They say the world ended not in fire, nor in silence, but in hunger.
Once, the gods walked among men, and their temples glowed brighter than any torch. They promised protection, balance, eternity. But promises rot like fruit left too long in the sun. When the Dead rose, when the earth itself split and bled shadows, the gods turned their faces away.
Humanity was left to choke on its own prayers.
The dead did not kill with teeth and claw alone—they consumed. They feasted on memory, on warmth, on the very essence that made mortals human. Each soul devoured was a light extinguished from the sky, until the heavens themselves seemed dimmer.
And among this ruin, the first Fractured appeared.
Not quite living, not quite dead, they walked with a hunger carved into their bones. To touch a soul was to unmake it. To consume was to grow stronger—yet with every taste, they lost a shard of themselves.
Most became monsters. A few became weapons.
And one… one became something else entirely.
His name is carved in whispers, never written. A boy who bore the ember of both salvation and damnation. A boy who could look at a soul and see its light, its cracks, its flavor. Some call him the savior who might have stood against the tide. Others call him the herald of Vael—the shadow that even the gods feared.
No one agrees which is true.
Perhaps he was both.
This is not his story alone. It is the story of a world abandoned, of survivors clinging to ash, of gods who chose silence over mercy. But above all, it is a story of hunger.
Because in the end, hunger always wins.