Chapter 1 — The Shadow That Breathes
The first thing I remember is the sound.
It was not the voice of a man, nor the whisper of the wind, but something deeper — like the echo of the earth's heartbeat, steady, patient, infinite.
I woke on a shore of black glass, waves lapping at the jagged edges. The sky above me was neither night nor day, but a twilight that stretched without horizon. And from the depths of that twilight, he spoke.
> "Rise."
The word was a command, yet not harsh. It was warm, as if it had always been meant for me — as though my bones had been carved around that single syllable.
I obeyed.
My body was unscarred, my hands empty. But in my chest… a weight pulsed, slow and deliberate. Not a heart. Something older. Something that was not entirely mine.
He appeared before me without appearing — not a figure, but a presence, filling the air like the scent of rain before a storm. My mind painted him in shapes it could bear to understand: a man draped in shadow, crowned by a waning moon, eyes like two dying stars.
> "Do you know your name?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but there was nothing. I did not have a name.
> "Then I will give you one," he said, the twilight trembling with his voice. "You are Azael."
The name fell into me like a stone into a still pond, ripples carrying its weight through every part of my being.
> "You are my first in this age," Draevan said. "The world above has grown fat with comfort. Light smothers it, coddles it, blinds it. You will remind it of the truth. That only in shadow does strength take root."
In the silence that followed, I felt him not as a god above me, but as something within me — a second pulse beneath my skin, a presence behind my eyes.
He reached — or perhaps I only imagined he reached — and placed something in my hand. A blade, black as the shore beneath my feet, its edge glimmering with an unnatural stillness.
> "You are not yet whole," he said. "Every conquest, every soul that kneels, will feed you. Every follower will bind you closer to me. With each victory, your shadow will deepen… until even the light will bow to it."
I looked at the blade, then at the endless twilight. I did not question him. I could not.
> "Go now," Draevan's voice sank into me, final and unyielding. "The first piece has moved. The Goddess has her pawn. You are mine."
The black shore dissolved beneath my feet.
When I opened my eyes again, I stood in a forest bathed in moonlight — my first breath in the world of men. Somewhere far away, a bell tolled, and I felt it in my bones. Not a call to prayer. A call to war.