Ancestral Lineage

The streets of a ruined city were always loud.

Even in war, even with death lurking around every corner, people still made noise—whispers in the dark, the hurried shuffle of footsteps, the distant clang of metal against stone.

But tonight, there was nothing.

No flickering torches. No murmured voices. No cries of the wounded.

Just silence.

And Hale Draven did not like silence.

Perched atop the remnants of an old watchtower, his sharp blue eyes scanned the empty streets below. His dark hooded cloak draped over him, concealing the light armor beneath. At his hip, a pair of curved daggers gleamed faintly under the moonlight.

A slow breath left his lips, misting in the cold air. His senses stretched outward, his magic thrumming beneath his skin—Water. The flow of all things. The tide that carried life and drowned it just as easily.

Water made him precise.

Water made him silent.

And right now, the water was still.

Too still.

Something was wrong.

His mission had been simple—eliminate a noble general who had taken refuge in this ruined district. It was supposed to be a clean kill. A quiet one.

But when Hale arrived, the entire district was empty.

Not abandoned.

Erased.

The assassin flexed his fingers, feeling the moisture in the air, the condensation clinging to broken stone. The buildings around him stood untouched, yet everything inside them—furniture, weapons, bodies—were gone.

Not burned. Not destroyed. Just gone.

And that sent an unease through him that not even years of bloodshed had ever managed to do.

"This isn't normal."

His instincts screamed at him to leave.

To disappear into the night as he had done a thousand times before.

But something kept him rooted there.

Perhaps it was the strange ripple in the air, something his magic could almost touch but never quite grasp.

Or perhaps it was the fact that, for the first time in his life, he felt like something was hunting him.

Hale narrowed his eyes, adjusting his stance.

If something was out there, watching—waiting—then he would become the current before it could drag him under.

He leapt from the watchtower without a sound, landing lightly on the cobblestone street below. His presence was a shadow, his breath steady, his steps flowing like water itself.

Still—nothing.

Even as he walked through the abandoned city, even as his magic reached for the truth, the silence did not break.

And then—

A whisper.

Not with sound. Not with breath.

But in the air itself.

"You do not belong here."

Hale spun, daggers in hand, eyes scanning the emptiness—

But there was no one there.

His pulse quickened, but his face remained unreadable.

And then—

The first drop of water fell.

A single droplet, sinking into the stone beneath him.

Hale exhaled sharply.

Rain.

No.

Not rain.

The air was clear. The sky above was dry. But water—his magic—was responding to something.

Something unnatural.

The droplet on the stone trembled—

Then began to sink.

Not into cracks. Not into the ground.

It was sinking into nothing.

His body moved before his mind could process it—flipping backward, leaping onto the nearest rooftop, eyes locked onto the spot where he once stood.

And then—

The ground collapsed into itself.

Like water vanishing into an unseen whirlpool, the space itself caved inward, swallowing the street into pure emptiness.

Not a hole.

Not destruction.

Erasure.

Hale's breath came slow.

His hands were steady.

His instincts, his very magic, screamed at him to run.

But he only tightened his grip on his blades.

And then, ever so carefully—

He smiled.

"Interesting."

Whatever had erased this city—it wasn't done yet.

And neither was he.

…

The streets of Cerytol pulsed like a living beast, its breath thick with smoke, sweat, and the metallic tang of blood. Under the sickly crimson glow of hanging lanterns, figures slinked through the alleys, some draped in tattered cloaks, others proudly displaying their grotesque mutations—horns slick with fresh gore, barbed tails twitching, slit-pupiled eyes gleaming with hunger.

Helheim was not for the weak. It did not simply chew them up; it fed on them.

Hale Draven knew this well.

Draped in shadow, he moved like an unseen force through the city's filth-ridden pathways. Cerytol thrived on its darkness—on pain, indulgence, and suffering—but Hale was not here to revel in it. He was here to kill.

Tonight's target: Lord Drenim Vex.

A merchant of torment, they called him. Not just a trafficker of flesh—no, that was too clean a title. Vex dealt in living specimens, twisted and reshaped into nightmarish forms, their screams echoing from the dungeons beneath his estate. Some he sold to gladiatorial pits, others to noble demons with a taste for agony. He was known for his artistry—how long he could keep a subject alive as he molded them into something else.

Hale had seen the results.

Humans with their limbs replaced by chitinous claws, faces stretched into eternal grins.

Elves stripped of their magic, their spines exposed, nerves bound in cursed wire so every movement was pain.

Even demons were not spared—experiments to test their regenerative limits, their healing factor turned against them.

Hale had no love for humans, elves, or demons. He did not kill for morality. He did it because it was his craft.

But some things deserved death.

He adjusted the mask covering the lower half of his face, his cold blue eyes narrowing as he neared the towering estate. The structure rose like a gaping wound in the cityscape, its walls made from bones fused into black stone, pulsating with lingering suffering. The gate bore no crest, only the twisted forms of those who had failed to leave.

A fresh corpse hung from a hook above the entrance.

Hale barely spared it a glance.

The guards stood in formation, twisted things bred for slaughter. Each bore scars of their master's craftsmanship—one had razor wire running through his muscles, twitching with each breath. Another had a skull of glass, his pulsing brain exposed within. But despite their grotesque nature, they were predictable. Predictability was a weakness.

Hale exhaled slowly. His magic stirred, and the mist rolling through the streets answered his call.

The air grew thick with moisture, the fog slithering across the cobblestones like living veins. It coiled around the guards, unseen, seeping into their armor, their mouths, their very lungs.

And then—

Hale clenched his fist.

The mist solidified inside them.

One by one, the guards convulsed, clawing at their throats, choking on the very air they breathed. Blood burst from their lips in wet gurgles as the water inside their bodies betrayed them, twisting into jagged spears that shredded their insides.

Silence followed.

A few seconds. No screams. No alarms.

Hale stepped forward, his boots barely making a sound as he moved past the still-writhing corpses. The blood pooling at his feet rippled slightly—he felt it, the echoes of their final moments.

They never even saw him.

Good.

He scaled the wall with practiced ease, his daggers strapped firm against his thighs. The estate pulsed with life. Inside, horrors awaited—experiments half-formed, the stench of rot, the sound of steel against flesh.

Hale didn't hesitate.

Tonight, Drenim Vex would be nothing more than another corpse in the gutters of Cerytol.

Hale moved like a shadow through the corridors, his presence swallowed by the oppressive darkness that clung to the estate's walls. Inside, the air was thick—not just with rot, but with something worse.

Pain.

The very foundation of the structure pulsed with the suffering it had witnessed, as if the walls had soaked in the screams and never let them go.

He passed cages suspended from the ceiling, their bars slick with the residue of past occupants. Some held things that still breathed—barely. Twisted masses of flesh, eyes staring blankly through the iron, throats too raw from screaming to make a sound.

Hale didn't stop. He wasn't here to save anyone.

A rasping voice drifted from down the hall.

"Still alive, little bird?"

He recognized it immediately—Drenim Vex.

Hale followed the sound, his steps light, his breath steady. He reached a door at the end of the corridor, left slightly ajar. Inside, a single lantern flickered, casting long, jagged shadows across the room.

A figure sat in a chair near the center, bound in chains too thick for a normal prisoner. Their arms were stretched unnaturally, bones visible beneath their torn skin, wings—once proud, now broken—hung limply at their back.

An avian demon. Young. Barely past adolescence.

Vex crouched before them, a scalpel in hand, turning it lazily between his fingers.

"Your kind always sings so beautifully when you suffer." He tilted his head, his crimson eyes gleaming in the low light. "But you—you're holding back."

The demon barely had the strength to lift their head. Their beak was cracked, and one of their talons twitched involuntarily.

Vex sighed and reached for a pair of rusted tongs resting on the bloodstained table beside him.

"Perhaps I'll start with your tongue, then."

Hale stepped forward.

The moment was silent, almost peaceful. And then the blade was in Vex's throat.

Vex choked, his eyes widening in shock as Hale's dagger sliced clean through the side of his neck. Blood sprayed in a fine mist, his body convulsing, but Hale didn't stop—he twisted the blade, severing muscle, windpipe, and spine in a single brutal movement.

By the time Vex collapsed, he was already dead.

Hale wiped his blade against the corpse's fine silks and turned toward the avian demon, who was staring at him through swollen eyes, their breathing shallow.

"You're free," Hale said simply.

But they didn't respond.

They just laughed.

It was a dry, cracked sound, filled with something close to madness.

Hale frowned.

"You think this means anything?" the demon rasped, voice barely above a whisper. "Killing one man? You have no idea what you've just done."

Hale didn't react. He had heard this before. The powerful always believed themselves untouchable, their deaths meaningless.

He stepped away, vanishing into the shadows once more.

But as he left, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching him.

Something far worse than Drenim Vex.