The weight of a blade is not measured in steel but in the burdens of the one who wields it. A man may lift a sword a thousand times in training, but it is the first time he kills that he truly understands its weight.
Leonhardt Vale was born into a world of golden halls and velvet curtains, where laughter echoed through the stone corridors of his father's estate. The Vale family was known for their military prestige, yet within their stronghold, life was not war but a serene orchestration of noble privileges.
As a child, Leonhardt's hands did not grasp weapons but fine quills, his days filled with poetry, diplomacy, and the strategic games his tutors claimed would sharpen his mind. He was the pride of his father, Lord Aldric Vale, a man renowned for his unshakable honor. His mother, Lady Elise, would stroke his golden hair as he drifted to sleep, whispering lullabies of heroes long past, their voices carried by the gentle winds of the northern plains.
Yet fate is cruel to those who live in blissful ignorance.
One autumn evening, the sky burned crimson as a raiding force, like specters of the abyss, descended upon the Vale estate. The walls that had stood for generations crumbled before an enemy neither political nor honorable—mercenaries, men of no allegiance, their faces obscured beneath iron helms. They did not come for conquest. They came for slaughter.
Leonhardt, only ten years old, was dragged from his bed by the hand of his mother, her warmth replaced by sheer desperation. Through hidden passages, they fled as screams filled the air, servants and soldiers alike cut down like wheat before the scythe. The boy did not understand the severity of it—not yet. He thought, foolishly, that his father would come and save them.
But the first horror that shaped him was the sound of steel through flesh.
As they reached the outer corridors, a soldier—a man his family had once trusted—turned against them. His mother shielded him, her embrace once a source of comfort, now a barrier against the inevitable. A blade, swift and merciless, pierced her back.
Her final breath was not a cry of pain but a whisper of love.
Leonhardt did not have time to mourn. His father, bloodied and wounded, arrived too late to save his wife but in time to see the betrayal. He cut down the traitor with fury, lifting Leonhardt into his arms as he fought his way through the chaos. But even the might of Lord Aldric Vale was not enough to stop the tide of death.
Before the boy's eyes, his father fell—speared through the chest.
They did not kill Leonhardt. Instead, they laughed. A noble child, a boy of golden blood, was worth more alive than dead. They took him, bound him in chains, and dragged him from the ruins of his home.
For two years, he lived among killers. They sought to break him, to make him one of their own, feeding him scraps and forcing him to watch as they razed villages, slaying the innocent. They believed a child of privilege would crumble. But what they did not realize was that the boy they stole was not merely the heir of House Vale—he was the son of Aldric and Elise, forged in love but tempered in fire.
The day he killed for the first time was the day they truly feared him.
He drove a stolen dagger through the throat of the man who had murdered his mother. The boy they had mocked, the noble son they had intended to mold into a pet, was no longer a child. He was a warrior.
By the time he escaped, he was no longer Leonhardt Vale of House Vale. He was Leonhardt Vale, the one who had crawled through blood and fire, the one who had carved his own survival with nothing but his own will.
He swore an oath that night. An oath that would guide his every action, his every step.
To purge the world of those who thrived in bloodshed.
And that was how he came to hear the name Salvatore Vernoux.
The rumors were like whispers in the wind—an immortal man, a legend of war, a priest who walked among the devout but whose hands were stained with the lives of countless innocents. It was not justice Leonhardt sought. It was vengeance.
For years, he hunted the trail of this ghost, this devil draped in holy robes. And now, standing at the gates of a forsaken village, he finally found him.
Beneath the cold glow of the moon, Salvatore Vernoux stood, waiting. The wind carried the scent of death.
Leonhardt did not hesitate.
He drew his blade.
And the battle began.