THE BASTARD KING: THE RISE OF THE PRISMATIC VOID

THE BASTARD KING: THE RISE OF THE PRISMATIC VOID

ARC ONE: THE AMBER FILTH

Chapter One: The Bread of Shadows

The mud of the Hinirang lowlands was a graveyard of ambition, a thick, gray sludge that smelled of stagnant water and ancient rot. In the year eleven thousand two, the soil was saturated with the sweat of the "Low-Lights," a caste of peasants whose only value was the dim amber glow they produced to keep the silk-worms of the nobility warm. Kulas spent his youth in this muck, his fingers permanently stained gray, his ribs visible beneath a tunic of rough hemp. Beside him, his mother, Diwa, worked with a rhythmic, agonizing grace. Her Amber Light was fading, leaking from her cracked skin like spilled oil, yet she never ceased her labor.

Kulas watched her hands, fascinated and horrified by the way the light flickered. Every few minutes, Diwa would press her glowing palms against the waterlogged soil, forcing a surge of warmth into the dormant rice seeds. It was a parasitic magic; for every grain that sprouted, a year of her life seemed to vanish. Kulas felt a coldness in his marrow that no amount of her amber warmth could thaw. He was a creature of the periphery, born from a wandering ghost and a woman who loved too much.

In the distance, the Obsidian Spire loomed like a jagged splinter in the eye of the world. It was a structure of impossible geometry, pulsing with the cold, aristocratic arrogance of the Blue Fire. Kulas hated it. He hated the way the light from the Spire turned the clouds into a bruised purple. He hated the way the Nobles looked down from their balconies, their spirit powers allowing them to breathe air that was too thin for common lungs. He gripped his wooden shovel, his knuckles white, and felt a tremor in his shadow.

The shadow didn't move with him. As the sun began to set, Kulas noticed that his silhouette remained standing even when he knelt. It was a deep, ink-black void that seemed to drink the light around it. He didn't know then that this was the blood of Haring Barguak calling to him. He didn't know that his father was the King of the Otherworld, a being who manipulated the very fabric of darkness. He only knew that he felt like a stranger in his own skin, a wolf trapped in the body of a plow-beast.

Diwa noticed his stare. She grabbed his wrist, her hand surprisingly strong. "Do not covet the sky, Kulas," she whispered, her voice a dry rattle. "Those who fly too high forget how to breathe the air of the earth. The Blue Fire is a hungry god; it eats everything it touches." Kulas looked at her, seeing the fear in her eyes, and for the first time, he realized that she wasn't just tired-she was terrified of him. She saw the shadow. She saw the bastard king waking up inside her son.