15. NEVERMORE (VIII, 13W)

He was—

He was killing.

Yes. Amid all the chaos and madness, that was the one thing beyond doubt. The resistance his hands met as they swung, the sticky drag as his blades bit into steel and flesh—these had taken root in his heart long ago, like his altered genes, things even death could not take away.

He was killing, and he had not stopped.

Who was he?

A corner of his mind not yet devoured by madness weakly uttered a name: Soren Volk. Then came a flood of images, shattered yet incomparably coherent to him. They were his memories and his past to begin with; with only the slightest prompt, he could remember everything.

And so, at last, he remembered who he was.

He was Soren Volk, current Chapter Master of the Raven Guard, with two hundred and thirty-one years of service. He was a miner's son, a son of Deliverance, and an unseen, unknown son of Corvus Corax. Yet the only blood tie between them was one granted by genetic surgery; in truth, they had never met.

In the first fourteen years of his life, now gradually fading into the distance, Soren Volk had never failed his birth parents. He had studied desperately in dimly lit underground classrooms, exchanging every reward earned through outstanding grades for tangible supplies to bring home.

During the following three years of gradual surgeries and training, he had likewise earned endless praise from his instructors and fellow recruits, and had even received commendations for exceeding assessment targets time and again.

But after that?

Over the longest and cruelest chapter of his life—a bloody history of war spanning two hundred and fourteen years?

Had he ever failed anyone?

Deliverance and its people? Corvus Corax? Or the forebears who had bled dry in the name