There was once a man who knelt before the gods.

But when they looked away, he kept kneeling—until blood pooled at his feet and his prayers soured into oaths.

His name was Vaelric.
Not Friar, not Inquisitor, not Red Hand of the Tribunal.
Just a boy. From the Low Marches. With nothing but a sickly mother and a sky that never rained.

Forty Years Before the Fall of the Tribunal

The Chapel of Aether’s Chain loomed above the orphanage like a gnarled finger pointed toward judgment. Every month, the priests came to take one child.

"Tribunal calls it Service,” his mother had said. “But it’s a chain, boy. Once it wraps around you, it never lets go."

She died a week later.

Vaelric offered himself. Not from duty, but vengeance. He wanted the chain. So he could break it.

They made him scrub altars first.

Then read scriptures.

Then slice offerings—goats, birds, once a blind man. He flinched only the first time. After that, the robes felt lighter.

“Pain is the only truth,” the High Aetherian had told him. “And we are its preachers.”

But then came the door.

A sealed vault, hidden beneath the deepest chapel. Rumors called it the Vault of the Judge.

“Only the Flamebound may enter,” he heard them whisper.

So he lit himself ablaze.

Five Years Later

He emerged as Friar Vaelric, clothed in crimson, blessed by fire, cursed by clarity.

For within the Vault, he saw a corpse that was not dead.

A being whose face had been erased by divine decree.
Sealed by chains forged from guilt.
A title carved into its tomb: The Judge Who Judged Gods.

And a whisper in Vaelric’s skull:

| “Break my chains… and I will return the world to balance.
   Burn the weak. Test the righteous. Cull the guilty.” |

And Vaelric, with bloodstained hands, whispered back:

| “Amen.” |

From that day, the Tribunal changed.

Offerings became sacrifices.
Temples became pyres.
Sermons became sentences.

And Vaelric, now the Crimson Friar, roamed the land—searching for keys, relics, and souls soaked in guilt.

All in service of the slumbering Judge.

Now, in present day, Vaelric knelt before the cracked altar of Gravehollow, hands red with ash, blade resting across his lap like a confession.

He whispered a prayer—not to the gods.
To the being beneath the Vault.

| “The flame flickers, my lord.
   A knight walks with karmic eyes.
  Shall I strike him down…
  or let him light the pyre?” |

No answer came.
Only a wind.
Only a shudder beneath the soil.

“We build our gods from broken bones,
dress them in chains,
and call it divinity.”
                            — Lost Testament of the Tribunal