PROLOGUE
The world broke a long time ago.
No one remembers what it was called before. Some whispered it had a name once, something soft and round on the tongue, something spoken between lovers or etched into the lips of lullabies. But no one speaks of those names now.
Now, it’s just Vraneth—a word that hisses and scrapes when spoken, fitting for a land that gnaws at itself.
The old empires are dust, buried beneath moss-choked ruins and bones. Cities still stand, but they don’t live. Enduring is not living. With their cold iron walls, heavy gates, watchmen with eyes sunken from sleepless nights. Between these cities stretch miles of wasteland, blighted wood, gray scrub, hills that bleed tar, rivers that stink of rot and iron.
And between it all, the Wretches roam.
They didn’t come from the skies. No divine punishment, no falling stars. The first ones just appeared. Twisted forms stitched from nightmares. They walk like animals but mimic human shape. Some crawl, some slither, some glide without limbs at all. No two Wretches are ever the same, save one thing: they crave flesh, and they breed more of their kind wherever blood is spilled.
They don’t speak. No one knows what made them. Some say a sickness in the bones of the earth. Others claim gods were buried here, and something hollowed their graves.
But when the first fortress fell, and the nobles screamed for armies to protect their gilded walls, no knights answered.
Only the Brotherhoods did.
They weren’t born from glory. They weren’t trained in courts or raised with honour. The Brotherhoods were forged from bastards, orphans, criminals, all gathered in fortress-monasteries, beaten into discipline, taught nothing but the kill. They lived by rule, by steel, by instinct.
Among them, Kaelos Varn was forged sharper than most.
He was a boy when the Wretches came to his village. Watched his father torn open, his mother dragged screaming into the woods. He never saw what took them. Only heard it: wet slaps, crunching bones, the sound of a body breaking on roots.
He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He followed the sound of death until someone found him blood-soaked, barefoot, silent and dragged him to Gravehold, one of the great Brotherhood keeps. There, he was beaten, branded, taught the way of the blade as his sole purpose.
Kill. Clean. Move on.
Kaelos excelled. He killed like he breathed, without hesitation, without remorse. There were never friends or lovers in the Brotherhood. Just drills, hunts, and sleep when exhaustion broke him.
They gave him a name: the Pale Blade. Not for his sword, but for his eyes, colourless things that saw monsters as his very own targets.
He had no love for the Brotherhood. But he knew nothing else.
Until now.
