London, 1848. Beneath the weight of soot and fog, the city pulsed like a dying heart—its rhythm erratic, its breath shallow. The air was thick with the scent of decay, every street a labyrinth of forgotten promises, every alley a place where the lost souls of the past whispered their stories to those who dared to listen.
And in the shadows of the cobblestone streets, the forgotten were not silent.
Veyron Ashwood had been one of them. Once, he had been a name spoken with reverence, an heir to a legacy of power and wealth. His family had been the pillars upon which London's high society had been built. Their estate had gleamed like a fortress in the heart of the city, and Veyron had been its crown prince. But the city had a way of forgetting those who grew too powerful, too certain of their place in the world.
It was not the first time London had seen ruin, but it was the first time Veyron had witnessed it from the inside out.
The night the Ashwood house fell was a night of fire, of blood, and of unspoken secrets. It was the night that Veyron had made his fatal mistake—a mistake born from greed and a thirst for power, the same hunger that had driven his father, his siblings, and himself into a cursed ritual they had believed they could control. The symbols had been drawn, the candles lit, the incantations whispered into the dark. But what Veyron had summoned was not power. It was destruction.
He had watched as the flames consumed everything he had known, his family torn apart by the very hand that was meant to protect them. His father, his mother, his siblings—all lost in an instant. But worse still, Veyron had lost himself.
The ashes of the Ashwood legacy were scattered across the stone floor, and Veyron stood alone in the wreckage, the walls of his past crumbling around him. His name, once revered, was now a whisper on the wind, a forgotten echo in a city that had already moved on.
But the forgotten were never truly silent.
The city did not care for the dead, nor did it mourn the fallen. In the gutters and the sewers, in the hidden corners where the desperate and the damned gathered, whispers spread like fire. Whispers of a man who had dared to reach for the stars and fallen into the abyss. Whispers of the price of ambition, of power, of blood.
Veyron had fled from the wreckage of his life, but he could not escape the whispers. They followed him, curling like smoke in the back of his mind, reminding him of the cost he had paid and the price yet to be exacted. The shadows knew his name, even if the city had forgotten it.
But he had not come this far to be swallowed by the darkness.
No, Veyron Ashwood would not be forgotten. He would carve his name back into history, not as the son of a fallen house, but as a force that could never be erased. The world had taken everything from him, but there was something he could take in return: power. The kind of power that had been locked away by those who had come before him, power that was forbidden, power that could turn the tides of fate itself.
The Guild had called to him from the dark corners of London, offering him the chance to reclaim what had been lost. They had seen the hunger in him, the hunger that had been born in the ashes of his family's downfall.
Power was not free. But Veyron had already given everything he had. What more was there to lose?
The forgotten were never silent. And Veyron Ashwood was about to make the city remember his name.