The Four Empires
…
At first, El was just a seven-year-old boy, surviving in a war-torn village steeped only in the air of misery and the stench of death.
He was far from ordinary though – for his fragmented memories made it difficult to remember many things, yet it gifted him with an uncanny intelligence.
With only a few tattered books from a crumbling, wooden library, he taught himself how to read, clinging to knowledge as his only solace.
He believed his fate was sealed, destined to die like other children who succumbed to illness or starvation, then left him there alone.
However, everything changed the day his village was attacked by unknown people. The invaders slaughtered everyone, yet for reasons he couldn’t fathom, they left him alive.
When El awoke under the pale light of the full moon, the attackers returned, searching for what they called "a breath that was left."
Helpless, he was captured. What followed was a blur – six years of his life erased from memory. He woke up again, his head bandaged, in the care of a mysterious man who brought him to Mirthwater, a city in one of the Four Vassal States of the Ryxhaton Empire.
Then without much of an explanation, he abandoned him there.
Left to fend for himself, El navigated the harsh underside of Mirthwater, while haunted by dreams of the unknown he couldn’t make sense of.
But his quiet struggle for survival suddenly took a dark turn when he stumbled into a brewing conflict hidden within the city’s shadows.
Unwittingly thrust into a world fraught with danger, he found himself face-to-face with creatures born from humanity’s darkest desires and worst nightmares.
Now, El’s must confront the horrors lurking in the depths of Mirthwater and uncover the truth about his past – before it consumes all of him.
…
