In the days when the Sovereign Empire stretched its marble fingers across the Middle Sea, when the Aetheric Towers still burned with the light of captured stars, there lived a man whose name would echo through the ages like thunder across mountains. But before we speak of Kami Van Hellsin, we must first know the wolves from which he descended.
In the northern provinces of the Empire, where the pine forests grew thick and the winters bit deep, there stood the estate of Grimwald Van Hellsin. Grimwald was no ordinary man. He had been a Cohort Commander in the Imperial Legions, a wielder of the Pneuma—that invisible force that flows through all living things, the breath of the world itself. In his prime, Grimwald could channel Pneuma through his blade until it sang with killing light, could harden his skin until swords shattered against his flesh like pottery against stone.
But Grimwald had grown weary of the Empire's endless wars, weary of bleeding for senators who had never held a sword, weary of watching good men die for bad reasons. So he had taken his veteran's grant of land and retired to the frontier, to a place where a man could live by his own law and answer to no master but himself.
The land Grimwald chose was rich but wild. The estate sprawled across valley and hill, forest and field, where wolves still howled at night and bears claimed the deep woods as their kingdom. The locals whispered that the land was cursed, that old powers slept beneath those hills—the kind of powers that predated the Empire, that remembered when gods walked the earth and the Pneuma flowed wild and untamed.
Grimwald built his hall from timber and stone, massive and dark, with great pillars carved with the old symbols that his grandfather had taught him—symbols the Imperial priests claimed were superstition, but which Grimwald knew held power. He took a wife, Bera of House Thornwood, a woman as fierce as she was beautiful, whose own lineage traced back to the ancient chieftains who had ruled these lands before the Empire came with its roads and laws and taxes.
Bera was a Pneuma-wielder in her own right, though her gift ran different than Grimwald's martial channeling. She could sense the flow of life-force in all things, could feel the pulse of the earth beneath her feet, could know when storms were coming or when enemies approached. Some whispered she had learned the old arts, the forbidden techniques that the Imperial Academy of Aetheric Studies had banned three generations past.
Together, Grimwald and Bera had two sons.
The first was Thorwald Van Hellsin, and from birth he was everything a father could want. He grew straight and tall like an oak, fair-haired and even-tempered. By the time Thorwald was twelve, he could best grown men at wrestling, could ride any horse in the stable, could strike a target with bow or javelin with uncanny precision. His Pneuma awakened early and strong, manifesting as a golden aura that made his movements swift and sure. The servants loved him, the tenants respected him, and Grimwald looked upon him with quiet pride.
But then came the second son.
Kami Van Hellsin was born on a night of ill omens. Lightning split the sky though no rain fell. The estate's hunting hounds howled until their voices went hoarse. Old Lucia, the midwife who had delivered half the children in the province, emerged from Bera's chamber pale and shaking, muttering prayers to gods whose names the Empire had forbidden.
"The child is marked," she whispered to Grimwald. "His Pneuma flows backward, like a whirlpool. I have never felt such a thing."
The baby was ugly—there was no kind way to say it. Where Thorwald had been pink and perfect, Kami emerged dark and strange, his head too large, his features twisted as though pressed by rough hands in the womb. But it was his eyes that disturbed people most. Even as an infant, Kami's eyes were knowing, ancient, filled with an intelligence that should not exist in something so new to the world.
Bera loved the child fiercely, as mothers do, but even she felt the strangeness of him. When she nursed him, she could feel her Pneuma being drawn into him like water into parched earth. The baby drank not just milk but life-force itself, growing stronger while leaving Bera exhausted and trembling.
Grimwald tried to love his second son, truly he did. But there was something about the boy that set his teeth on edge, that woke old instincts from his days as a soldier—the instinct that warned when something was wrong, when danger lurked just out of sight.
As Kami grew from infant to child, the strangeness only deepened.
By age three, while other children were learning to speak in simple sentences, Kami spoke like a scholar, using words he should not know, discussing concepts no one had taught him. He would sit for hours watching ants march across the courtyard stones, or staring at the flames in the hearth, and when asked what he was doing, he would say he was "listening to their Pneuma."
At age five, Kami killed his first man.
It happened at the harvest festival, when the tenants and freeholders gathered at the Van Hellsin hall for the autumn celebration. There was drinking and feasting, contests of strength and skill. A traveling merchant named Valdus, a greasy man who traded in cloth and trinkets, had set up his stall in the courtyard. Kami, wandering as he often did, stopped to examine the merchant's wares.
"Touch nothing, you ugly little beast," Valdus snarled, his breath wine-sour. "Your fingerprints will ruin the silk."
Kami looked up at him with those disturbing eyes. "Your Pneuma is diseased," the child said calmly. "It rots inside you like fruit left too long in the sun."
Valdus's face went purple with rage. He raised his hand to strike the child—and that was when it happened.
Kami did not move, did not raise his hands in defense. He simply looked at Valdus, and something shifted in the air, a pressure that made everyone nearby take an involuntary step back. The merchant's hand froze mid-swing. His eyes went wide. Blood began to trickle from his nose, then his ears, then his eyes.
Valdus opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. His Pneuma—the vital life-force that sustained every living thing—was being ripped from his body like thread pulled from cloth. In front of three dozen witnesses, the merchant collapsed into a twitching heap, then lay still, his eyes staring at nothing, his body suddenly aged decades, his skin hanging loose on his bones.
Kami tilted his head, studying the corpse with clinical interest. "I was right," he said. "His Pneuma was diseased. I could taste the corruption."
The courtyard erupted in chaos. Women screamed. Men reached for weapons. Grimwald came running, his own Pneuma flaring with alarm, ready to defend his home from whatever threat had emerged.
What he found was his five-year-old son standing over a corpse, perfectly calm, as the dead man's Pneuma still flickered around Kami's small form like dying embers being absorbed into his skin.
That night, after the body had been removed and the witnesses paid for their silence, Grimwald stood in his son's room watching the boy sleep. Bera stood beside him, her hand on his arm.
"He is a Devourer," Grimwald said quietly. "The old texts speak of them. Those who do not just channel Pneuma but consume it, drain it from others. The Academy hunts them. The Empire burns them."
"He is our son," Bera said fiercely.
"He is dangerous."
"He is five years old."
Grimwald turned to his wife, and she saw fear in his eyes—real fear, the kind he had never shown even in the worst battles. "When I look at him, Bera, I see something that should not exist. Something that breaks the natural order. The way he took that man's Pneuma... it was not learned. It was instinct, like a wolf knowing how to hunt."
"Then we teach him control," Bera insisted. "We teach him to be more than his instincts."
But even as she spoke, both parents knew the truth: Kami Van Hellsin was not like other children. He was not even like other Pneuma-wielders. He was something the world had not seen in generations—a throwback to an older, darker age.