No dreams. No magic. No life.
The Ember Vein is not metaphor—it is function.
A river of molten ore that runs beneath the Broken Plains, pulsing with power too ancient to name.
The forges drink from it.
The blacksmiths, mages, and vision-weavers of Nightfall craft tools from its gifts—tools that fuel realities, spark creation, sculpt destiny across a hundred worlds.
And still, they whisper about me.
They think I don’t hear it, but I do.
Two-face, they call me.
The Masked Lord.
The Burned Prince.
The Death That Walks.
And they’re not wrong.
When fury rises, so does the thing inside me.
My second form.
My Demon made flesh and bone and fire.
Bone mask snapping into place.
Wings of living flame ripping free from my back, each span eight feet across and too bright for mortal eyes.
The air around me ignites. The ground splits.
In battle, I am a walking inferno. I do not know mercy.
I have burned everything I ever tried to love.
And that is the truth I carry closest to the bone.
That is why I isolate myself. Why I do not bond like Kael and Alaric. Why I do not laugh with them, drink with them, hope like them.
I trust them because I must.
Because we are Lords, and without a Prime, Nightfall needs all four of us whole.
But I will never belong the way they do—to each other, to their joy.
If I had to choose one who understands the weight I bear, it would be Dagan.
The Lord of Earth is no softer than I am—he is stone, grit, ancient bark and buried bone.
The very foundation of this realm hums through him the way The Ember Vein hums through me.
But we are not brothers in the way Kael and Alaric are.
We are weapons.
