Renner watched from the tower as the first construction crews laid down the last of the western ramparts.
He had arrived before dawn—slender silhouette among the laborers and laboring in silence. His pale skin was flushed by the day's chill, worn wrappings clinging to him, relics still rattling at his belt.
He'd come to Esgard with one goal: to climb—and break—the mountain called Ian Night, the Demon Blade.
Renner wasn't born from nobility. He came from scorched houses and rotting fields, from crack paths where the Southern Army spilled blood like rivers.
He built his legend through pain and ceremony—earning rings and chains, a broken sigil from one throat and dried hair from another.
Each trophy told a story: a step closer to summoning the darkness he'd claimed to hold at his side. None of this had been vanity. He had been building a ladder out of corpses.
