1030: Story 1030: Oath of the Spectral Warrior 1030: Story 1030: Oath of the Spectral Warrior Before the fall, before the plague of undead and cults and blood moons, there was a knight.
His name was Sir Calder Veyne, the Silver Blade of Wyrmvale—a man sworn to protect the living from what lurked in the dark.
A devout sentinel of the Order of the Pale Flame, Calder faced beasts, necromancers, and horrors unnamed.
But nothing compared to what came from the rifts.
From the sky, a teal storm bled through the stars.
From the ground, eldritch vines slithered.
And from within the very bones of the earth, the dead sang.
The Order fell screaming.
Calder did not.
Not truly.
He died atop the cliffs of Dunrook, blade buried in the chest of a writhing zombie high priest whose tongue spoke backward scripture.
But death did not claim him cleanly.
As the last words of his sacred oath fell from his lips—“I serve the light beyond death”—a new force heard him.
Not a god.
Not a demon.
Something older.
Something watching.
Calder awoke in ash and frost.
He had no heart.
No breath.
His armor was shattered and reformed, held together by mist and glowing runes.
His sword, once steel, now whispered.
His voice echoed even in silence.
He was Spectral now—caught between realms, sworn still to fight.
But the world he returned to was broken.
The undead ruled the forests.
The sky was green with decay.
Villages prayed to empty icons.
And his name was long forgotten.
So he walked.
Cloaked in fog.
Leaving phantom footprints in bloodied soil.
Where he passed, restless ghosts rose and followed.
Warriors who fell unjustly.
Children who cried under rubble.
Mothers who died holding rusted weapons.
Each bound to Calder’s Oath.
He was not just one now.
He was a legion of the wronged.
A cult known as the Breathless Choir attempted to bind Calder’s spirit in obsidian chains, performing a ritual beneath the shattered cathedral of Ilyar.
They sang with sewn mouths.
They bled memory into bone circles.
But Calder broke free before the final verse.
The Choir never sang again.
Now, survivors whisper of the Pale Flame That Walks.
He appears on battlefields thick with rot.
He raises no war cry.
He does not speak.
But when his blade passes through the reanimated, they crumble—not just in flesh, but in soul.
He burns with memory.
And with that memory comes rage.
Yet his vengeance is not mindless.
Each life he takes is a balance restored, a measure repaid.
He hunts not for slaughter—but for silence.
For peace.
For the final breath never given.
The Oath of the Spectral Warrior endures:
“So long as death is defied, so too shall I.”
And on the eve of the next riftstorm… the earth hums with spectral echoes.
Something is coming.
And he’ll be waiting, sword drawn.