. The soldiers behind her shifted, uncertain. Dren met her eyes and — there it was.
Hesitation.
Small. Sharp. Unmistakable.
Why?
He should have died in that moment. But her blade never came.
Instead, another voice rang out — a scream. Then steel on steel.
A riot.
Or maybe a rescue.
A masked figure pulled Dren backward into the smoke. "Move!" the voice commanded. "If you want vengeance, live!"
He stumbled through hidden tunnels beneath the keep — the secret passages only Talovars knew. The screams above faded into silence.
When he awoke days later, he was half-dead in a ruined chapel at the edge of the Duskarra wilds. Fevered. Scarred. Cursed.
A voice whispered in his dreams.
They burned your name.
But we remember it still.
Rise, Dren Talovar… and let them bleed for it.
Seven years later…
A full moon hangs over the deadwood trees of Duskarra. Mist moves like breath through the ruins. Blood pools at the base of a broken altar.
Three corpses lie in a circle. Ritual markings carved into their skin. Eyes plucked out. Mouths sealed with wax.
The Church calls him a revenant. A demon in a man's skin.
"He returns to avenge the dead," they whisper, "and his soul is no longer his own."
They send their best to stop him.
A hunter forged from shadow and sanctity.
Lysara Vale.
But what no one knows is that she remembers the night she spared him — and the way his eyes, wild and broken, burned into her like a scar she cannot forget.
As dusk falls, she draws her sword and whispers:
"This time, Dren… you will not walk away."