To the northeast of Millinggarde's fractured remains, beyond the reach of civilization's order and Aether's suffocating grasp, lies a place that has been forgotten by time itself.
Grieg's Lair.
A name spoken only in hushed tones, carried on the wind like a dying whisper. A place where the air is thick with the scent of rust and decay, where the earth itself seems to reject life, swallowing all who dare tread upon it.
But Grieg's Lair was not always this way.
Long ago—before the war, before Aether's conquest, before even Millinggarde stood at the height of its progress—this land was a void.
A place without name. Without rulers. Without laws.
It was an exile's purgatory.
And it was here that Grieg, the man who would lend his name to the cursed wasteland, was cast away to meet his fate.
The Man Who Poisoned a Nation
Grieg was not a warlord. Nor a king. Nor a revolutionary.
He was a scientist. A scholar. A man who understood the delicate balance between power and consequence—and how easily one could tip the scales.
It was said that in his prime, Grieg had been a visionary of Aether, a mind sought after for his brilliance in mana-infused alchemy. He had studied the properties of magic and its interactions with the physical world, developing formulas and methods that enhanced the capabilities of Aether's ruling elite.
But great minds are often the most dangerous.
Grieg did not share Aether's rigid philosophy of control. He believed that power, if left unchecked, would become a poison. And so, in a move that was as bold as it was catastrophic, he decided to test his theory.
He crafted a substance, a deadly mana inhibitor, something so potent that it could nullify the very lifeblood of Aether itself. And with it, he did the unthinkable—
He poisoned Aether's entire water supply.
In a single night, millions suffered the effects. Those who had been sustained by magic their entire lives—those who had never known a moment without mana coursing through their veins—collapsed as their bodies rejected their own existence.
He had crippled a nation in a single stroke.
And for that, he was condemned.
But Aether did not execute him.
No. That would have been too merciful.
Instead, he was cast into the northern wastelands—a land where no magic flowed, where no water ran, where nothing but dust and death awaited.
A fitting punishment, they thought.
But Grieg did not die.
The Birth of the Lair
Where there is suffering, there is kinship.
Where there is exile, there is a cause.
And where there is injustice, there is vengeance.
Grieg was not the first to be cast into the wastelands, nor would he be the last.
Over time, others like him—criminals, rebels, exiles—found themselves banished to the same desolation. Murderers. Thieves. Outcasts. Some sent away for their crimes, others for merely existing in defiance of Aether's rule.
At first, they fought each other, scrambling for what little could be scavenged.
But survival breeds necessity.
And so, beneath Grieg's guidance, they formed something new.
Not a kingdom. Not a nation.
A den of monsters.
The wasteland was transformed. What had once been barren land became a network of underground tunnels and fortified ruins, carved out by those who refused to be forgotten.
They crafted their own weapons. Crude, but deadly.
They devised their own laws. Brutal, but fair.
They took what they needed. Without mercy.
And soon, what had once been a place of exile became a place of power.
Aether had cast them out.
But Grieg's Lair would not be ignored.
The War That Never Came
For years, rumors spread of the ghosts of the wasteland.
Caravans that passed too close to the border would vanish without a trace. Soldiers sent on patrol would never return. Supplies would go missing, stolen by unseen hands.
Whispers of a force rising from the ashes began to reach Aether's courts.
The rulers of Aether feared what was growing beyond their borders. They had expected the exiles to wither and die, not to organize and expand.
And so, before it could fester into a true threat, they did what they had always done.
They purged it.
Aether's forces, thousands strong, marched upon Grieg's Lair, bringing with them the full force of their magic and steel.
The battle lasted three days.
Three days of fire and blood.
Three days in which Grieg and his people fought like demons, refusing to surrender, refusing to bow.
But they could not win.
Not against Aether's full might.
In the end, the lair was reduced to rubble, its tunnels collapsed, its people slaughtered.
And Grieg was never seen again.
Some say he was burned alive in the purge.
Some say he escaped into the depths of the wasteland, living out his final days in hiding.
And some say he still lingers beneath the ruins, waiting for the day when Aether's downfall will come.
But the truth no longer matters.
Because Grieg's Lair is dead.
Or so the world believes.
The Graveyard That Breathes
Today, Grieg's Lair is nothing more than a stretch of desolate ruin.
A place where no flowers bloom, where no rivers flow. Aether has long since abandoned it, the land considered cursed, left to rot under the weight of its own history.
And yet—
The most foolish of travelers claim that when the wind howls across the broken wasteland, they can hear whispers beneath the stone.
That when the night is at its darkest, they have seen shadows moving in the ruins.
That not all who were exiled had perished.
That Grieg's Lair is not dead.
Only waiting.
And if that is true—if there are still embers buried beneath the ashes—then perhaps Aether's greatest mistake was not its destruction…
But thinking it could be forgotten. To stand at the borders of Grieg's Lair is to feel the weight of something ancient pressing against your soul.
The land does not welcome. It does not yield. It devours.
The air itself is thick, heavy—not with magic, but with something far older, something woven into the very bones of the earth. Aether has long since erased its name from records, buried its history beneath official decrees, and yet, those who dare to venture close know the truth.
This place remembers.
The iron-laced soil is cracked and dry, refusing to bear life. What few plants dare sprout from the earth are brittle, colorless things—shadows of what they should be. The wind carries a scent of dust and rust, the remnants of a time when blood soaked this soil in rivers, when the dying screamed into the night, and the echoes refused to fade.
Few venture here, and those who do never stay for long.
Not because they fear the place itself.
But because, when night falls over Grieg's Lair, the silence feels alive. At the heart of the wasteland lie the ruins of a city that never was.
Collapsed tunnels yawn open like the mouths of forgotten beasts, their jagged entrances gaping with the remnants of an empire that never had a chance to rise. The skeletal remains of iron fortifications jut from the ground, twisted and blackened by time, whispering of a war fought in desperation rather than strategy.
Here, there is no beauty in ruin. No remnants of grandeur lost to time.
Only destruction.
The remnants of fortified strongholds, their walls torn asunder by Aether's siege weapons, stand like broken ribs protruding from the carcass of the land. Their interiors have long since caved in, devoured by erosion, leaving behind only hollow husks where exiles once planned their vengeance.
Yet, despite the decay, the city does not feel empty.
Some say the spirits of the dead still roam these corridors, trapped in an eternal cycle of defiance. Others whisper that not all who lived here perished. That beneath the ruins, in tunnels untouched by Aether's fire, something still lingers.
Waiting.
Watching.
Breathing.
The ruins above may be silent tombs, but the tunnels below?
They are something else entirely.
Deep beneath the charred remnants of the lair, where even Aether's forces dared not chase the last of the exiles, there is a place untouched by time.
The undercity.
Carved into the stone by desperate hands, it was once the lifeblood of Grieg's rebellion—an intricate network of underground corridors, built not merely for survival, but as a means to resist. The exiles of the lair knew that Aether would come for them one day. They knew their walls above would not hold.
So they built beneath the land.
Miles of passageways, fortified with whatever scraps of iron and stolen mana-infused stone they could salvage. A second city, hidden beneath the bones of the first.
Aether believed they had destroyed all of Grieg's Lair.
But they never found the deepest tunnels.
Even now, the air down there is different. Stagnant, unmoving. The walls are lined with marks left behind by those who once lived here—records carved into the stone by hands desperate to be remembered.
Some messages are simple. Names, dates, fragments of stories left unfinished.
Others are more chilling.
"Aether will never break us."
"The fire cannot reach us here."
"We still hear them walking above."
And then, the final words ever carved.
"They are coming. The doors won't hold. We will not scream."
Beneath those words, there are no more carvings.
Only silence.
Time has done little to erase the weight of Grieg's Lair.
Aether may claim it is gone, reduced to nothing but an empty wasteland, but the land remembers.
And sometimes, so do its people.
The resistance that still festers within Millinggarde's oppressed cities speaks of Grieg's Lair with reverence, with a quiet, desperate kind of hope.
They say that its people are not truly gone.
That in the deepest tunnels, past the ruins no outsider has set foot in, something still stirs.
Aether's control is absolute. Its power unmatched. Its reach unyielding.
But even the most unstoppable empire fears the whispers of the forgotten.
Because history has a way of resurfacing when it is least expected.
And if the embers of Grieg's Lair still smolder beneath the earth, waiting for the right breath of air to bring them back to life—
Then Aether's reckoning is not a question of if, but when.