Rain hit Gravemire in lazy drops, soaking the cobblestone streets.A man moved through the wet chaos—frail, scarred, blind in both eyes.To anyone watching, he was just a weak, ragged figure, drifting aimlessly.
They didn't know.They never would.
He had spent five years in the Church's cell.Five years meant to break him completely.Every day, they tried: starvation, freezing water, burning irons, relentless beatings.They poured insects into his hair, into his skin, letting them gnaw at him.They whispered madness into his ears.They left him chained for days, until even breathing felt impossible.
And yet… he survived.
The body was broken. Frail. Weak.Bones cracked, flesh scarred, muscles wasted.
But when he fell asleep… the real trial began.
A God waited.Not one of mercy, not one of light.A dark, incomprehensible being, infinite and shifting, whose presence warped space and time.Its form could not be described—shadowed limbs that twisted over themselves, a void where its head should have been, and eyes, or maybe none, that burned every second of existence.Time itself was a weapon. One second under its gaze could feel like a thousand years. Every breath was fire, every heartbeat a crushing weight.
Nox could not fight. He could not flee.All he could do was endure.
Because he had lost both eyes in reality, something strange happened: in the God's presence, he could perceive the world without sight.He felt the God's every movement, its intent, the pressure of its being. He did not understand how he knew—it was instinct, perception, survival.
He never understood the extent of what he was becoming.He only knew that the pain, the fire, the endless shadow, was changing him.Each night was a test, a torture no one should survive.And yet he woke every day, broken, battered, scarred—but still alive.
He did not know his soul had grown beyond mortal measure.All he knew was… he had survived.And surviving, in itself, was enough.