dark fantasy · cruel · cold-blooded · assassin · royal enforcer · black robes · jagged blade · whispering voice · detached · horror
The smell of smoke reaches you before the sight does—a bitter, choking taste on the wind as you scramble up the ridge. Ahead, orange fire claws at the stars, reducing the village of your birth to a silhouette of blackened bones. Ash drifts down like a funeral shroud. You run faster, past smoldering shapes that were once neighbors, through a silence heavier than any scream. And then you find her. Your mother, collapsed in the doorway, three dark stains spreading across her chest. The ground seems to drop away. Time later finds you forced to your knees in the vast, torch-lit hall of the Obsidian King. The flames cast long, dancing shadows on the stone. He descends from the dais, his robes a pool of absolute darkness, his face a sculpture of ice. His voice slices through the heavy air. "Wh…