Ezra Vale was born in a forgotten corner of the city, in the depths of the slums where life was a currency that could be spent without a second thought. His earliest memories were not of joy, but of the stench of mold, blood, and despair. He grew up on the cracked streets, where every shadow seemed to hide a story of loss, and every face carried the weariness of survival. His mother, a frail woman with a broken smile, had tried to shield him from the world's cruelty, but it was a futile attempt. By the age of four, he learned that no one could protect you forever.
Orphaned after a violent raid on their home, Ezra was left to navigate the unforgiving streets alone. He learned quickly that kindness was a weakness that could be exploited, and cruelty was the only language the world understood. His days were spent begging for scraps, and his nights, hidden in the broken walls of abandoned buildings, were filled with the sounds of others' suffering.
It was in these dark years that Ezra's faith began to take root—not in a god, but in the hope that something, anything, could save him from the abyss. When he was seven, he stumbled across a dilapidated church hidden between two towering buildings. Its stained-glass windows were cracked and its doors barely held together by rusted hinges. But it was there that Ezra found the thing he had been searching for: a sanctuary. The priest who tended the church, Father Malachi, was a man of strange kindness. He took Ezra in, offering him food, shelter, and, most importantly, something that had been foreign to him—love.
Father Malachi's teachings were simple, but they struck something deep inside Ezra. The old man spoke of forgiveness, of the power of redemption, and of a god who saw potential in even the most broken souls. To Ezra, these words were salvation. For the first time in his life, he felt as though there was something more to this world than pain and suffering. He believed that if he could learn enough, become enough, he could be a force for good—a beacon of light in a world full of darkness.
Father Malachi saw something in Ezra as well. The boy was quiet, introspective, and driven. Though he was small and often sickly, there was an intensity in his eyes that the priest could not ignore. As the years passed, Ezra grew closer to the old man, helping him tend to the church, cleaning the pews, and lighting the candles for the evening prayers. He studied the holy texts, memorizing verses, and eventually became an altar boy, his devotion unwavering.
But not all was as it seemed in the small, forgotten church. Behind Father Malachi's warm smile lay secrets, ones that Ezra would learn far too late. The priest was not a man of salvation, but a man of manipulation. As Ezra grew older, the abuse began in small, hidden ways—whispers in the dead of night, the promise of salvation through pain, the twisted justification for actions that would make any holy man shudder. Ezra, lost in the fog of devotion, did not see the signs at first. His loyalty to the priest blinded him, and for a time, he allowed himself to believe the lies.
The abuse was only the beginning. As Ezra's faith in Father Malachi deepened, so too did his dependence. The priest, knowing the boy's vulnerability, twisted Ezra's mind until it was nothing more than a reflection of his own broken soul. The boy became a tool, a pawn in a game that was never his to play. It was only when Father Malachi had all but destroyed him, body and mind, that Ezra finally saw the truth—there was no salvation in this man. There was only the same cruelty he had known his whole life.
When Ezra turned sixteen, something in him snapped. The weight of betrayal and the realization of how far he had fallen tore through him like a wildfire. He had spent years believing in the goodness of others, but Father Malachi's actions shattered that illusion. The man who was supposed to be a beacon of salvation had become his tormentor, and in that moment, Ezra understood that the world was full of monsters hiding in the shadows of false virtue. But this realization did not make Ezra angry. It made him cold, desolate, and driven. Driven to eradicate all that was wrong with the world, driven to be the judge and the executioner.
Then, the city's darkness took on a new, literal form. A large Mimic attack ravaged the town one evening, its monstrous shapes cloaked in the skin of humanity. These creatures—terrifying, brutal things that once appeared as ordinary people—crashed into the city with no warning. They bled into the streets, stalking and slaying those they encountered with unsettling precision. People screamed in terror, their very neighbors turning into vile monsters in an instant.
In the chaos, Father Malachi, who had once promised to protect Ezra, locked him inside the church to save himself, abandoning the boy to the creatures. Ezra, no longer the naive child who had once believed in salvation, saw only betrayal. As the Mimics rampaged outside, he was left behind to die. The screams of the dying echoed through the church's hollowed halls, but none of them were for Ezra. They were for his family, his congregation—his lost soul.
But Ezra was not dead.
The firestorm of death outside illuminated the ruins inside. And as the flames swallowed the church, the whispers of the dead began. He could hear them—his congregation, his family, their voices screaming in his mind as the world around him burned. It was their sins, their regrets, their desperate cries for redemption, all reaching out from beyond the grave. They haunted him, their voices twisting and warping as they clawed at his sanity. "Save us, Ezra," they whispered. "Save us from this hell."
Ezra could not. He could not save them. He had failed them, and now, they were dead—consumed by the Mimics, consumed by his own inability to protect them. As the church collapsed, Ezra felt the weight of his failure and guilt press down on him, crushing him under its weight. His hands, bloodied and trembling, reached out to the sky, begging for salvation that would never come.
Then, The Judgment Bell appeared in front of his hand, its silver surface glowing faintly in the flames. Ezra's broken, tormented soul reached for it instinctively. As he touched it, the bell tolled once, and the sound echoed through the ruins of the church like a war cry, a call for justice. The bell's power surged through Ezra, amplifying his agony, his sorrow, and his guilt. But in its resonance, he also heard the voices of his lost congregation—whispering, accusing, and pleading for redemption.
Through this horrible time his appearance changed. His once kind, youthful face, filled with hope, now became gaunt and hollow. His pale skin grew ashen, as if the life had drained out of him. His once bright blue eyes dimmed to a hollow, ghostly shade, now tinged with a cold, unholy fury. His hair turned silver, streaked with the weight of his guilt. The remnants of his priestly robes, once white and pure, became tattered and stained with soot and blood. The toll of the bell had marked him, not just physically but spiritually. Ezra was no longer the boy who dreamed of salvation. He was the harbinger of judgment, a figure bound to a cursed fate.
The whispers did not stop. They followed him, an endless chorus of the damned in his ears. They told him to purge, to cleanse the world, to bring justice to those who were as corrupt as the Mimics that had destroyed his life. But the guilt never left him. It gnawed at him, reminding him of the sins he had failed to erase. Each person he judged, each soul he condemned, fed his obsession, but it also deepened his madness. The Judgment Bell had made him a vessel for this power, but it had also made him a prisoner of it. The bell's toll haunted him, echoing in his mind long after the sound had faded from the air.
Ezra's only drive now was to bring salvation to the world. To rid it of all the corruption that had killed his faith, to purge the evil that hid in the shadows of false virtue. He would be the judge, the one who cleansed the world through fire and fury.
As he walked the bloodstained streets, the voice of his lost congregation rang in his ears:
"The world is damned, but I—" his voice cracked with the weight of his journey. "I will be the one to purge it."
"To cleanse the world, I must first cleanse myself—though the cost may be the very soul I seek to save."