Sovereign of the Forsaken Realm

The stench of blood clung to the air.

Ash and embers drifted like dying fireflies, settling over the lifeless expanse of a battlefield long since abandoned. The ground, a patchwork of shattered stone and ruptured earth, bore the scars of a war whose echoes had already faded. Weapons lay broken, armor lay crushed, and bodies—so many bodies—were left to rot beneath the uncaring sky.

And amidst it all, he awoke.

Pain surged through his body like molten steel, searing his nerves. His chest heaved as he sucked in ragged breaths, each one an agony of its own. His arms trembled as he tried to push himself upright, but his body refused to obey.

He didn't remember how he got here. He didn't remember who he was.

But he knew one thing.

He shouldn't be alive.

A pulse of unnatural energy shivered through the air. A whisper. A presence.

Then, a voice—cold, mechanical, absolute.

[Error.]

[Subject identified: "Forsaken."]

[Existence outside recorded parameters. Correction initiated.]

The world twisted. His vision blurred, his body flickering at the edges as if coming undone. A force unlike anything he had ever felt dragged at him, trying to erase him from reality itself.

He gritted his teeth.

A searing heat ignited in his mind, images flashing—memories, fragmented and incomplete.

—A tower of light, shattering into oblivion.

—A throne, vacant and waiting.

—A battle against something that should not exist.

—A voice, distant yet familiar. "You were never meant to be."

The memories slipped through his grasp, vanishing as quickly as they had come. But he remembered something he shouldn't.

The world resets.

The strong ascend.

The weak are erased.

The cycle repeats.

He clenched his fists as his body flickered, caught between existence and oblivion. No. He refused.

And then, something inside him shattered.

A pulse of power erupted from his core, twisting, corrupted, and wrong. The force trying to erase him screamed as it recoiled, the system's presence flickering in confusion. His body stabilized. The world stilled.

And in that moment, he knew.

This had happened before.

He had died before.

And this time, he wouldn't let it happen again.