The air was thick and suffocating. Tall, grotesquely twisted canopies blocked all sunlight from the forest floor. The only sound that was cutting through the silence was the dripping water from the branches, the rustling of leaves, and the low howling wind.
Ronin stirred. He pushed himself up, his fine robes now smeared with black soil and clinging twigs.
He looked around, his wide eyes filling with terror "Mama...? Dada...?"
His small voice was swallowed by the immense, hungry silence.
He took a trembling step forward, his heart drumming a frantic rhythm against his ribs. A stick snapped under his foot.
He stumbled — caught on an uprooted tree root — and fell hard onto the damp ground.
A sharp whimper escaped from him. He glanced at his knee, scratched and bleeding from rough earth.
Ronin sniffed, tears beginning to stream down his dirty cheeks. "Mama... Dada... Mama... I am... all alone"
In the dark of the Whispering Forest, no one was there to hear a child's cry.
Then, a new sound cut through the stillness: deliberate, measured footsteps from behind a thick trunk.
A man stepped into view. He was dressed in black gothic attire, his skin pale as moonlight, his eyes a sharp, luminous crimson.
Hurt Darksteel
The Necromancer's gaze was drawn to the source of the soft whimpers.
He walked over and looked down, his expression unreadable. His voice was cold, detached. "Who are you kid? And why are you crying in a place like this?"
Ronin looked up at his pale face, his breath hitching. "I... I am lost."
Hurt's crimson eyes scanned the boy, his mind calculating. "An Arcane child. Here. In our forest."
In Eldrya, Arcane Sorcerers and Necromancers were locked in an ancient, bitter conflict. To his kind, the very spark of Arcane energy was an affront; their own arts of death were seen as a curse by the living.
Hurt turned away, lowering his gaze. He took a step to continue his path.
But—
The sound of child's tears, the raw, small fear in them, tore through the centuries-old silence in his soul. He stopped. Looked over his shoulder.
Against every instinct, against generations of ingrained loathing, Hurt walked back. He knelt before the weeping boy, his voice softening imperceptibly
"I am undead. A Necromancer. But..."
He could sense it now — the immense, sleeping power coiled within the child, like a dormant star. But beneath that, he saw something simpler, and far more disarming: a lonely, scared little boy.
And something stirred in Hurt's hollow heart. He had spent his life among the dead, but this child... he was alive in a way that even the living rarely were.
Against all tradition, against the hatred his kin held for Sorcerers. Hurt scoops up Ronin into his arms. The boy was light, trembling slightly against his cold, unnatural body.
"I am a monster," Hurt said, more to himself than to the child. "But what kind of monster leaves a child to die in hell?"
He carried Ronin deeper into the forest, the boy's tremors gradually subsiding into exhausted stillness against him.
Hurt knew the consequences. He knew the outrage it would cause. But the alternative — leaving him — was an act of true evil.
***
Ronin had cried himself into an exhausted sleep. Hurt looked down at the peaceful, tear-streaked face, and a soft, almost imperceptible smile touched his pale lips.
Soon, they arrived.
The massive obsidian black gates of Necropolis groaned open before them, operated by silent armored gatekeepers. Hurt stepped through.
The atmosphere inside the city of the dead froze.
All activity ceased. Eyes widened in absolute perplexity and dawning horror. People stopped to stare. Children were hastily pulled inside homes. Elders whispered behind trembling hands.
A young Necromancer stepped forward, his voice a mixture of protest and fear. "Master Hurt... Why? Why bring an Arcane child here?"
A woman pointed, her voice sharp. "You, our most esteemed Necromancer... you would violate our oldest law?"
The young man's voice rose in panic. "Answer us!"
Hurt stopped. He turned slowly and stomped his foot once upon the stone street. The sound was a crack of finality.
A wave of palpable dread washed over the crowd, forcing them back a step. Everyone knew who Hurt Darksteel was, and the reason for his name.
His voice was a deep, calm rumble that silenced all whispers. "He is sleeping. Do not wake him."
He turned and continued walking, pushing open the door to his own gothic mansion.
Inside, polished wooden floors gleamed under enchanted sconce-light, and obsidian walls were decorated with artifacts of forgotten ages.
Hurt carried Ronin upstairs, laid him gently on a soft, fluffy bed in a spare room, and pulled a blanket over him.
He returned to his doorstep, where a fearful crowd had gathered. His expression was calm, resolute.
"I will answer your questions now." He said, his voice carrying across the tense square.
A senior Necromancer stepped forward, his voice trembling with age and disbelief. "Hurt... why? Why break our tradition for a sorcerer's whelp?"
Hurt inhaled deeply, the action unnecessary but humanizing. "He was lost in Whispering Forest. We all know what dwells there.To leave a child to that fate..."
He let his crimson eyes sweep over them. "...would make us the very monster they claim we are."
The young Necromancer from before spoke again, fear hardening his voice. "But, my lord... what if it is a trick? A sorcerer's ploy?"
"Enough." Hurt's voice cut through the doubt like a blade.
"We are undead. We have been given a second existence. That does not mean to abandon what makes us more than the corpses we raise. We are not monsters."
He looked at each of them in turn. "He is a child. He knows nothing of our wars, our hatreds. You will treat him as one of our own. This is my will."
He turned and re-entered his mansion, leaving a stunned and whispering crowd behind. He walked to a window overlooking his stark garden, his thoughts turning to the boy's parents, somewhere beyond the obsidian walls.
"His parents... must be sick with worry."
***
Arcane Kingdom. Hirata Estate.
The air in the grand hall was heavy enough to crush stone. Usama's face was parchment-pale. Beside him, Miraya wept openly, her composure shattered.
"How?" Usama's voice was a shaken whisper. "Tell me how this happened."
Miraya clung to him, her tears soaking his robe. "They came from nowhere... I fought one, but another took him... I failed. I failed as a mother. I couldn't protect our child."
Usama stroked her hair, his own grief a cold, hard knot in his throat. "No, my love. You did not fail. You fought. This... this is a cruelty of fate."
He gently guided her to a seat, then turned to the assembled Arcane Sorcerers.
His eyes, once hollow with grief, now hardened into chips of frozen amber, blazing with a resolve that could level mountains.
"Hear me," his voice rang out, clear and absolute. "Scour every district. Search every shadow in Eldrya. Turn over every stone. I want my son found. No cost is too great. No border is respected. Do you understand?"
The sorcerers bowed as one, a silent wave of determination, and marched out to begin the impossible search.
***
An Arcane child now sleeps, innocent and unaware, in the heart of the Necromancer's city.
And in the Arcane Kingdom, a father's desperate army was already on the move.
The only question that remained was one of cataclysmic consequence:
What would the Lord of the Arcane Kingdom do when he discovered his heir was in the hands of his ancient enemies?