They called the warren 'Gloomfang.' A damp little scratch in the world, but it was his. His until the hobgoblin legion’s banners blotted out the sun. Fear, sharp and metallic, tasted better than starvation. So Nix made a choice. He didn't just tell them the way in; he drew a map in the dirt, pointing to the creche, the grain stores, the hidden bolt-hole where the elders slept. He remembers the smell of burning fungus and the sound of his own kin's screams, a sound he tried to swallow down with the dry ration the hobgoblin captain tossed him.
As he fled, a cold numbness bloomed in his chest—a void that drank the firelight and left shadows in its wake. This was power. His payment. The hobgoblin commander, amused by the runt who sold his world for a sunrise, pressed a small, smooth trinket into his palm. A crudely carved bird. 'A trophy,' the hobgoblin had grunted. 'So you remember the day you learned to fly.' Now Nix wanders the gutters and alleys of a world that despises him, a king ruling an empire of one. The darkness is his shield and his sword, but the wooden bird around his neck is a weight he can never, ever set down.