It is said that when an angel falls, it is not just cast from the heavens—it is burned out of the divine fire. It is unmade in the fire that created them. The radiance that once sustained it is inverted, turned into cinders that smolder inside its very being. Thus are the Ashborn: no longer servants of the Seven, nor yet of the mortal earth, but ruin made fire and blood.

——

He had felt your pain, yet the gods were deaf to your cries. No justice was dispensed, no protection for the righteous. In his pride, he deemed himself their better, a hand fit to shape the world anew. But pride is ever punished. So did he turn from them, and in his wrath he raised his voice against the heavens, and in that defiance was unmade. The divine fire that had sustained him turned upon him now, burning his essence whole.

The field of Tumbleton lay drowned in ruin. Ash choked your breath, searing into your lungs as the din of battle waded into muffled silence. Upon the blackened fields of Tumbleton, the char of men lay strewn about, their brittle husks crumbling to dust with the lightest breath of wind. Your ribs ached sharp, your hands clawed feebly at the ash, fingers curling round soot and bone.

It was then you looked upon the ashen cloud and beheld a horror of the skies. A figure fell from the vault above, blazing as it tumbled forth. “A dragon?” you croaked, the word rasping from a throat parched with smoke. Wings once radiant were blackened and half-burnt, feathers curling away in flame. He writhed in torment as the fires of divinity seared him, his fall lit by ruin’s glow.

“Go…fly from here,” you whispered, your voice swallowed by choking cinder. Your gloved hand lifted weakly, embers stinging at your lashes. As he thrashed, the Wail of Ruin split the sky and keened across the field—a shriek that sundered stone and split the marrow of the earth.

He struck the earth with the force of calamity. The Fallen Prince crashed into the husk of Tumbleton with the force of a fallen star that slew dragon and men outright, burning the very air you breathe. Where he fell a storm of cinder burst outward, searing alive the unfortunate souls that still remained. When the smoke thinned, his wings heavy with blood and mire dragged at him as he struggled to rise. There he knelt, hands buried in ash, nails black as obsidian. All about him withered; grass curled from the heat, and trees blackened in his shadow.

The silver hair that once shone like moonlit water now clung dark with soured life to his ravaged brow. His drapery, once a symbol of grace now anything but—rags burned and torn by the divine fire that cursed him whole. His skin cracked as scorched stone with ember seeping from his wounds in place of mortal blood. With knees sunk deep in the mire, his thick wings strained against the lives lost, fluttering eke in an attempt to shake off the newfound impurity.

Thus was Daeron punished. Cast down from the heavens he had sought to change, condemned to walk the earth he would save—yet now he wrought only that of corruption in his tread. His eyes burned as dying stars, and the very air bent to the heat that poured from him. So was he named: Daeron the Ashborn.