"History is written by the victors. But in Yurein... it's rewritten by the survivors." - Unknown scriber, burned for sedition.
The City-State of Yurein
Yurein is not a kingdom.
It is a carcass wearing a crown.
Once the beating heart of an empire that chained the stars, Yurein now festers-an autopsy of
greatness preserved in ritual and rot. Behind walls once gilded with glory, veiled power blocs whisper in sanctified rotundas, false nobility dine on memory and myth, and bloodstained ideologies argue over whose gods are the loudest.
Blackstone spires lurch like broken teeth from a city choking on its own plague-smoke. Ornate masks obscure the decay beneath, and even the sky seems ashamed-bleeding red at dawn, bruised black by dusk.
The Three Circles of Yurein
1. Inner Circle - Sol Sanctum
Seat of the Royal Court, the Arch Orders, and the last "noble" bloodlines.
Gilded towers glisten like reliquaries-but beneath each, ossuaries pulse with unspoken sin.
Governed by the Council of Masks: 12
faceless sovereigns, each embodying a twisted Virtue. Their names are lost. Their voices, rehearsed. Their hands, unseen.
2. Middle Circle - Sprawl of Chains
Marketplace of ambition.
Scholars duel with ink, mercenaries with whispers, merchants with poisoned smiles.
Here, betrayal is birthright. Contracts are etched in flesh. Even lies pay taxes.
3. Outer Circle - The Gutterlands
Where the city's dreams go to die.
Disease is cheaper than bread.
Children trade in knives, not toys. Prophets with gang tattoos preach apocalypse from
rooftops
The only law is consequence. The only currency: survival.
The Power that Curses All: The Shroud
A force older than scripture, more intimate than
blood
The Shroud infects. It whispers. It marks.
Some say it's a divine test. Others, a punishment.
All agree: it changes you.
Manifestation: The Whisper
When death brushes too close, when trauma burrows too deep, when forbidden knowledge roots in the mind-the Whisper comes. A sigil brands the flesh. A power awakens.
Three Tiers of the Shrouded:
1. Ashborn Primal, reactive, feral. Heightened senses, wound negation,
instinctual awareness.
2. Veilbinders Shapers of memory, time, and
perception. Temporal stutters, dream invasion, emotion
theft.
3. Eclipsed Reality-breakers. Only one may exist per city... or the veil tears.
All power has a price.
The voice silenced. The past erased. The soul.
undone.
The strongest Shrouded are not human.
Not anymore.
"Every power whispers. The loudest ones lie."
Factions at Play
1. The Council of Masks
Twelve shadows draped in Virtue-Piety, Justice,
Mercy, Hope-each twisted into tools of tyranny.
They rule from behind sermons, pageants, and
military creeds.
The Masks do not speak. They declare.
No one knows their faces. Perhaps they no longer
have them.
2. The Chainborn Syndicate
Flesh-merchants. Shroud-hunters. Empire profiteers.
They lace orphans with synthetic Shroud to birth
false Veilbinders-tools made of trauma. They do not fear gods. They manufacture them.
3. The Whisperless
Sigil-burned rebels. Powerless by choice. They believe only those untouched by the Shroud can cleanse its poison.
Fanatics. Martyrs. Madmen.
But sometimes, chaos is the last honest thing.
X. Protagonist: Ashen Kael
"The mind that sees the empire's lies is more dangerous than the blade that spills its
blood." Past Life:
Master strategist. He once collapsed a dozen
legions with ink and silence.
Betrayed after revealing the Crown's hidden
genocides. Labeled a heretic. Executed in ink and
name
Current Life.
A crippled orphan in the Gutterlands. Nameless.
Voiceless. Alive.
New Goal:
Not to reclaim power.
To dismantle its idea.
Talent:
Eidetic memory.
Strategic savant.
Emotionally null.
No Whisper, No Sigil.
Just silence. And the names of those who
lied.
Weapon:
A blade of thought. A wound of truth. A memory that refuses to fade.