"Before the Architect carved light into rune, before Essentia danced in rivers of stars, there was a boy who belonged to the storm."
He was born nameless—no mother to kiss his brow, no cradle-song to greet the moon: only thunder, fire, and the scent of wet ash in the wreckage of a razed village. The Fel'khari War had just begun then, and he was what it left behind—a child with bloodied claws and eyes too quiet for his age.
They said he should have died. Most orphans did. But the boy clawed his way from corpses, crawling through soot, surviving on scraps and instinct. He learned early that kindness was often the edge of a blade too slow to swing.
By ten, he had already killed.
By fifteen, warlords offered coin for his loyalty.
By twenty, they called him a myth—the Fang of Ruin, the beast-kin mercenary who never lost a battle, who carved through armoured men like wind through grain, who wore no crest and bent the knee to no king.
But Tharen was no monster.
No matter how the world dressed him in legend, deep inside that towering mass of sinew and scar was something worse than rage—remorse for every kill. Every friend is buried. Every home he could not save.
"He was not the sharpest blade," the story says. "But the one most willing to bleed."
Tharen didn't fight for glory. He fought because no one else would. Because someone had to. And because dying was easier than living with what he'd already done.
When he moved, armies trembled. When he stood still, kings whispered his name behind closed doors. And when he vanished—just like that, no grave, no farewell—the world held its breath.
And waited.
"The storm had passed, they thought. But they never noticed… it had simply changed direction."
Some wars change borders.Then, some wars change people.
Tharen had waded through both. But it was during the Crimson Rebellion that he met the ones who would change him.
They were three anomalies—too vibrant, too broken, too alive—and they arrived like fate had stitched them from different legends.
Seraphine Quenara, daughter of the Aether Realms, alchemist of divine mischief, and chaos incarnate in heels.She appeared in his life mid-battle, astride a celestial beast with flaming manes, laughing as she turned an enemy regiment into marzipan statues. When Tharen yelled, "Are you insane!?" she responded, "Darling, I invented it."
Vaelgard of the Bloomsteel Order, the man whose muscles had muscles, who fought with grace and flamboyance and a scimitar that shimmered like moonlight off silk.He called Tharen "kitten," and it wasn't an insult. It was a term of deep affection. And when Tharen tried to punch him for it, Vaelgard dodged with a pirouette and kissed his fist instead.
Ellesmere, the whisperwood dryad with eyes older than time. Her voice calmed stampedes. Her spells made flowers bloom on battlefields. But she could also turn a fortress into moss if she was in a bad mood.Tharen respected her most of all. She didn't need to scream to be feared. She simply existed, and the world bent politely around her.
They should never have fought together.They should've never trusted each other.
But they did.
And so, they became a force history never accounted for:The Four Who Defied the World.
In their most infamous campaign, the Fall of Vaelstrom Citadel, they stood against a coalition of mage-tyrants who ruled with arcane supremacy and soul-binding contracts.Outnumbered, outgunned, utterly surrounded—Tharen and his mismatched companions stormed the gates with no formal plan and even less patience.
Seraphine dropped divine bombs in the shape of roses.Vaelgard charmed enemy generals mid-swordfight.Ellesmere turned the stone halls into blooming forests.And Tharen—he didn't fight for the revolution.
He fought for them. His first real family.
When it was done, Vaelstrom burned not with fire, but with freedom. The mage-lords were exiled. The people sang songs of the four. For a brief moment, the world felt... better.
But peace, as always, is a coin cursed by time.
The four began to drift—some called it fate, others, inevitability. Even Seraphine once muttered:
"Legends are lovely, darling… but they always come with an expiration date."
Tharen didn't say anything.
But deep down, he already knew:
"This joy... it won't last."
And he was right.
The battlefields eventually fell behind.The songs stopped. The banners were folded.
And Tharen?He walked.
Through ghost towns turned to ash. Through sacred woods now quiet. Through people who bowed and whispered—but no longer dared approach.
He had grown tired.Not old.Just... worn.
He reached the Ael'myra forest with no destination, only a strange pull in his chest.
The Felyari tribe didn't open their gates for strangers, especially not beast-kin warriors scarred with ancient glyph-burns and reputation.But someone did.
Selya.
She was standing in the village square, surrounded by children who danced like leaves in the wind. Her laugh healed. Her hands glowed with Essentia light so soft it felt like moonwater.
Tharen blinked. Once.And for the first time in years, he didn't reach for his sword.
She looked up and said simply,
"You look like someone who forgot what quiet feels like."
He stayed.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks into seasons. The village accepted him slowly—some out of respect, others out of fear. But Selya? She didn't flinch even once.
She made him rebuild huts with her.Help feed children.Sit in silence under starlit trees.
He tried to keep his distance. To be the 'visitor.'But every time she smiled at him, he lost another wall.
When a sick child was dying, he carried the boy on his back for three days to find a healer, even though Selya knew the boy wouldn't make it.
When it rained too hard, he stood outside until the storm passed—just to make sure no thatched roof leaked.
He never said "I love you."He didn't need to.
The people started calling him "Chief" when the old one passed.
But Selya—she called him "stormcloud."Teasing. Gentle.And when they finally lay together beneath the Heartroot Tree during the Silver Moon Festival,
The storm found peace.
Their daughters were born under a lunar eclipse, marked by divine glyphs. Triplets.
Nyra.Mira.Kaeli.
Selya wept.Tharen held them like crystal lanterns.His hands shook. His soul didn't.
He made one vow that night—spoken not as the Fang of Ruin, not as the war-torn chief,But simply as a father:
"No god, no king, no curse… will ever take them from me."
And somewhere in the woods, the wind shifted.The world watched.Because peace may be rare—But what comes for those who dare to hold it… is even rarer.
The battle had left scars on the land, on the tribe, and most of all, on Tharen's heart.
He had stood beside Selya, blades bloodied, spirit heavy, watching his daughters and the villagers take down horrors that should never have existed. The first creature, Nyra, had been obliterated with KAIROS's help. A moment of divine brilliance, calculated wrath. But the second—ah, that one had come the next day, when KAIROS had fallen silent.
That was when he saw it.
Not the strength. Not the power.But the doubt.Nyra's doubt in herself.
Later that night, she came to him. No tears. Just resolve.
"I need to be better. Not stronger—better.KAIROS isn't responding. And if it never does again... I have to stand on my own."
He had listened in silence. Then, with a nod that cracked him open inside, he agreed.
Seraphine had been summoned. Eccentric, radiant, unignorable. Her entrance was blinding. Her demands? Predictably outrageous. And Nyra had gone with her, without fanfare, but with fire in her eyes.
Only one daughter was meant to leave.
The next morning, Tharen found two pairs of footprints missing alongside Nyra's.
He stormed into Tanya's hut.He checked the barrier wards.He even interrogated one of the moon owls for good measure.
Then he found Spark's scribbled note on the ground, complete with an insult and glitter explosion:
"Don't worry, muscle papa. They stowed away through a portal I "accidentally" left open. Oopsie-daisy. 🦊✨"
He should've been furious.He should've dragged them back.
But when he looked at the empty horizon, at the space where his daughters had once stood side by side under Lunareth's twin moons...
All he did was smile.
"Of course you followed her," he murmured.
Selya appeared beside him, folding her arms.
"You know they'll drive Seraphine insane, right?"
"I'm counting on it," he replied.
Then added, quietly—
"They'll be alright, won't they?"
"They're ours, Tharen.They were born to break expectations."
The forest wind carried the sound of laughter—Mira's, distant and chaotic, echoing faintly through the residual portal trail.
Tharen turned back to his people.His daughters were out there, growing. Testing fate. And maybe… changing it.
And he would be here, as he always had been.
The Fang. The flame. The father.