Dedication and Prologue

To the faithful,

To the fools,

To those who believed the sermons and stood anyway.

To those the Church used and then buried.

To the ones who thought they were serving the light—

And learned too late that the flame devours everything.

Somewhere between the Empire of Luminaris and the Kingdom of Camelot

My name is Samuel. I was a squire of the Holy Church. I served in the First Holy Crusade, in the Year of Our Mother One Hundred DCE, against the barbarian war hosts of Camelot.

And I swear—by the Goddess, by the Holy Mother, by the Mother of Light Herself—what I witnessed that day was not divine. It was something else entirely.

This is what I saw and Goddes help me. I owe it my life.

But before.

Before I tell you the truth.

Before I fall into whatever shallow grave waits for those who ask too many questions—

I want you to understand what I used to believe.

I used to think war was righteous. That it was sacred. That battle was the forge where faith was proven through blood, sacrifice, and purpose.

I believed in the Mother Goddess. I believed her light, channeled through the Holy Church, would protect us.
That we—her chosen—would never fall.

I still remember the day my system synced for the first time.

The moment my display lit up.

When the goddess’s voice greeted me through the Church's Window, bright and clear as sunlight on a polished blade:

Hello, Devotee. Welcome to the Holy Army of the Mother Goddess.

I was proud. I was ready.

And I believed every word.

That was before the Battle of the Burning Plains.

Thousands of us lined the field that morning. The Church had summoned its soldiers— High Paladins, battle-clerics, and squires like me—shield in one hand, spear in the other, divine inscriptions glowing across our arms and armor and finally the Knights of the Luminous Vow, the legendary elites of the Kingdom. The Church’s magic flowed through us: divine power-fed healing spells, shielding prayers, divine pulses that mended bone and strengthened resolve and and our arms.

We had numbers.

We had faith.

We had Light.

Banners of the Mother snapped in the wind, pure white against a sky already choked with ash. The ground beneath our boots thrummed with sanctified glyphs—holy circuits laid into the earth by the High Clerics, meant to amplify our connection to the Mother Goddess.

Our casters whispered their chants. Our command sergeants barked orders. And still, there was a silence. That kind of quiet that only lives just before blood.

I remember gripping my shield so tight the edges bruised my fingers. I remember my system feed pulsing at the edge of my vision:

“Blessing Link Stable. Divine Conduit at 94%. Gospel Matrix: Synced.”
I felt unstoppable.
I felt chosen.

They told us we were righteous. That no blade could pierce the faithful. That the goddess herself would hold the line with us.

We believed them.

Until the skies turned red with flame.

But it wasn’t enough.

The barbarians of Camelot came in waves. Swordmasters. Monks. Wielders of fire and speed and strange, foreign magic that didn’t obey the will of the Church. The forsake the DIVINE for mana.

Disgusting mana.

That mana burned with intensity and d we couldn't match. Their blades struck with intent—true intent. The kind our sermons never taught us about.

Still, we fought. The Church's high clerics called down divine barriers. Paladins raised light-infused blades. We healed ourselves. We healed each other. We bought every second with blood and breath and the last flickers of our divine power.

And still, they pushed us back.

We simply couldn’t do enough damage.

Even our greatest spells were answered with precision cuts and overwhelming speed.

Divine power was the way. It was truth. It was Light. But Light does not strike. Light does not tear. Divine power could empower, could protect, could heal. But it could not harm.

And that was the problem.

Our best knights—trained in centuries-old forms, their faith sealed in every breath—fell to swordsmen who fought without prayer.

I watched one of our banner guards take a flame-wreathed spear straight through the ribs. His shield glyph flared once—then cracked like glass. The light scattered.

The man didn’t even scream. He just dropped.

Around me, the line buckled.

Clerics chanted faster. Paladins shouted oaths to the heavens. Squires began to panic, whispering command lines through their system feeds, begging for divine support that never came.

The ground was red. The sky was smoke while I am ashamed to say. Our hearts were black. And still, we held.
Because what else could we do?

Our lines faltered. Faith wavered.And then— something changed.

It wasn’t just a sound.

It was a pressure. Like the entire battlefield had just exhaled, and then forgot to inhale again. My HUD flickered. The Gospel Matrix jittered. For a heartbeat, the light dimmed.

And across the burning ridge,a figure stepped onto the field.

It began like a pressure drop. Like the sky was holding its breath.

I felt it before I saw him.

A figure dropped from the sky. He landed hard, armor ringing like a death knell across the field. Black metal. A full mask—smooth, expressionless, sealed by mana I didn’t recognize. He didn’t carry a knight’s longsword, but a slender, curved blade—eastern steel wrapped in black and violet flame.

He didn’t pray. He didn’t chant. He didn’t call to the Mother.

He was silent.

And then he moved.

I watched him tear through their front lines like they were nothing. Three elite swordmasters engaged him—fighters who had already slain dozens of our best. They struck fast, coordinated, perfect. It didn’t matter.

He broke one’s guard with a reverse step and shattered his spine with a single upward cut. He parried another with a flick of his wrist and burned the third with black lightning that screamed as it touched the air. He moved like fire wrapped in shadow—acrobatic, brutal, almost bored.

He didn’t fight like a man.

He fought like a god.

Or a demon. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which.

The battlefield shifted around him. Even the Camelot forces began to fall back. Their confidence broke. Their lines shattered. And that’s when I saw it: the chaos around him wasn’t just power—it was wrong. Wild. Untethered.

His power it was either divine nor sanctioned.

Later, they told me what he was. He wasn’t a knight. He wasn’t a paladin. He wasn’t even holy.

He was a Warforged Condemned. One of the Church’s secret weapons—men who had been forced to sin, to bleed, to burn themselves hollow to channel raw power the Church couldn’t control.

He was a Forsaken.Unclean. Unforgivable. Damned. Damned to the lowest part of Prison.

And yet—

That day, he saved us. He saved me.

That day, I learned something no sermon had ever taught me:

Salvation doesn’t always come from the Light. It comes from whatever’s still standing after the screaming stops.

My brethren, I have seen darkness, I have seen evil, I have seen the blood of man spilled in waves upon the battled field.

Worst of all. I watched as a man walked through the bloodiest, direst darkness of part of the world—Condemned. And he…is the only reason i am still alive.

Thank you Warforged. Thank you.