Ghost In The Machine.

Sometime somewhere:

Capital of Fauldrice.

Two masked figures of opposing sex emerged from the crowd and into a bar,

Ordering 2 pints of beer, they begun to converse.

Man- “Job well done, fall back to azmara.”

Woman- “An ant has left the colony.”

Man- “Which one? I made sure both targets couldn't recover.”

Woman- “Fall back yourself, I still got a needle to thread.”

The woman merged back in with the crowd.

Sometime somewhere:

The Holy city, kingdom of Sylenthia

It’s the middle of the night.

An abandoned Cathedral beneath the snow rang its bells for the first time in decades,

Its windows glowed with the illumination of candles.

Old priests held their arms to their chins in prayer,

Mourning the dead king,

And dressing the new heir in long white robes.

Sometime somewhere:

Trivanheim.

A silent tremor ran through the continent of Trivanheim.

A tension that thickened in the throats of merchants, hardened the eyes of soldiers, and cast a long, anxious shadow from the highest peak to the lowest valley. The cause wasn't an army on the march or a dragon’s flight,

But an absence.

An absence of diplomacy,

An absence of a king.

It began as catastrophes often do, with something small and seemingly insignificant, a squabble between tribes.

Along the rugged, rolling hills that blurred the border between Fauldrice and Sylenthia,

Nomadic tribes had driven their herds and practiced their ancient rites for generations.

They were stubborn clannish people, their loyalties to their own kin running deeper than any respect to a distant crown.

A dispute over a poisoned well or a stolen herd of prime cave goats had escalated, as these things do,

Into a bloody brawl.

Magic was unleashed, the old and brutal kind that scarred the land.

The conflict was brief, barely a footnote for the great capitals. But its aftermath was questionable.

The fertile fields of the Fauldrik borderlands that fed the western garrisons and several key trade towns were left scorched and sterile.

The earth was barren, leaving behind soil that was little more than gray dust.

In a world where failed harvest could mean famine, this was a wound upon the nation itself.

News traveled slowly, then all at once.

In the Fauldrik capital of Eisenhive, the news was met with cold, calculating fury by the assembly of nobles.

Theirs was a nation built on technical prowess and unflinching order.

The loss of the crop was strategic liability.

A message, crisp and demanding, was sent across the narrow sea to the theocratic state of Sylenthia.

It held the tribes of both nations responsible. It spoke of reparations. It carried the iron weight of Fauldrik implication.

In the snow-drenched marble city of Svelta, capital of Sylenthia.

King Velimir the second received the missive.

A man who saw the hand of the divine in every raindrop and every drought.

Had not seen a political problem, but a spiritual test.

The tribes were his people, To him, the Fauldrik demand was plenty arrogant, blasphemous even.

Yet he was a pragmatist at heart. War over a few fields of dust served no god, atleast no good one at that.

He would go himself to mediate, offer his blessings to heal it, and show the steel-hearted Fauldrice the strength of Sylenthian conviction and forgiveness.

His arrival in Fauldrice was swift

The meeting was set in a Geisterfaust, a town known for its sacred monuments, where a Fauldrik noble designated to mediate,

A young lord known for his silver tongue and political connections would host him.

The stage was set for a tense but peaceful resolution.

But the noble never came.

For seven days, the King waited.

Seven days of growing impatience from the increasingly smug silence from the Fauldrik officials, who claimed they could not locate their own mediator.

The insult was profound.

On the morning of the seventh day, Velimir announced his departure.

He would ride to the trampled fields himself, offer his prayers to the land without Fauldrik permission, and then return home.

The diplomatic mission was over.

He never made it to the fields.

His body was found two miles from the Sacred wall, in a shallow ditch off the main road. His personal guards were slain around him, their bodies arranged in a grim, silent circle.

The weapon used was not Sylenthian steel, nor the crude axes of the hill tribes.

It was a Fauldrik military-issue crossbow bolt, clean and efficient, found buried in the earth beside him. The shot had been precise, professional, and utterly merciless.

Skeptics say even the best fauldrik crossbows couldn’t overpower sylenthian royal guards like that.

But The silent tension that had long been building across Trivanheim, now found its voice.

It was continent-spanning wildfire of outrage and questions.

In Svelta, the bells of the Grand Basilica, which only rang for the coronation or death of a King, began to toll.

A low mournful sound echoed across the entirety of Sylenthia, Priests in black robes emerged onto the streets, The word on every lip was not “tragedy.”

But “sacrilege.”

In Eisenhive, the news was met with a different kind of reaction.

The Noble Assembly was called into emergency session behind doors sealed so tightly not even a whisper escaped.

Messengers on armored horses were dispatched to every major garrison and lordship.

The air smelled of coal smoke and fear. No one claimed responsibility of course.

Most offered condolences.

The sheer.. terrifying capability of the Fauldrik war machine seemed to hum, a sleeping dragon beginning to open one eye.

But one man stood against it all.

A sylenthian figure respected and loved amongst all.

It was the prince

Not of royal blood, but love of the nation.

A figure almost religious.

His name, is Fynx Nerfantes.

The silver lining that forgave fauldrik carelessness.

Putting the distubed dragon back to its slumber.

In the mountain-ringed fortress-city of Aegis, capital of Azmara, old men with older memories watched and waited.

They remembered the War of Unification a century past, when their empire had been great

And then, through overreach and the rising might of a unified Fauldrice, had been broken.

Now, they watched the two powers that had oppressed them teeter on the brink.

Their own army, the legendary Shield of Azmara, was mobilized, a defense so profound it was said no force in the world could break it.

They fortified passes, stockpiled grain, and watched the horizon. They knew that when giants clashed, no bystander was safe.

But the giants didn't clash.

It was put on pause.

For now.

Courtesy of the prince.

Fynx had demanded another mediation meeting in the next couple months, this time on Sylenthian soil.

Across the continent, the tension bled into everyday life for another 3 days, Before finally dissipating.

A merchant in a Geisterfaust tavern, trying to sell his last shipment of Sylenthian olives, found his prices slashed and his person threatened. He fled before nightfall, his wagon half-empty.

A mother in a dusty town south of the Azmara border sat her children down not with a bedtime story of heroes, but with a practical lesson on which underground cellar was the deepest and safest, her eyes constantly flicking to the window.

In a Fauldrik port, a shipyard foreman barked orders at his crew, rushing the completion of a new warship. that was being pushed from its drydock weeks ahead of schedule. The men worked in silence, tweaking the original design accordingly.

Two scholars, one from Sylenthia and one from Fauldrice, who had been collaborating on a historical text in a neutral library in Azmara, found their friendship strained by a new yet awful politeness. They could no longer meet each other’s eyes.

The cause of it all, the missing mediator, a young noble named Lushen Frae, was a ghost in the machine.

His absence was the void around which the storm gathered.

Some in Fauldrice whispered that he was a traitor, conspiring with some cult.

Others hissed that he was a coward who had fled his duty.

In Sylenthia, his name was already a curse, the embodiment of Fauldrik deceit.

“It shall be with the missing mediator”, prince fynx announced, expressing his preference in the upcoming loosely scheduled meeting.

The fields remained barren. The king was dead. The mediator was gone. And with every silent, ticking moment, the continent of Trivanheim held its breath.

…

Sometime somewhere:

The Lushen mansion.

Lushen Frae had just got done getting scolded by his sister, his eyes glowed for the entire day,

Not with the usual sorrow, anger, or fear.

Whit curiosity, he took to scouting his room, searching for any signs of his past, with no visible results.

Tired from it all the young man took a sip of hot milk, and laid on his bed, his eyes greeting the ceiling But something was strange… the bed was unbelievably stiff for its luxurious look.

-Ting!-

A realization pierced his mind.

He went to the basement, grabbed an axe, and with a swift motion,

-Crrckkkk.

he had hit something solid, a box.

a wooden box was planted in his mattress, another swing came.

-Kkkrrett!

The box had shattered, and inside it was a book,

A green leather book. the words:

"Diaries of a Necromancer”

Engraved on it.