Before the world began, there was the Fold.
A realm without time, where every soul hung suspended like a word unsaid.
And in that place, there was a name.
A name that defied endings.
A name cursed to return.
Ashardio.
The First Death
He was once a man of titles.
Sage of Veilglass.
Warden of the Forbidden Stair.
Speaker of Nine Tongues.
Ashardio had transcended what kings coveted—he held not power, but understanding. He sought the threads that wove existence: the luminous, golden strands of Life, and the silken black roots of Death.
He called both sacred. And for that, they called him heretic.
It is said he walked the labyrinthine ruins beneath the Spine Mountains and returned with a book written in living ink. That he debated with Seraphs and drank from the Wellspring where no mortal was meant to kneel.
But knowledge is not free.
And the moment he wrote his final theorem—"All Light cast from Death is False, yet all Death born of True Light returns"—his fate was sealed.
The thirteen High Orders signed his silence in wax and fire.
They came at dawn.
Not to kill him.
But to erase him.
The temple where he made his final stand was lost in official records. Its ruins renamed. The trees around it burned to salt. But the stars remember.
And when he fell, bleeding silver beneath the shattered Eye of Divinity, he did not scream.
He whispered.
"I will return where even death dares not tread.
My name will be born again—
in light…
and in shadow."
The Fold heard him.
And answered.
The Second Birth
The child was born in the noble house of Ravaryn, on the longest night of the year.
A cold wind howled through the birthing chambers as thunder struck the bell tower, shattering the angelic statue atop it. The flames in every hearth went out. Mirrors cracked. And in the great hall, a raven bled from its eyes and sang no more.
His mother, Countess Elirelle, gripped the child with trembling hands.
The midwife went pale.
"His eyes," she murmured. "They're silver. And… blinking in two directions."
The baby did not cry.
He only looked.
His father, Count Tharos Ravaryn, named him Ashardio—not knowing why the word rose in his throat like a prayer.
Some said it was ancestral.
Others said it came from his dreams.But none spoke of the omen.
None dared to.
The House of the Raven Sigil
Ravaryn was a noble county of dignity and order. Its banners bore the Raven Sigil, symbol of truth between life and death.
But after the child was born, things began to… twist.
The ravens flew east and never returned.
The priests avoided the estate.
The court astrologer burned her charts and threw herself into the frost-river, whispering "the spiral has been broken."
Ashardio's father began hearing voices.
He locked himself in the family archives for days, muttering about symbols found behind mirrors and numbers that bled.
In the final month of his life, he asked to be buried not in the ancestral tomb, but "where breath cannot reach."
No one understood.
He died in his sleep. Eyes wide. Smiling.
⸻
A Silent Cradle
Ashardio grew in silence.
Not because he could not speak.
But because the world around him seemed quieter when he was near.
Candles flickered. Clocks slowed. Even the birds paused their song when he entered the garden.
At one, he traced glyphs in spilled wine.
At two, he pointed at a weeping maid's shadow and said "That's not yours."
At three, he vanished for six hours. They found him in the crypt chapel, asleep before the effigy of Saint Morro—the only saint banned from public worship.
No one could explain how he got in. The doors were sealed.
He was not punished.
But from that day onward, the estate priest left without saying goodbye.
The Watchers
Some say a shadow watched the child from afar.
A hooded figure by the vineyard. A flicker behind the stained glass. A whisper in the crypts beneath the family chapel.
No harm ever came to him.
Because something already claimed him.
And one night, when the Countess stood by the nursery window, she heard her son speak in his sleep.
Not gibberish.
But an old, lost dialect of Primordial Light—the language of gods.
And again, in the same breath, he uttered a verse in the Tongue of the Hollow Deep—a language only the dead are allowed to know.
The Countess did not sleep that night.
Nor the next.
She began to wear gloves of iron thread. And whenever she held her son, she whispered prayers under her breath—not to bless him…
…but to protect herself.