Echoes of the Forgotten Blade

The first light of dawn crawled like a wounded animal across the shattered landscape of Blackmirror Keep. Centuries of neglect had transformed what was once a formidable stronghold into a skeletal monument to forgotten glory. Massive stone walls, pockmarked with the scars of ancient battles, rose from a landscape of windswept desolation. Twisted remnants of ancient oak trees—gnarled and lightning-struck—stood as silent sentinels around the keep's perimeter, their branches reaching like arthritic fingers toward a steel-gray sky.

Kaelen Valtheris moved with the careful precision of a man who had learned to survive in the margins of the world. Each step was measured, deliberate—a habit born of years spent traversing battlefields and wilderness alike. His leather traveling coat, patched and repaired countless times, bore the same marks of survival as the keep itself. Dark leather, the color of old blood, blended with the shadows that clung to every corner of this place.

He was not tall by the standards of the great knights whose legends filled tavern tales, but there was a compactness to his frame that spoke of coiled potential. Muscles moved beneath his skin like steel cables, honed by years of mercenary work. His hands—calloused and strong—told a story of constant struggle. A thin scar ran from his left temple to the corner of his jaw, a pale reminder of some long-forgotten conflict.

The keep's interior was a cathedral of decay. Fallen masonry created treacherous pathways, and thick layers of dust muffled every sound. Massive tapestries, once vibrant with the colors of House Valtheris, now hung in tatters. Threads of silver and midnight blue—the family colors—were barely visible beneath years of grime and rot. Heraldic designs, once crisp and proud, now looked like half-remembered dreams.

Kaelen's eyes—gray as weathered steel, with flecks of something deeper, almost silver—scanned every detail. These were not the eyes of a casual explorer, but of a man hunting for something more than mere remnants of the past. Each chamber, each fallen column, each dust-covered artifact was a potential key to a history that had been deliberately erased.