Chapter 1 — The Awakening of Azrael
The sky was painted in the hues of early dawn—soft lavender and pale orange—when a frail man with a weathered beard and white hair lay on the edge of a cobblestone path, covered in rags soaked with dew. His blue eyes stared at the void above him—not the clouds, not the heavens, just... nothing.
"Why did my parents abandon me when I was a child?" he asked the stars that were slowly fading away.
There was no grief in his voice. No pain, no anger—only a hollow question spoken from habit, like a prayer long since lost its meaning.
"What... was my name?"
He didn't know. Not anymore. His memories were a broken tapestry, full of holes. He remembered the cold. The hunger. The cruel laughter of strangers. But his name? Lost.
Tears slipped from his lifeless blue eyes as if his body remembered how to cry even if his heart forgot why. Just as sleep began to pull him back into its silent grip, a deep, terrifying whisper coiled around his ear:
"Wake up."
He bolted upright.
But the night was gone.
The world had changed.
Sunlight filtered through trees and old-fashioned buildings that stood tall with ivy-covered stone and elegant iron balconies. Men wore black coats and broad hats. Women in vibrant silk dresses and jewelry clacked their heels across the streets. Horse-drawn carriages passed with snorting beasts and clattering wheels.
The vagabond blinked.
This wasn't the city he'd fallen asleep in. It wasn't the world he knew.
He shut his eyes, tried to calm his breathing, and whispered to himself. "It's a dream. Just a dream."
"Get out from in front of my shop, you shameful vagabond!" a voice shouted.
Elliot—if that was still his name—felt rage boil inside him, but it quickly cooled. He stood in silence, his face blank, eyes dull. He walked away, ignoring the curses that followed him.
As he walked, he realized something strange. His back didn't ache. His knees didn't crack. He felt... younger. Stronger. His body no longer felt like a brittle shell. He saw a reflection in a shop's polished glass window—a man no older than twenty-five with a pale, slender face, shoulder-length black hair, and red-black eyes that gleamed like dying embers. His features were sharp: a pointed nose, thin lips, and skin pale as winter moonlight.
"This... is me?" he whispered.
Suddenly, a voice broke his trance.
"Excuse me, sir!" A man with messy brown hair and sharp black eyes stood in front of him. He was dressed in a black coat and pants, holding a clipboard.
"You look new. Lost, perhaps? Would you be interested in joining an organization that helps those without home or kin? It's completely free. We even pay our members well. All you need to do is sign."
He extended a parchment. At the top were the words:
"Ashen Veil Society"
Elliot stared at the name. A strange chill crawled up his spine.
"I don't have a name," he replied coldly.
The man raised an eyebrow.
"That so?" he said, hiding his surprise behind a gentle smile.
"I see. Well, perhaps... this is your chance to choose one."
The man handed him a pen.
But before Elliot could take it, something seized his mind.
A sharp pain exploded in his skull. Blood dripped from his nose. His knees buckled, and he clutched his head, eyes wide as the world spun.
Images—hundreds of them—rushed into his brain. Voices. Faces. Symbols. Names.
A massive tree reaching toward black stars.
A circle of robed figures chanting in a forgotten tongue.
Flames dancing atop silver skulls.
Then—a name. A whisper.
Azrael.
"You are the boundary between life and death. The shepherd of souls. The Reborn."
And just like that, everything stopped.
Azrael opened his eyes—red and black. His tears, once blue, had dried in another world.
He wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand, calm as still water.
"What happened?" the brown-haired man asked, stepping closer.
"Nothing," Azrael replied.
His voice was cold, smooth like marble. Void of life. The man instinctively stepped back.
"May I borrow your pen?" Azrael asked.
The man handed it to him silently.
Azrael scrawled the name on the parchment:
Azrael Duskgrave
The man squinted at the name. "Azrael... Duskgrave? Quite the ominous name."
Azrael nodded without emotion.
"I'm Markus Vren," the man said, forcing a smile. "Welcome to the Ashen Veil. Headquarters are on Wraithbone Street. I can take you there if you'd prefer."
"I'll go alone."
Markus hesitated, then handed him a small brass token marked with the Veil's insignia: a flame inside a crescent eye.
Azrael pocketed it and walked off.
Markus watched him go, unease crawling down his spine.
---
The city was called Eidralis, the capital of the southern provinces of the Thorne Empire. A city where noble houses ruled by bloodlines blessed—or cursed—by ancient entities. Magic, though forbidden to the commoners, whispered behind every curtain. And monsters, some human and some not, walked in disguise.
Azrael walked through crowded streets, each step light, graceful, unhurried. People looked at him—some with pity, some with disdain. To them, he was a thin, sickly young man with haunted eyes and ragged clothes.
Weak. Worthless. Forgettable.
Exactly how he wanted to be seen.
As he passed an alley, a sudden scream split the air. Azrael turned and saw three men in black cloaks dragging a young woman behind crates. Her eyes wide with fear, her mouth covered.
No one stopped. No one cared.
Azrael did.
He walked into the alley.
"Get lost," one of the men snapped, drawing a curved dagger.
Azrael said nothing. His face remained blank.
"I said get lost!"
The man lunged.
And then—
He stopped mid-air.
Frozen.
His body crumpled to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The other two stared in horror as black veins spread over their friend's corpse. His flesh aged and cracked as if a thousand years had passed in seconds.
"What the—?!"
Azrael raised a single hand. His fingers moved like a conductor's, elegant and precise.
The second man gasped and fell to his knees, eyes rolling back as his heart ceased to beat.
The last man turned to run—
But a whisper followed him.
"Sleep."
The man collapsed, still breathing but unconscious.
The girl stared at Azrael, trembling.
"Go," he said softly.
She fled.
Azrael knelt beside the first corpse and placed two fingers on its cold forehead.
A black mist rose, forming into a glowing red thread. A memory fragment.
A sigil.
A secret.
Azrael inhaled—and the memory vanished into his soul.
Information flooded his mind. The three men were part of a heretical cult—The Crimson Rebirth. They were collecting souls for an upcoming ritual meant to summon something from the Dead Plane.
"I see..." Azrael murmured.
As he stood, he noticed his reflection in a broken shard of glass. His eyes flickered with red flame, his features shrouded in a thin mist of death energy. But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.
He looked human again.
He left the alley, vanishing into the crowd once more.
---
At sunset, he arrived at the Ashen Veil headquarters. The building looked like an abandoned chapel: moss-covered stone, shattered stained glass, and a crooked bell tower. But when he showed the token at the door, the guards stepped aside.
Inside was a different world—tall candlelit halls, leather chairs, maps of secret territories, and bulletin boards lined with requests for investigation, monster slaying, and relic recovery.
Azrael was led to a modest room with a cot, desk, and bookshelf.
"This will be your space for now," said the quartermaster. "Food's at the mess hall. You'll be assigned a mentor tomorrow."
Azrael nodded, closed the door, and sat on the cot.
He pulled from his coat a worn book he'd picked up earlier—a codex of Bloodpaths.
There were twelve main paths, each aligned with a fundamental aspect of reality: Light, Shadow, Flame, Flesh, Time, Death...
He traced his fingers across the page until they landed on the one that stirred something deep inside him.
Path of the Reaper.
Each Bloodpath had nine Sequences—powers granted through ritual and consumption of carefully crafted potions made from mystical ingredients.
Azrael remembered it now. He had once walked this path.
And now... he would walk it again.
But this time, he would not make the same mistakes.
Not as Elliot the forsaken.