Prologue -Seeds of Hatred #1

If hatred had a form—

It would look exactly like mine.

Asher jolted awake to a scream.

His skull throbbed as if split by a mace, every wail around him driving nails into his nerves. Consciousness violently tore free from an abyss of darkness.

The first thing he saw was a whip carving arcs through stale air.

Crack!

The lash struck the shoulder of a girl in the iron cage—Beth, the five-year-old daughter of Carter, the village drunk. Fresh blood unfurled beneath parchment-thin skin. Her shriek pierced the air.

“Silence! Or I’ll flay you alive!”

Snarled an imperial soldier, his voice dripping with venom.

The whip fell again. Blood misted the air as the girl’s scream frayed like a snapped lyra string.

Beth—once a dirt-smudged child chasing chickens through the village—now trembled like a withered stalk. Tears streaked her gaunt face, and her eyes pooled with terror and confusion.

Why?

The question trembled in her gaze, unanswered.

Too young to understand the word “slave.”

Too innocent to comprehend why cruelty wore a uniform.

But the widow Julian, chained beside her, moved differently. A laundress who’d scrubbed millers’ sheets for stale bread, her hands were maps of calluses. She had long ago learned to read a man’s twitch before he struck.

When she saw the soldier’s boot tap twice, Julian acted.

Her cracked palm slapped over Beth’s mouth before the next sob could escape.

No sound now.

Tears pooled in Beth’s lashes, spilling soundless paths through grime. Julianne’s calloused palm drank the saltwater grief.

This is how we endure, the old woman’s grip whispered.

This is how we outlive them.

A child weeping from instinct.

A woman silencing screams from habit.

In the cage named slavery, survival wore many faces—all of them carved by despair. 

Pathetic.
The thought coiled through Asher’s mind beneath closed eyelids.

Tears change nothing.

We’re slavdes now.

The soldier snorted, satisfied by the silence, and turned away. 

Still, Julian kept her palm sealed over Beth’s mouth—though her own hand trembled like a leaf in storm winds.

Asher gritted his teeth and forced himself upright. Even the slightest movement sent searing pain through his entire body—but he let no sound escape. 

Once steady, he surveyed the surroundings with grim calm.

Iron. Blood. Rust.

The air inside the iron cage was thick with the stench of blood. The mingling smell of decay and rust was enough to make anyone gag.

In the cramped space, several figures huddled together, pressed tightly against one another: wheezes from broken ribs, muffled sobs, the dry click of dehydrated throats.

Aside from Beth, Julian, and himself, there were two others in the cage.

One was a small, scrawny boy curled up in the corner. Tears quietly streamed down his face, but he was too weak even to sob.

The other was a middle-aged woman. She cradled her head in her hands, curled into herself, murmuring something under her breath. Her voice was so faint that it was impossible to make out the words. It was as though she were praying to some unseen god.

Yet,  in Asher’s sea-green eyes, it only spoke weakness. 

—What good are tears?

—What use is fear?

He couldn’t understand such weakness, nor did he want to.

He clawed through fractured memories. None in this cage shared blood or history—just the stink of shared despair. And the iron cage they were trapped in was just a tiny part of the Empire’s endless caravan of plunder.

Ahead and behind, the procession stretched—an iron centipede of barred wagons. Each segment pulsed with human cargo: blacksmiths here, laborers there, children tossed wherever space allowed

They were no longer human—just commodities tagged with a price, their worth measured in coin.

Once they were transported to the empire, their fate was sealed. Either they would be taken by some noble’s whim, or they would be dragged to the market, auctioned off like cattle.

If Asher’s guess was correct, most of the village’s adult men had already been slaughtered.

The survivors were the elderly, women, children, and craftsmen—blacksmiths, healers, and others with some kind of useful skill.

Survivors not by mercy, but by market demand.

A temporary reprieve.

With every bump of the cart, the iron cage groaned and squealed, the grating sound of metal against metal cutting through the air.

Through the rusted gaps in the iron bars, Asher could see the line of soldiers flanking them.

The imperial soldiers moved in formation, their progress heavily guarded. In their hands, they wielded polished long spears, while short daggers hung at their belts. Their bodies were clad in finely crafted iron armor, with crimson ribbons sewn into the shoulder decorations. Plumes of red feathers rose proudly from their helmets, fluttering with each step.

Bathed in the midday sun, they gleamed with blinding brilliance, their armor too dazzling, almost painful to look at.

Yet, beneath this dazzling facade, the soldiers carried themselves with a certain indifference. They chatted idly, their laughter sharp and hollow. When boredom crept in, they turned to the iron cages. Whips cracked against the bars with violent force. Sometimes, they jabbed at the prisoners with spear tips through the gaps, laughing as the captives flinched or cried out in pain.

Asher, feeling the bite of the chains digging into his wrists, did not move.

He simply watched, his cold gaze unwavering as it followed their every action.

Aeteria.

He cursed the name deep within his heart—the empire that had crushed everything he held dear with brutal ruthlessness

He had grown up in a village at the northwestern edge of the continent, a quiet place where life was simple. Even as a child of eight, he remembered how his father and the village elders often spoke of the looming threat from the south.

They said the empire’s army was merciless, bloodthirsty—like wolves or tigers. They warned that if the mountains were crossed, the village would fall to ruin in an instant.

To the villagers, it was nothing more than idle talk, like tales of distant storms that rumbled but never struck. The mountains to the north of Eteria stood as an unyielding barrier, shielding them from the iron-clad hooves of imperial conquest—or so they believed.

And finally, they understood—

And finally, they understood—no wall lasts forever.

Not stone, not steel, not even the mountains they trusted with their lives.

The villagers had always believed that the mountain range was their greatest shield.

Even when rumors began circulating that the empire’s army had crossed the mountains, burning villages and selling the inhabitants into slavery, they merely shrugged it off.

“Those are villages in the south,” they would say, “We’re still far from the Rimepeaks.”

To them, the southern threat was a distant, almost mythical danger—like a monster in a child’s bedtime story, something to be feared only in tales told around the campfire.

But that illusion was torn apart in an instant, and the threat became a reality at an unexpectedly fast pace.

When Asher closed his eyes, memories of that morning flooded back—

Sunlight through the farmhouse window. Fresh rye bread steaming on the table, the tang of goat’s milk sharp in his nose.

His mother’s calloused hand was warm on his shoulder, smiling softly at him.

“Fetch the nets,” she’d said. “We’ll take trout from the—”

But that peaceful moment was shattered in an instant.

Black smoke rose on the horizon. Screams pierced the air, fractured and desperate.

Asher turned. His father stood in the doorway, chest heaving. His face was pale, beads of cold sweat dripping down his forehead.

“Imperial troops!”

His father gasped, eyes wild with unspeakable terror.

“Hide—now!”

Without thinking, Asher sprinted outside.

The village had turned into a living hell.

Fire and ash consumed everything in sight. Flames devoured the morning mist, twisting shadows in the thick smoke. Beneath the Empire’s fluttering banners, armored soldiers moved like wolves in human skin, their blades flashing as they cornered their prey.

The villagers fought back desperately, wielding hunting knives, blacksmith’s hammers, and farming tools as weapons. But against the blades of a trained army, their resistance was futile—a desperate struggle doomed to fail.

The sight of blood splattered across his vision.

A hunter’s blade—his father’s blade—bit into a soldier’s collarbone. Then came the spear—a brutal thrust that pierced his father’s chest, cutting him off mid-swing.

The sickening crunch of bones snapping.

Asher’s scream died in his mother’s palm.

“Run!”

His mother grabbed his hand in panic, desperately trying to flee. But the imperial soldiers quickly surrounded them, and one of them raised his longsword—

The blade struck without mercy, piercing his mother’s back.

Even then, she summoned every last bit of strength to shove Asher away.

He tumbled, powerless, watching as his mother slumped to the ground, her blood soaking into the earth.

The acrid scent of iron filled the air, burning his nostrils.

The mocking laughter of the soldiers pierced his ears.

At that moment, something inside Asher snapped.

His fingertips dug into the earth, and instead of tears, hatred flooded his eyes, staining his vision with a deep, burning fury.

His mother’s sacrifice brought no hope. Not even a shred.

One of the soldiers quickly closed the distance, striking Asher’s head with his shield. As his vision went dark, the last thing burned into his mind was the soldier’s mocking laughter as he trampled over his mother’s bloodied face with his boot.

When he awoke, he found himself trapped inside an unfamiliar iron cage. The cold iron bars were all that remained of Asher Sinclair’s new world.

The fluttering banner of Eteria drove a wedge of hatred deep into his heart.

“…Ugh… Ugh…”

Beside him, Beth began to weep softly once again.

Her mouth was clamped shut, and all she could manage was a faint, fragile whimper—like a dying fawn’s last breath.

Why cry?

Crying only makes you easier prey, Asher thought.

He had no desire for tears. Not even fear touched him.

Instead, he was consumed by a deep, burning hatred.

It felt as though the world itself had grown freezing cold. The chill wrapped around him, stripping away every last trace of warmth.

His fists clenched tightly. Nails bit into palms, blood silently seeping out.

But he felt nothing.

As if his body had severed from pain, leaving behind only a frozen shell where fury burned absolutely.

Blood dripped from Asher’s wrists, raw from the iron chains, tracing a trail across the cold ground. It mixed with the surrounding mud, forming a dark, twisted pattern.

At that moment, a harsh, mocking laugh cut through the air.

A slave, a gaunt man, was roughly dragged out. Several soldiers raised their whips and, with twisted amusement, began to lash him.

CRACK.

“AAHH!”

Each lash split flesh. Each scream tore through the sky.

Asher watched, his gaze fixed on the unfortunate villager writhing on the ground.

Beneath his tattered rags, blood and pus mingled with the dirt, creating grotesque, uneven patterns. The man’s fingers—bone protruding through shredded flesh—still clawed at the earth. His shattered lips still shaped the word “help.”

He tried to stand, convulsed, and fell.

Again. 

And again.

Pure despair pooled in his eyes.

Then, a soldier approached the cage—his crimson uniform clinging to sweat-drenched skin, segmented breastplate gleaming under the light, steel helmet crowned with a crest of red horsehair.

“Scum…”

The man pressed against the bars, baring his yellowed teeth.

“You want to join them? Come down here.”

The other captives scrambled back immediately as if they had seen a nightmare. Their eyes, bloodshot with terror and despair, darted wildly.

But Asher didn’t flinch.

Slowly, he raised his head, his gaze—cold as ice—locking onto the soldier’s throat. A ghost of a smile brushed his lips.

In a voice that seemed to echo from the depths of hell, he whispered:

“Gladly.”