The wind howled through the blackened bones of the village, whispering echoes of lives that no longer existed. Gold stood at the edge of the crater where his home used to be. The silence wasn't empty—it was thick, watching, pressing against him like invisible eyes in the dark.
A sudden pulse trembled in his chest. Not from within, but from it—the thing now tethered to him. The pact. The presence. It stirred with hunger, as if sensing that the deal was complete.
"Give more," it murmured faintly, a voice like a cracked bell inside his skull.
Gold stumbled forward, clutching his temples. More? He had already given it a piece of himself. A piece he couldn't even remember losing. His name—gone. His mind recoiled when he tried to recall it, as if touching a scar that refused to heal.
He looked down at his hand. Power crackled faintly beneath the skin—shimmering veins of iridescent light winding up his arm, vanishing beneath his sleeve. Beautiful. Terrifying.
A sound—soft, like footsteps—snapped his head toward the treeline. The forest that bordered the village stood untouched by flame, its shadows deeper than they should be.
Someone was watching.
No. Not someone. Something.
His vision flickered. A shadow stepped forward—but its form was hazy, incomplete. Shifting. Gold's breath caught. It had no face. Just a vague outline of a man, stitched together by tendrils of smoke.
The thing didn't speak. It raised its hand, and Gold's body moved before he could think—his instincts surged with unnatural clarity, and he ducked as something invisible sliced the air where his neck had been.
He rolled, came up to his feet, and the power surged again.
This time, he didn't fight it.
The world slowed.
Every heartbeat was a drumbeat in the void. His muscles moved with strange precision. His thoughts cleared, even as the rest of his identity continued to bleed away. The pact was guiding him—not as a partner, but as a puppeteer.
"More…" the voice inside him repeated.
Gold struck. Not with fists, but with the will of the pact. The air shimmered, and the faceless shade was hurled back—dissolving into black mist as it hit the ground.
Silence returned.
Gold stood panting in the smoke, alone again.
But he knew now—this was no gift.
This was a debt.
And it was only beginning to collect.
The night stretched on, heavy with ash and the aftertaste of burnt dreams. Gold sat near what remained of the village well—now cracked and dry, the stones scorched black. The moon hung above like a blinded eye, casting silver light on ruin.
The voices inside him had gone silent. For now.
He stared into the emptiness, and though his name was gone, memories not entirely his own stirred beneath the surface—like dreams someone else had abandoned in a rush.
A boy was born on the edge of the world.
Not into royalty. Not into prophecy.
Just into quiet, warm hands and a worn-down home surrounded by fields that danced in the wind. His mother had hair like fallen leaves and eyes always a little too sad. His father was the village blacksmith—hands like stone, voice like thunder, but heart like the soil: steady and deep.
They named the child "Gold,"
But that was before the forest began to whisper.
Before animals started to vanish. Before villagers started waking up with blood on their hands and no memory of the night before.
Before the Empire came to investigate.
Gold had been no more than twelve when the first soldiers arrived. Not warriors, but Seekers—mages clad in white, with symbols etched on their skin like chains. They said the village stood upon something old. Something buried. Something that pulsed beneath the soil like a heartbeat.
His father tried to resist. His mother begged. But when the soldiers took a child to the woods and he never returned, something cracked in the air. People started leaving. The ones who stayed—those too stubborn or too poor—became thin with silence.
Gold stayed. Because he felt it too.
The pull.
The memory faded like mist.
Gold blinked, his breath fogging in the cold. He didn't remember these things clearly—not like photographs in his mind. They came in pieces. In flashes. Like echoes of another life.
But deeper than the memories of Velden Hollow, there were others.
Older. Stranger.
He would sometimes see himself standing on a tower that didn't exist. Hear voices speaking in languages he couldn't name. Feel grief for people whose faces he couldn't recall.
Was he... born twice?
He didn't know. And that terrified him more than the faceless creature had.
There had been a night.
A scream.
Flames rising from the fields.
And at the heart of it all, a door—not made of wood or stone, but of light and symbols and pain. Floating mid-air in the hollow of the forest, where no tree grew.
He had stood before it, not knowing why.
A whisper had come from behind that door, offering a choice. Power, at a price.
He remembered reaching out.
But not why.
And then—nothing.
No screams. No village. Just ash. And him.
Gold rose to his feet. The weight of the pact curled around his soul like a cold chain. He was alive, somehow. Reborn maybe. But hollowed out. Fragments missing. Echoes rattling in a frame that no longer knew itself.
He didn't know who he was.
But he would find out what took everything from him.
And he would make it remember his name, even if he never could.
The road was old.
Worn by time, covered in crawling moss, and cracked where tree roots had claimed it as their own. Gold followed it anyway.
He didn't know why his feet carried him north—toward the Empire's heart—but something inside whispered that answers lay beyond the silence of Velden Hollow. He needed to know what he had become… and why it cost him everything.
The forest gradually gave way to low hills. The sky widened, and with each mile, the world began to pulse with life again. Faint echoes of carts. Travelers. Smoke rising from distant chimneys. Civilization.
But the moment people saw him, they looked twice. His clothes—burned, tattered. His eyes—too bright. The mark—a faint sigil burned into the side of his neck, hidden by his collar, but glowing faintly when he grew anxious.
No one spoke to him.
Except one.
A Day Later – The Border Town of Grellsby
"That mark... you're not a mage," the man said, his voice sharp as broken glass. He sat across the tavern table from Gold, arms crossed over leather armor, a faint scar above his brow. "And yet it reeks of contracted power."
Gold didn't answer. He didn't know how.
The man leaned in. "You ever heard the name Aether Pactum?"
The words burned in Gold's mind.
He nodded slowly.
The man cursed under his breath. "Then you're either cursed, mad, or something worse. Either way, boy—you need to keep that mark covered. If the Seekers see you with that sigil, they'll burn your soul clean out of your body before you can speak."
Gold's heart beat faster. "Why?"
"Aether Pactum is forbidden. Old magic. Divine magic." The man lowered his voice. "Not the pretty kind that flows through crystal rods or academy scrolls. The kind that made gods bleed. The kind that eats back."
Gold's mind buzzed. He wanted to ask more—but the man stood.
"You didn't hear this from me," he muttered. "I don't traffic with soulbound freaks."
Then he was gone.
That Night – Alone in the City Streets
Gold wandered the cobbled roads, hood drawn low.
The capital was still far away. Grellsby was just a border town, forgotten by the Empire unless taxes were late. But already, he could feel the weight of the world pressing in. Statues of white-robed Seekers stood in every square. Soldiers wore enchanted chains, not for binding limbs—but for suppressing magic.
And the people? They bowed their heads. Spoke in half-whispers. Avoided eye contact.
The Empire fears its own gods, Gold thought.
And now… he was tethered to one.
World Lore – The Empire of Caldreth
The Empire of Caldreth stretches from the Shattered Isles in the west to the Black Mountains in the east. It was built atop ancient bones—literally. Entire cities sit on ruins of older civilizations lost to time and divine wrath.
Magic here is tightly regulated. Only nobles, scholars, and approved mages may use it. The rest? Either shunned… or hunted.
Above all things, the Empire fears the Unbound—those who make pacts with divine remnants, eldritch beings, or forgotten gods. The Aether Pactum is the oldest and most feared form. Not because of its power, but because no one fully understands it.
To use Aether Pactum is to cut pieces of your soul—to trade memory, emotion, identity—for borrowed strength.
And once you do… you're never truly human again.