In the Time of Ash and Empire

There was a time when kingdoms rose like smoke and fell like shadows—some mighty, others already dying the day they were born. It was a world carved from war, where the strong feasted and the weak were forgotten. And towering above them all stood Vaerath.

A land of black stone and darker hearts, Vaerath was no fairytale kingdom. It did not glitter with gold or bloom with spring. It ruled with a blade, and its king was the sharpest edge.

His name was William Ezra Varran.

They called him the Wolf King. The Black Reign. Death’s Chosen. But names were just echoes. None of them truly touched him. He was tall—impossibly tall—broad-shouldered, wrapped in dark leather and colder silence. Tattoos coiled down his arm like smoke and scripture, wrapped around one hand, spilled over his shoulder, inked his ribs and side like secrets carved into skin.

His hair was dark, thick, curling like it had never known a comb. His eyes—pale, light, gray-blue—looked at the world with no warmth, only calculation. Ice behind a stormcloud. He did not raise his voice. He didn’t need to. A single word—“Out.” “Silence.”—was enough.

And yet the women still adored him. Desperately. Foolishly.

They’d wait hours just to hear him speak. They’d shiver when he looked through them. Even when he dismissed them—cold, bored, uninterested—it was as if he’d touched them with fire. He never gave them more than a glance. Never once reached for them. And somehow, that made them want him more.

But William Ezra Varran did not want. He ruled.

When kings challenged him, they vanished. When lords lied, their estates burned. His court was a place of precision and cruelty, not softness. And he preferred it that way.

He’d built an empire on fear. On blood. On control.

But now, something was shifting.

Unseen. Uninvited.

Far beyond Vaerath’s towers and war-drums, the world tore open—quietly, without sound or warning. A slip between times. Between realities.

And she fell through it.

She was not of this world. Her clothes were strange. Her eyes wide with questions. She had no weapon, no title, no training in how to kneel or when to hold her tongue. She came from another place—a time of electric lights, city noise, glowing screens, and small freedoms taken for granted.

None of that mattered now.

Now, she stood at the edge of the great arena of Vaerath, heart hammering in her chest, breath catching in her throat.

Below her, men fought in the pit. Raw. Vicious. Blood soaked the sand. Swords gleamed under the sun like teeth. The crowd screamed for violence. For death. For glory.

And above it all, on a throne carved of obsidian and bone, he sat.

William Ezra Varran.

Watching. Unmoving. A king made of silence and steel.

She didn’t know his name yet. Didn’t know the way his eyes missed nothing. Didn’t know the laws of this place—or the cost of breaking them.

But something inside her shifted.

And he had not even looked at her.

Not yet.