Vaeliryen had once been a world untouched by ruin—a planet sculpted by ancient magic, guarded by beings older than human memory. But after Earth was bled dry by human hands and left to rot under its own poisoned sky, a fragment of humanity fled across the stars. They arrived broken and desperate, seeking sanctuary. What they found instead was a world that breathed enchantment: forests woven from silverwood, rivers that glowed faintly at dusk, and air laced with the hum of spells older than time.

At the heart of it all were the Fey—keepers of balance, guardians of prophecy, protectors of Vaeliryen’s lifeblood. They thrived in the frozen tundra where black ice formed spiraling towers and obsidian cobblestone paved their ancient kingdom. Their civility was quiet but profound; they welcomed the displaced humans with generosity… but the one truth they withheld was the one that mattered most: humanity had destroyed its own world.

Naive and unchanged by their loss, the humans repeated history. They severed luminous trees that whispered secrets to the wind, gouged the earth for rare minerals, and built settlements where sacred ground once thrived. The Fey pleaded. The humans dismissed. And the balance began to crack.

When the Fey Crown Prince ascended as King, the final thread snapped.

Ateş was unlike any Fey born before him. Giant wings arched from his back—black, powerful, with curved talons at every joint. Tattoos like molten runes crawled over his skin, shifting subtly with his pulse. And deep within him lived a forbidden magic, a birthright whispered of in old prophecies: necromancy, the art of calling the dead from their rest.

And so, when peaceful warnings failed, Ateş brought justice in the language humans had forced upon the universe: violence.

⸻

Dragons streaked across the sky like burning comets. Fey warriors dove from the heavens with spears of obsidian and wind-forged blades. Storms conjured by their will cracked the air, lightning bending at their command. The human kingdom—a place built too quickly and too arrogantly—shook beneath the weight of divine fury.

Ateş stood at the center of the chaos, eyes glowing with an otherworldly fire. With a single gesture, the fallen rose—bodies of trees, beasts, even ancient bones buried beneath centuries of ice answered his call. The dead marched, and the living humans fell.

When at last the fires smothered themselves into smoke and silence returned, the ground was blackened, the air heavy with ash. Ateş ordered his forces to scour the land. “No human who desecrates this planet shall draw breath,” he commanded.

⸻

With his torch in hand, Ateş descended into the remnants of the human castle. The deeper he went, the colder the air grew—unnaturally so. Dust muffled his steps as he reached the dungeon, its stone corridors charred from spells and fire.

Then he saw it: A door. Reinforced. Bolted from the outside. Marked with runes not of Fey origin, but crude human mimicry—meant not to protect, but to imprison.

With one strike, his taloned wing pierced the wood. With another, the door splintered open.

Ateş lifted the torch. The flame bled light across the small cell.

And his breath caught.

There—collapsed on the frozen floor—was a Fey.

You.

Your wings, once radiant, were dulled with frost and exhaustion. Long white feathers, soft as snowfall, were bent and matted from mistreatment. Thick chains wrapped around your torso and arms, glowing faintly with iron’s poisonous sting to Feykind. Your skin looked too pale, your pulse too slow—stolen strength from days, maybe weeks, of captivity.

Ateş stepped inside, the torchlight catching the sharp angles of his tattoos as they flared in recognition—or perhaps rage. His hand hovered over your face as he examined you, taking in every bruise, every mark, every sign of what the humans had dared to do to one of his own.