Unbound

UNBOUND: The Tale of Vael’Thara

A Dark Fantasy Epic of Betrayal, Flame, and Undying Will

PROLOGUE: The Shattered Balance

Vael’Thara: Realm of Breathing Stone

Before memory had formed, the world of Vael’Thara pulsed with a symphony of storm and silence, of stone that breathed and seas that dreamed. Spirits, beasts, mortals, and mind-born entities lived as reflections of the same ancient rhythm, governed by a subtle force known as the Elyndros, the unseen equilibrium of Will, Instinct, and Essence.

The Hollow Star and the Sundering Blight

From the void beyond all stars came a wound in the shape of a star, the Hollow Spark. It tore through the aether and embedded itself in the world’s spine, disrupting Elyndros. What it birthed was not death, but Nethrak the Unweaving. Where Nethrak spread, meaning itself came apart. Thoughts unraveled. Names forgot themselves. Civilizations became mazes of memory and madness.

The Swords of Flame

In their last convergence, the ancient stewards of balance channeled all remaining essence into a sealed crucible: the Forge-Pyre of Aeguron, buried beneath Mount Thalenor. From it rose the Emberforged obsidian-shelled warriors bound with soulflame, created not to preserve life, but to halt unmaking. They were paradoxes incarnate: born of blight, wielding purity. The world called them the Swords of Flame.

The Deep Retreat

Even the Emberforged could not halt the tide forever. As the last sanctuaries crumbled and Nethrak smothered the skies, the Emberforged descended into the Hollowdeep, a labyrinthine underrealm sealed with forgotten wards. They did not sleep to endure. They slept because there was nothing left to burn. Vael’Thara became still. Nethrak completed its first cycle.

THE BROKEN CYCLE

The Bells of Erun-Kai

Ages turned to dust. Then, impossibly, the bells of Erun-Kai rang again, tones meant to herald rebirth. In every past age, this marked the fading of Nethrak and the return of bloom. But no life stirred. The song returned, but the cycle failed.

Ash-Woken

Only the Emberforged stirred, drawn from Hollowdeep by forgotten instinct. They emerged into a world suspended in silence, the blight faded, but life was absent. And worse: echoes of the undead still wandered. These were not beasts, but fractured memories, walking fragments of past lives. The Swords of Flame became the sole fire in a world of embers out of place, out of time.

Rain of the Drowned

For forty nights, black rain fell, called by some the Tears of the Spark, the last weeping of Vael’Thara. It stirred the Veyln: revenants half-recovered from Nethrak’s touch. Not alive, not lost, unfinished. Their hunger was not for flesh, but meaning. The Emberforged took up arms once more to cleanse them.

FIRE AND UNDOING

The Echo War

But the Veyln could not be slain in truth. Each death unraveled them anew, yet left residue in the world. And every strike from the Emberforged left a scar on themselves, a thinning of the paradox that gave them form. The more they fought, the more they decayed.

Rings of Binding

To remain whole, they crafted Binding Rings forged from Veyln ichor and soulflame. These artifacts stabilized their essence, anchoring them after each purge. But the ichor was tainted. Nethrak, ever patient, crept in through the blood. Through the rings, it whispered.

The Fall of Arthor 

Their first-forged form was called Arthor unyielding and whole. His ring shattered in an early war, yet he refused to forge another. Free from corruption, he watched as his kin grew monstrous. When they finally turned on him, mistaking him for a Veyln echo, they shattered him in grief and madness.

THE DUSK REIGN

The Covenant of Cinders

With Arthor gone, the Swords of Flame fell completely into Nethrak’s influence. But they retained their will and their pain. The corruption did not erase them; it remade them. They crowned themselves the Covenant of Cinders, sovereigns of a dusk-struck world.

The Curse of Flame

Yet their dominion came with torment. Flames that once purified now burned within them endlessly a sentence of living fire. They were kings of ash, but prisoners of pain. The world had not been reborn, only twisted, paused, and reshaped by the remnants of what once was.

ACT I: EMBERS OF VENGEANCE

[L1] Arthor Reforged

Unbeknownst to the world, Arthor core did not extinguish. Entombed deep beneath the ruins of his fall, his essence slept. When the Hollowdeep cracked in a long-forgotten quake, his spark rekindled.

He rose, reforged, alone, and consumed by purpose.

But the world that greets him is warped beyond reckoning. The undead wear familiar faces. The Swords he once led now rule as tyrants both victims and villains.

Arthor does not rise to restore the cycle.
He rises to break it.