Sevrin was born into a world of chains bound by a debt heavier than iron. It pressed into the shoulders, bowed the spine, and hollowed the eyes long before chains ever touched skin. His father used to say that numbers were harmless things—ink on parchment, words spoken by men who had never worked the soil. That was before the collectors came. Before the seals were stamped. Before Sevrin learned that injustice, once written, became law.
He was twelve when his family name was stripped away.
The decree was read aloud in the public square of Lethain, a border town clinging desperately to the edges belonging one of the great 7 Clan's that owned all of Yuira. The square was clean, meticulously so, washed each morning by priests of Chastity who claimed purity could be scrubbed into stone. Seven banners hung overhead, each embroidered with the sigil of a legendary hero whose bloodline now ruled Yuira.
The people knelt. Sevrin did not.
He stood between his parents, fingers clenched in his threadbare sleeves, listening as a robed official recited numbers that made no sense. Interest compounded upon interest. Taxes levied retroactively. Penalties for "improper conduct"—a phrase vague enough to swallow entire lives.
"By authority of the Seven Clans," the official intoned, voice smooth and empty, "the family known as Sevrin of Lethain is found unable to repay its lawful debts. By righteous decree, they are henceforth bound to servitude."
Servitude.
A kinder word for slavery.
His mother's knees buckled first. His father did not move at all.
Around them, the crowd was silent. Silence was safety. Silence meant obedience. In Yuira, emotions were dangerous things—too much joy, too much grief, too much anger could be interpreted as lust. Desire for freedom. Desire for justice. Desire for more than one's allotted place.
Lust, the Clans taught, was the root of all impurity.
Those found guilty of it were sent to the Prison of Chastity, a place spoken of only in whispers. A place where eternity awaited sinners, unchanged and unending.
Sevrin felt something burn in his chest as the shackles were brought out. Not desire. Not greed. Not rebellion.
Just a quiet, cold hatred.
The mines on the outskirts of clan territory were where debtors were sent to disappear slowly.
Sevrin learned the rhythm of slavery quickly. Wake before dawn. Eat tasteless rations. Work until the body forgot how to stand straight. The overseers wore white, their uniforms pristine, their eyes dull with practiced indifference. They never raised their voices. Violence, after all, was unnecessary when the system itself did the breaking.
His parents were assigned elsewhere. He never saw where.
Days blurred together, marked only by exhaustion and the distant roars of magical beasts beyond the borders. The Clans did not bother to tame those lands. They called them impure zones, remnants of an age before cleansing—before the Demon King was slain and Yuira was remade into a world without desire.
But Sevrin had heard the older slaves whisper at night.
They said impurity was just another word for power the Clans could not control.
On the forty-third day of his enslavement, Sevrin collapsed.
It happened beyond the assigned tunnels, past a collapsed shaft no one bothered to clear. The overseers assumed he had died. Bodies were common. Cheaper to replace than to recover.
Sevrin awoke alone.
The air was different there—thick, heavy, humming faintly as if the earth itself were breathing. The rock walls were blackened, scorched by something ancient. Symbols carved into stone pulsed faintly, their shapes unlike the holy scripts of the Clans.
He should have felt fear.
Instead, he felt… seen.
At the center of the cavern lay a shard of obsidian, no larger than a child's heart, suspended just above the ground. Cracks of crimson light ran through it like veins. The moment Sevrin's eyes met it, the air trembled.
A voice echoed—not aloud, but inside him.
So… the world still forges chains.
Sevrin staggered back, breath hitching. His heart raced, but not with panic. With recognition.
"Who—what are you?" he whispered.
The shard pulsed brighter.
A fragment, the voice replied. Of a king they thought erased. Of a will that does not bow.
Images flooded his mind—seven figures standing triumphant, bathed in false light. A throne shattered. A crown cast down. And beneath it all, a hatred deeper and colder than anything Sevrin had ever felt.
The Demon King.
The very impurity the Clans claimed to have cleansed from the world.
Sevrin's hands trembled as he reached out. He thought of his parents. Of the square. Of the banners. Of a world that punished desire while indulging cruelty in secret.
"If I touch you," he asked quietly, "will I be damned?"
The fragment seemed to laugh.
This world has already damned you, child.
His fingers closed around the shard.
The cavern shook. Chains he could not see shattered. And somewhere far above, in pristine halls ruled by righteous liars, the Seven Clans felt something stir for the first time in millennia.
The Demon King had found a vessel.
And Sevrin's ascension had begun.