Location:Virleya, specifically the dark city of Nocthrax, seat of the Minister of the North.
In the scorched heartlands of Virleya, where ash kissed the soil and the wind howled with the voices of things long buried, the world turned beneath a blood-red sky. The continent was no stranger to shadow — it had embraced it. Temples to forgotten demons rose like broken teeth across the land, their cracked stones smeared with offerings. The people here were human — but their gods were not. They bore no illusions of purity, no desire for redemption. They revered power in its rawest, most unshaped form.
At the heart of this power stood the city of Nocthrax, the obsidian spire-ringed seat of the legendary House of Vox — one of the Eleven Great Houses of Virleya. Though the supreme ruler of the generation hailed from the House of Bleu, the name Vox still echoed like thunder through the halls of dominion. From Nocthrax's towering peaks to its labyrinthine underbelly, the blood of its founders ran cold and deep, churning beneath generations of silent pacts and ancient sins.
Derethir Vox was born beneath a blood eclipse—an omen that split the skies and silenced the beasts of Virleya for three days. The Vox Clan, sworn to the Demon Courts, has ruled the obsidian wastes for centuries, their bloodline cursed and blessed by an ancient pact with the First Demon. Derethir is their heir, not by choice but by birthright—a child carved from prophecy and power.
Unlike his ancestors, who fed their strength with rituals of pain and sacrifice, Derethir was different. Quiet. Observant. Dangerous in stillness. The clan's seers feared him, for they could not read his soul. His birth broke a pattern written in hellfire.
They say he does not bleed red.
Hidden from the wider world, he was raised in the black citadel of Nar'Zareth, trained in forbidden arts and warcraft from the age of five
It was here, on the day of when the sun seemed to be it's brightest, that the city fell into stillness.
All at once, every torch dimmed. Every prayer halted mid-syllable. A cold fog began to rise — not from the sea, but from the very veins of the land. Mist rolled in over rooftops, crept between statues of horned lords, curled around the iron altars. And in the center of it all, in the highest chamber of The Obsidian Pinnacle, Drethir Vox awakened.
He had turned eighteen.
Alone, surrounded by silence, he stood before the Brazen Mirror, the ceremonial gate of branding. The branding was not just rite, but revelation — a contract inked in soul and sealed by blood. Drethir knelt before it, heart pounding with memories not his own. His body was lean and tall, wrapped in ritual garb — midnight silk with silver-threaded runes, a crimson mantle slung across his back.
The branding flame ignited.
It was not fire. It was cold. A searing burst of white-blue energy exploded upward, swallowing the chamber. Drethir stepped forward, barefoot, eyes unblinking. The fog entered his lungs — and something ancient stirred within him.
Chains of frost curled around his limbs. Symbols etched themselves into his back, glowing like starlight on a frozen lake. The pain was not sharp but eternal, as if time itself had turned to ice inside his bones.
Then came the sigil — a spiral of runes shaped like a dying snowflake, branded upon the back of his neck. The Mark of Winter Fog.
A burst of white mist erupted outward, crashing through the windows, sweeping down the spires of Nocthrax. It swallowed the city in silence. Screams froze in throats. The sky darkened, and for a single heartbeat, the world forgot what warmth was.
From the fog, figures emerged — eleven of them, cloaked in living parchment, faces shifting between inkblots and masks of ash. The Eleven Demon-Scribes, ancient recorders of every cursed pact and shadow-wrought legacy, drawn by the birth of something not seen in millennia.
"It is written," hissed one.
"The fog lives," whispered another.
"The Pactborn stirs," chanted all.
Scrolls unfurled in the air. Quills hovered, scratching without ink, as the Scribes circled Drethir.
"Speak your name."
"Let it echo into the Ashen Ledger."
"Let the Binding be sealed."
Drethir opened his mouth, frost escaping with every word:
"I am Drethir Vox of the House of Vox."
"Brand me. Witness me. Write me."
With those words, the chamber trembled.
The Eleven chanted. The scrolls burned.
"Winter Fog — the power to veil the world."
"To cloud all truth. To paralyze all will."
"To draw breath from the living and leave only frost."
And then came the final voice — deep, not from the Scribes but from beneath the stone, beneath the world:
"The Pact is reforged. The Ledger lives."
Outside, Nocthrax groaned.
Spire-lamps shattered. Statues wept blood. Birds froze mid-flight and shattered on cobblestones. The fog, Drethir's birthright, rolled into every alley, every hall, every cradle. And somewhere in the deepest crypt, an old vault cracked open.
In far Caelion, golden shrines flickered.
In Thalor, wolves stopped howling and trees bent low, as if bowing to the cold.
And in the lost continent beyond — unspoken and unseen — the sea hissed and boiled.
Drethir stood tall in the chamber, his eyes glowing with stormlight, his breath visible.
"Let them remember," he said.
"The world will know I lived."
"And that I returned."
The Eleven bowed as one.
"It begins again."
"The first betrayer walks again"
"And winter follows."