The battlefield was silent.
Not the silence of peace...
But the kind that comes after the world stops screaming.
Ash drifted like snow across the ruins of empires.
Spires lay shattered, banners burned to threadbare memories, and the very wind refused to blow through the corpses of kings.
Ten of them.
Ten sovereigns — lords of a forgotten age.
Their bodies crumpled beneath a fractured sky,
their Marks still glowing faintly across their chests.
Once radiant.
Now sputtering, like dying stars gasping against the pull of oblivion.
Symbols of rebellion.
Monuments of failure.
And above them stood the last man who remembered when the world still spun with purpose.
Azarion Dawnbreaker.
Hunter of the First Age.
Breaker of Realms.
The Blade that severed fate itself.
His cloak billowed in the newborn dawn —
a dawn not brought by the sun,
but by his very presence.
He did not breathe.
He did not blink.
He simply stood.
As if to defy the end of all things.
His armor, etched with the names of the fallen, glistened with blood — not his own. His blade, taller than most men, was buried tip-first into the corpse of the High King of Vorell, the last of the Ten to fall.
A king who once commanded storms.
Now nothing but meat.
Then...
Across the scorched plain,
a ripple twisted through the horizon.
It was not heat.
Not magic.
Something older.
Reality... resisting.
From the smoke emerged a figure,
neither man nor god,
wrapped in threads of silver and shadow.
He walked without sound.
Without weight.
Only certainty.
His hands were clean.
Too clean.
Not a scratch, not a tremor.
In one palm rested a scalpel —
not large,
but cruel in its precision.
He smiled with no joy,
and his voice echoed like a whisper inside a coffin.
"It ends here, Dawnbreaker."
Behind him,
the army stirred.
Massive titans,
stitched together from stolen time and rotting miracles,
their eyes hollow,
their mouths sewn shut,
yet still whispering.
Whispering his lullaby.
They sang of the end.
Of laws rewritten.
Of legends made obsolete.
The Architect.
He who rewrote laws.
He who carved new legends from dead prophets.
He who mourned nothing.
Azarion's gaze didn't waver.
Not even slightly.
He looked beyond the Architect —
beyond the army —
and into the shattered firmament,
where the stars themselves watched in silence.
Once, those stars had sung to him.
Once, they had knelt.
Now, they were quiet.
As if unsure who would win.
Then, he stepped forward.
One foot.
Crack.
The bones of kings shattered beneath his boots.
He drew his blade —
a weapon forged from the spine of the first dragon,
still humming with the wrath of ancient storms.
The very air bent.
The sky… wept.
Clouds twisted above, forming symbols older than time —
runes from the Dawn Script, the language spoken before reality took form.
The titans flinched.
Just a little.
The Architect did not.
"You stand alone," he said, voice flat, clinical. "The world has already turned. You are a relic. A stubborn echo."
Azarion tilted his head, just slightly.
"Perhaps," he said, voice quiet, but not weak. Never weak. "But even echoes can break glass."
And the Architect... frowned.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
For a single moment, the mask cracked.
Azarion took another step.
His presence expanded, folding into the very bones of the world. The titans recoiled, whispering faster now — a chorus of dread building to a soundless scream.
Ravens dropped from the sky, twitching.
Rivers turned to glass.
Time slowed.
The world held its breath.
Then...
The blade rose.
Azarion gripped it with both hands, and the markings along his arms ignited — golden chains of prophecy that burned brighter the closer he walked to death.
He did not tremble.
He welcomed it.
He commanded it.
And with a voice that carried the weight of forgotten prayers and unburied dead, he spoke—
Not as a man.
Not as a myth.
But as the final judgment.
"THE HUNT... HAS BEGUN."