A vast landscape of ruin and decay. Crumbling stone fortresses dot the scorched earth, their towers broken and ragged like the teeth of a beast long forgotten. Jagged mountains loom in the distance, their peaks lost in ash-streaked skies. Below, twisted forests of blackened trees sprawl, their roots exposed and writhing like serpents. The ground is cracked, scarred by ancient battles and cursed magic, rivers of ash flowing sluggishly through the valleys. In the distance a desolate village, its few remaining structures half-buried in ash and bone. Stray figures, their forms hunched and wrapped in ragged cloaks, sift through the debris, searching for something long lost. Strange symbols, barely visible, are etched into the stone — forgotten remnants of a time when men feared what lurked beyond the veil. 

»In the wake of empire’s fall, the world was undone. The great walls, now but dust, ground down by hands unseen, forgotten to time. Now, a cold and silent age remains.. The old gods turned their gaze elsewhere, and men wandered, lost, in the wasteland they had wrought.«

»The Fell Men rose as the last embers of the Imperium withered. Their hands, soaked in blood and ruin, carved kingdoms from the bones of the old world. But where their feet touched, nothing grew. They sought to claim a dead land, and only shadows answered.«

»In the dark of their reign, strange stirrings began. Whispers of powers older than men, older than kings. Some spoke of demons walking among them, others claimed only madness. Some see this is the result of the horrible acts of mankind, while others whisper of its root being something altogether more sinister, hidden deep within the shadows. Now, none dare speak, yet the signs remain — etched in every stone, every twisted root. The world bears the mark of what was.«

»In the shadow of fallen empires, as the darkness crept and the old flame’s light flickered low, men turned to the earth for refuge. They forged the Barbed Ward, a tome born of fear, bound in iron. Its pages etched with prayers that shield the soul. For it is whispered, no evil may breach the thorn, and so the book was adorned in them, within and without. By the blood of kings and the bones of the earth, they carved their hopes into thorn-riddled pages, their words a frail barrier between this world and the unknown. Few dare speak these chants aloud, for the thorns protect — yet to invoke them is to call forth the gaze of old powers.«

»The prayers are murmured still by those who recall the old ways. Words woven like brambles, spoken to ward off the nameless things that stir in the dark. The ancients believed the thorns repelled all unseen, for no evil could pierce its barbs. In these verses, they sought shelter from the void and the creeping dread that moves in silence.«

»In the age where shadows prevail, only the thorns persist.«