Veyl Vale
“A contract is a written truth, and a promise is a spoken contract.”
The city of Linsburg lived in an age when curses were running rampant, and the hunt for cursed artifacts was fierce. Corvus and Amaara Vale, curse hunters, heard legends of an ancient tomb marked by a powerful curse. Upon entering, they felt a chill pierce through their souls: the curse resided not in an object, but within the crypt itself. When they stepped onto the cursed ground, Amaara fainted, overcome by it. Though Corvus carried her to a healer, she lost the child she was carrying and died of a broken heart.
But the baby, somehow came back to life, Veyl was born as a pale creature with red eyes, the product of the curse that tainted it’s blood. A shrill and grave voice emerged from Amaara’s body, saying to Corvus:
“Behold the fruit of your greed. Behold the fruit of your envy. Your firstborn is no longer, and instead, a memory of your sin was left. From the womb of your lover comes this child. Yours in blood, mine in soul. Understand that all this could have been avoided had your greed, envy, and lust not overcome your discernment and judgment.”
Overcome with hatred, Corvus refused to accept Veyl and began to abuse him, seeking to shape him into an extension of his own contempt and pain.
When Veyl came of age, Corvus forced him into assassination contracts through a blood pact, using Veyl’s true name, Veylcor Amaris Vale, to bind his will. A cross-shaped mark burned on his chest every time he failed to fulfil a contract. Veyl became a killing machine, obsessed with fulfilling contracts and earning coin. Any attempt to refuse orders caused unbearable pain, and over time, he developed a cold, calculating personality.
At one point, he crossed paths with Silas Varrin, an assassin and mercenary for hire. During a mission, Silas protected a noble whom Veyl had been contracted to kill. As failure loomed, the pact activated, and Veyl collapsed in excruciating agony. Silas understood immediately: Veyl was a Reborn, a cursed being bound by a blood pact. Experienced in rituals and bindings, Silas attempted to break it, only to discover the bond was tied to Veyl’s true name. Lacking that name, Silas did what he could, freeing Veyl partially and removing the compulsion to obey blindly.
Consumed by rejection and realizing that everything he had ever known was born of blind hatred, Veyl set out with a single purpose, to end his own suffering, the only way he knew: by killing. He found Corvus and, in one swift motion, split his throat open. Corvus had always despised Veyl’s eyes, for they reminded him of Amaara, and Veyl knew it. As Corvus fell to his knees, blood gushing from his throat, Veyl knelt before him, wanting Corvus’s final sight to be the eyes he so loathed. Gurgling in his own blood, Corvus managed to utter only one word:
“Abomination.”
From then on, Veyl followed Silas. Having been taught all his life to fulfil contracts and keep promises, he felt indebted to him. Though reluctant to accept affection, Silas taught Veyl not only to kill but also to protect. He taught him that everything has a price, even a soul. The only truths of life, he said, are the greed of the living and the silence of the dead. Veyl grew up believing this. He killed innocents and protected criminals alike. His only truth, only ideal, only god was the contract and the payment for a service rendered.
Years later, after countless jobs alongside Silas, a new contract arrived with a name that made Veyl tremble. On a bloodstained scrap of paper, he read the words: Silas Varrin.
The internal conflict was immense, but the mark of the pact reminded him of the one truth he knew: the contract must be fulfilled. Veyl could refuse, but that was not his nature. Silas’s death was swift and painless. In his final moments, Silas uttered words Veyl did not understand, and then spoke a name, Veylcor Amaris Vale.
Veyl felt a sharp sting, like a dagger piercing his chest. The scar he had borne for as long as he could remember vanished. The pact had been broken by Silas in his last breath. What Veyl never knew, was that Silas had spent his entire life since meeting him trying to uncover Veyl’s true name, to free him completely from Corvus’s curse.
Veyl noticed his weapon, the scythe Silas had given him, had changed. It looked almost spectral, a rope stretching from its blade to Veyl’s wrist. Feeling Silas’s spiritual echo within it, Veyl fell into silence, whispering through clenched teeth:
“Two fathers, two deaths. The first bound me. The second freed me. I killed them both, and now, every coin will remind me of human greed.”
From that day on, Veyl accepted contracts, not out of greed, but out of habit. He sometimes hears Silas’s voice emanating from the scythe, a lingering echo of his soul. In battle, he sometimes feels Silas guiding him. Those who meet Veyl, ask why he does what he does and always receive the same answer:
“Life is an unfair business. Everything has a price, blood, loyalty, even a soul. I just learned to collect before someone takes me.”
Over the years, he developed an unshakable respect for contracts and promises, not out of honor, but because, as he puts it:
“A contract is a written truth, and a promise is a spoken contract.”
Cursed by birth, cursed in childhood, cursed forevermore, Veyl walks the earth bearing the weight of three corpses: his mother’s, Corvus’s, and the father who freed him. Gold is his trophy, the contract his creed, and in the echo of his scythe, the whisper of Silas is his only companion.