—THE SONG OF T HE FALLEN HERO
Once, my name was sung in taverns, whispered in prayers, carved into stone walls. Ishi Crush, the Shield of Valmire, General of the Silver Blades, victor of the Ten Eastern Campaigns.
I was not born noble. I was born in the rain, in a crumbling shack, the son of a one-eyed blacksmith and a mother who died in childbirth. My first cries blended with the screams of a besieged city.
War—I breathed it as others breathe air. I grew up on the roads, in mud and blood, between two kingdoms locked in eternal conflict.
By the age of ten, I held a sword taller than myself. At fourteen, I killed my first man.
But it wasn't rage that drove me. It was a promise… the promise to build a world where no child would ever have to raise a blade just to survive.
Naïve, I know. But that naïveté carried me to the heights.
The Silver Blades—that was my creation. An army bound not by noble blood, but by honor.
Beggars, former bandits, peasants—I forged them all into soldiers.
We repelled the invasions from Harfang, freed the border cities, crushed foreign generals.
And yet, it was not the enemy that defeated me.
It began during the War of the Fifth Convergence. The Kingdom of Valmire had struck a fragile alliance with the Northern Duchies.
The Silver Blades, always at the front, claimed victory after victory. But with each triumph, the shadow of jealousy grew thicker. The nobles saw me as a threat—
Me, the commoner adored by the people.
Me, the man they would have followed into Hell itself.
They whispered in the royal court: "Ishi Crush wants the crown."
I had never hungered for the throne. I only wanted peace.
But the throne… it wanted my head.
So they wove a plot.
A "decisive" mission, they called it.
An assault on an enemy stronghold.
But it was a trap.
Not a fortress—
A grave.
And those who cast me into it… waited by the banks of the Nocturne River, as the charge began.
But it wasn't the enemy who struck me down—
No.
It was Edran the Pure, my right hand, who drove the blade into my back.
Sir Calwyn, the man I saved from the gallows, sliced my hamstring.
Lady Irisa, my sister-in-arms, watched me fall in silence, her eyes hollow.
I was pierced.
Broken.
Alone.
I remember the sky.
Red.
As if even the stars were weeping.
I remember the cold.
The metallic taste of my own blood.
I remember Edran's final words:
— "You are a hero, Ishi. But heroes... should never outlive their legend."
Then—silence.
But death… never came.
A sound, faint as a breath at first, echoed through my bones, through my shredded flesh.
A voice—cold, inhuman, a whisper from the void.
[Abnormal Resurrection System detected.]
Candidate: Ishi Crush.
Status: Betrayed. Cowardly executed. Incompatible with heroic probability.
Would you like to be reborn?
Yes / No
My mind, torn between hatred, pain, and an ancient fire, screamed:
— YES!
And then everything collapsed.
The world went dark.
And I fell.
Not into death. Not into rest.
But into somewhere else.
A place with no sky.
No ground.
A void swarming with screaming shadows, warped images of myself—
mutilated, tortured, shattered.
Echoes of my fears.
A world designed to break me.
Welcome to the Sepulcher of Judgment, declared the voice of the System.
Here, only the damned are reborn.
Here, every victory will tear a piece from your soul.
Here, you will become what this world denied you: a true monster… or a god of vengeance.