Beneath a sable canopy woven with the cold shimmer of distant suns, the city of Erebus lay cloaked in shadows both ancient and weary. Its spires, jagged like the shattered bones of a fallen giant, pierced the ashen sky, while below, the streets curled in labyrinthine despair—a nest for the broken, the desperate, and the forgotten.
Upon a weathered rooftop, solitary and silent as a wraith, crouched Cael Orin. His frame was gaunt, a mere whisper of flesh and bone, yet his eyes—dark, keen, and restless—held the weight of unspoken torment. Upon his breast, hidden beneath tattered raiment, glimmered a mark most dire: an inverted star, etched deep as if by the hand of fate itself, a sigil of curse and portent.
Above, amid the host of celestial fires that danced their eternal dance, burned a singular and dreadful constellation—the Horned Star. Twisted and eldritch, its light was a pale echo, a silent herald of a curse old as the stars themselves. None save Cael's keen gaze beheld its haunting glow; none but he bore the burden of its watchful malice.
The world beneath him was a realm torn asunder, fractured by wars celestial and earthly. The great houses of men, now but shadows of their former glory, waged silent wars behind veils of deceit, their agents—the assassin guilds—wove webs of death and dominion. Erebus itself was shackled beneath the iron clasp of a guild corrupted, puppets to distant lords whose riches knew no bounds, while the poor starved and perished beneath cold, indifferent skies.
A sudden cry shattered the brittle silence, piercing as a blade through thickened gloom. Cael's heart stirred, a tempest within his chest, and he sprang forth, swift as a shadow fleeing the dying light.
Through narrow alleys slick with rain and rot, he pursued the sound—a lonely beacon amid the tide of despair—until his eyes fell upon a figure sprawled upon the stone, blood seeping like spilled ink beneath a trembling hand. Upon that hand, a sigil glimmered faintly—a token of forgotten legends, a cipher of doom.
Yet before he could move, a shadow detached itself from the darkness behind him, a whisper of menace in the cold night air.
A voice, low and edged with hunger, breathed forth: "The Horned Star marks you, child of ruin. Its gaze pierces veils unseen. Beware what truths you seek, for some stars herald not salvation, but oblivion."
The night held its breath as the world poised upon the edge of fate's cruel blade.
The shadow lunged.