A Chronicle of the Flameborn
The battlefield burned
Ash rose like snow as bodies fell to both steel and spell. The sky had darkened long ago not from clouds, but from smoke and the wings of creatures that did not belong to the world of men.
Magic cracked the air. Flesh met flame. The earth split and wept.
And through it all moved one figure calm, radiant, deathless.
Zybaah.
Not a king. Not yet.
But already a legend.
Young in body, but ageless in power.
He walked through the wreckage of war like a blade drawn from light itself. His skin shimmered pale, sheer, marked by the faint glow of sigils that no mortal tongue could name. His eyes were not eyes they were wells of silver fire. He wore no armor. He needed none.
Two blades.
Wings of light, half-folded behind his back.
And a silence that made demons retreat before his hands ever moved.
He cut through the enemy without pause without anger, even. Only precision. Purpose.
War to him was not chaos. It was designed.
And in his wake, he left order.
But Zybaah had not always walked the earth.
He had fallen, cast from a higher realm not for wrath, but for mercy.
Where others of his kind watched mortal suffering from the veil of stars and passed judgment, Zybaah crossed the boundary.
Not to rule.
To change what should never have been allowed.
And for that, he was cast down.
But he did not fall alone.
From his descent came others angels stripped of title and sky, drawn to his cause.
They took form.
Human, but unmistakably other.
Their skin pale, their eyes luminous, their voices harmonic.
They wore bodies, but never fully belonged to them.
Together, they wandered until they found a land untouched by kingdom or crown.
There, they built Tenshyra.
The Sanctuary of the Fallen.
Born not of conquest, but of vision.
They shaped valleys with their hands. Tamed storms with their breath.
They mingled with humans, took mortal lovers, and from their unions came a bloodline set apart.
The Tenshyrians.
Generations passed.
Tenshyra grew.
Its towers shimmered with arcane silver. Its people wielded magic without rites. It was a land that feared no gods, for its ancestors had been gods once.
And at its heart stood Zybaah.
Not as a ruler by name.
But as the First Flame. The Warden of the Veil. The One Who Fell Willingly.
His power did not just defend the realm it inspired it.
Far away, the land of Aetherion suffered.
The rule of King Neraxis the Veiled had grown weak not from failure, but from war without end.
Ordael, a land twisted by demons and dark lords, had broken the outer defenses of Aetherion. The rivers ran black. The sky turned to smoke. Cities fell faster than they could be rebuilt.
Neraxis knew the time of men alone had passed.
And so he went east.
He crossed the borders of Tenshyra not with swords, but with a white banner.
He came to the gleaming citadel of light and silence.
And he knelt before Zybaah.
"I offer my crown," he said, "if you will spare my people."
Zybaah refused the crown.
But he listened.
And a treaty was formed.
The Pact of Blood and Flame.
The forces of Tenshyra would protect Aetherion.
In return, Tenshyra would be recognized not as a subject, but as an equal.
Tenshyrians would take seats in the royal court.
And Zybaah would marry one of Neraxis' daughters, to seal the pact in blood.
Zybaah entered the palace not as a foreigner.
But as family.
He married Princess Lirael, third daughter of the king, a quiet sorceress born under eclipse.
Their union shook the court. Some whispered it was divine. Others, unnatural.
But the children they bore silenced every voice.
Their sons and daughters were angelbreed their blood ran hot with magic, their eyes shimmered with veiled flame.
They moved with grace beyond training.
Spoke languages they had never been taught.
Some called them blessed.
Others, cursed.
But that was the beginning.
A time of unity. Of power.
Of hope.
Before the fear set in.
Before the whispers turned to prophecy.
Before light turned its back on him once more.
Before Zybaah fell a second time.
The fear started slow.
The Church of the Veiled Flame, born in Aetherion's oldest sanctums, once praised Zybaah as divine deliverance. But time made their altars quiet, their prayers careful. Angelbreed children half-mortal, half-light walked the court with eyes that shimmered and voices that carried forgotten tongues.
And so the Church whispered.
That the angelblood line was not a gift, but a threat.
That fire born of mercy would one day consume the world.
They preached in shadows, in sanctuaries, behind veils and veiled threats. And their fear infected others nobles who envied Tenshyra's power, generals threatened by a flame they could not control, and even some within Tenshyra itself. Men and women Zybaah had trusted. Counselors. Scholars. Lifelong allies.
The plot was not of one realm.
It was betrayal, twin-born.
Forged in Aetherion.
Sharpened in Tenshyra.
When the eastern rifts opened, Zybaah went to war.
He led his army through ash and sunlight, through the breaking of veils and the screams of fractured realms. At his side rode Kaerion, his firstborn blade-saint, keeper of the sword Sungrasp.
Behind, in the white towers of Tenshyra, remained the rest of his family:
They entered not with armies.
But with trust.
And they murdered his family.
Lirael first.
Then Seran.
Then Elyra.
And finally, infant Thael whose blood was spilled across the temple floors to "purify" what they had defiled.
Only Nocthyr survived.
He saw the blade fall. Saw the holy symbols marked in his siblings' blood. And fled through fire, through grief, into the shadows of a world that would one day fear his name as they had feared his father's.
Zybaah returned to silence.
The citadel stood, but hollow.
The towers still shone, but dim.
The air carried not incense, but ash.
He walked the halls where laughter once echoed.
The citadel was too quiet.
He walked its shining halls, once filled with light and music. Now cold. Still. Stained.
He found them.
His wife. His children.
Their blood soaked into silver floors.
The sigils meant to protect them had been shattered.
Their lives, stolen by cowards in robes.
His world ended at that moment.
And Zybaah screamed.
Not in grief alone.
But in fury.
A god's fury.
It tore through stone, through towers, through the sky itself.
Aetherion heard.
The entire realm shook.
The wind went silent.
The sky cracked and bled.
Red rain fell on marble streets.
Clouds twisted, fled, caught fire.
The sun dimmed.
The flame within him, the one he had always kept bound, broke loose.
And the scream became more than grief.
It became judgment.
"You feared the fire I gave to save you."
"Now face the fire I bring to end you."
He stood among the dead.
No crown. No armies. No mercy.
Only wrath.
His family was slain.
And now, the world would burn for it.