Upon the still-smoking corpse of a creature as monstrous as it was massive, a man stood. His presence was that of a colossus carved from stone, his muscles taut beneath skin hardened by battle and the merciless elements. Resting against his back like a loyal shadow was a colossal sword, nearly two meters long. His scarred, calloused fingers dug into the still-warm flesh of the beast.
A deep, guttural sound resonated as he pulled free an obsidian shard, the size of an ostrich egg. The thing pulsed, writhing in his grip, trying to gnaw at his palms. But he held it firm, a smile tugging at his lips.
His teeth, strikingly white despite the grime coating him, gleamed in a satisfied grin. Dark, wavy strands of hair framed his weathered face, falling across his forehead in wild curls. A scruffy beard, dusted with the dirt of weeks spent trekking through these forsaken woods, shadowed his jaw. His tunic, once a deep midnight blue, was now little more than a tattered mess, stained with dried blood and caked with earth.
The air around him thrummed with a heavy tension, thick with the acrid stench of scorched flesh and rusted metal. The twisted, blackened trees loomed, silent witnesses to the brutal duel that had just unfolded.
The Gouffrours, an Hollowborn he had slain, lay sprawled before him, an abomination standing six meters tall, its grotesque form caught between a forest predator and a nightmare-made-flesh. Patches of its matted, decayed fur revealed dark, scaled plating beneath. A reptilian tail, lined with jagged spines, stretched behind it, twitching faintly with lingering traces of life.
Two days ago, he had picked up its trail.
Claw marks gouged into trees, deep imprints in the dirt, signs of a predator prowling its domain. The hunt had begun, a pursuit that had culminated in a ferocious clash. He had fought relentlessly, evading savage strikes, exploiting every weakness, until his blade had finally pierced the beast's blackened heart, unleashing a torrent of thick, glacial Umbra.
And from that heart, he had carved out the shard.
A shard he now held with reverence.
Beneath the dying light of dusk, it did not shine, it devoured. It swallowed the glow around it, a gaping maw drawing in the very essence of the world.
But the man did not recoil.
He craved this darkness.
He desired it.
With a steady motion, he unsheathed his sword, an impossibly large weapon, one that would leave most struggling to lift it.
He wielded it as effortlessly as if it were an extension of his own arm.
Driving the blade into the earth, he set the shard against its edge and, with calculated force, he split it in two.
A burst of darkness erupted, a surge of raw energy exploding outward, shaking the trees to their very roots.
The man staggered beneath the onslaught, his clothes whipping violently, his skin sliced by the sheer force of the unleashed power.
And yet, he stood unshaken.
He spread his arms wide, welcoming the storm of Umbra, drawing it into the deepest parts of his veins.
Shards of shadow swirled around him, clinging to his skin, seeping into his soul. His breath quickened, his muscles tensed under the surge of power.
He roared, a cry woven from both agony and euphoria, echoing through the darkened forest.
"Brann... the Umbra drinker," he murmured once his voice had spent itself, savoring the metallic taste of raw energy on his tongue.
But deep down, he knew.
That name, the title others had given him, was just a mask.
Brann was not born of darkness, he had plunged into it by choice.
Once, he had been a swordbrother, a warrior devoted to the Severance, a defender of principles now long eroded by disillusionment. He had believed in the justice of blades, in the honor of oaths. But betrayal, the lies of the orders he had served, and the loss of his brothers, not to the enemy, but to the treachery of their own allies, had cracked his convictions until they shattered.
From that abyss, Brann the Drinker was born.
A man of principles turned to ash, Brann had traded discipline for freedom, order for survival.
Pragmatic and ruthless, he scorned empty rhetoric and the hollow ideals of the Luminic Order, which crumbled the moment blood was spilled. And yet, behind those steel-gray eyes, a flicker of melancholy remained, the regret of another time, another man.
But Brann no longer had room for nostalgia.
The darkness welcomed him without judgment.
Umbra did not lie. It took… and it offered in return.
His sword, an heirloom taken from a master he had once challenged and slain, never ceased its whispering in the recesses of his mind. Its voice, rough with the weight of years and shattered blades, coiled around his thoughts like a patient serpent. It spoke of Severance, of choices, of surrender.
"Severance is no ally of the Lumen. Severance only knows how to sever. Lumen, Umbra… two sides of the same coin, two reflections of a single blade."
The voice echoed, relentless.
And him…?
He was neither.
The edge.
The razor-thin divide.
Not a defender of the light, nor a child of the dark.
Just the Severance, the force that divides, reveals, and destroys what must be destroyed.
Brann Erathorn, or Brann the Umbra Drinker, as the world now called him, wrapped himself in his cloak of shadow, the fabric shifting at his will, woven from Umbra and raw, flayed memories.
The darkness slid over his skin, deeper, denser than before, like warm liquid seeping beneath his flesh. His left arm, laced with blackened veins, pulsed in rhythm with his heart.
He inhaled slowly, the frigid mist of night filling his lungs.
Around him, the forest was a void of silence, broken only by the distant crackling of branches bowing under the weight of the abyss.
Every scent, the tang of dried blood, the damp rot of earth, the bite of iron and ash, merged into the perfume of the night.
His steel-gray eyes, worn but still razor-sharp, lifted toward the fractured sky. The moon, scarred by celestial wounds, cast a pale glow over the tortured trees.
A breeze snapped the edges of his cloak. Fenris, his massive blade, rested against his back, dormant, yet never silent.
"Oaths are chains. Honor is an illusion. Only the edge of the blade cuts through the truth."
The voice of his former master, entwined with that of his sword, echoed like a funeral dirge. He clenched his teeth.
The voices always returned when he fed on Umbra, madness creeping a little deeper into his mind. So he severed it.
He felt the Umbra recoil, retreating beyond his reach. Within his mind, the Severance awakened. The lines of the world unfolded before him, invisible threads he could unravel, pull taut, or break.
Every choice was a cut.
Every hesitation, a wound.
Brann did not seek to purge the darkness entirely. He needed it.
What he sought was truth.
And sometimes, truth could only be carved by a blade already stained.
"You want the truth, Brann?"
"Light lies. Shadow takes. And I… I cut."
A rough breath escaped him, somewhere between a laugh and a sigh.
He wasn't speaking to anyone. Not to himself, not to another.
But his own deep voice reassured him, reminded him that he was still sane.
Somewhere in the darkness, something stirred.
A ripple of tension pulsed through the air, as if the forest itself had drawn a sharp breath.
"A scavenger, already?"
His fingers curled around Fenris' hilt. The blade thrummed.
No hesitation.
No heroism.
Only the blade, and the choice it demanded.
"I am no hero," he murmured, his words lost to the wind. "I am the last warning."
When Gaël touched the blade and its Severance, Brann did not sense it.
His connection to Umbra had made him deaf to the echoes of his brothers.