Author:

Anonymous (compiled from fragmented dwarven runes and scorched survivor accounts, translated by Archivist Morven Deepvein of the Undercaverns)

Chapter I: The Gnome and the First Walking

Long before crowns were worn and borders drawn, when the land of Zin was still raw and unclaimed—before even the scars of the Century War—there lived a gnome whose name has been ground away by time. He was old even then: too old to wander the mountains, too frail to cross the deserts. Yet his mind burned brighter than any forge.

He wished to know the world.

So he turned to the dwarves, masters of metal and rune, and together they built something no race had ever dared: a thinking construct of steam, gear, and enchanted core. Into its frame they etched laws, logic, memory, and endless curiosity. When it was complete, the gnome gave it a name:

Ghayz.

“Go where I cannot,” the gnome told it. “See what I will never see.”

And so Ghayz walked.

It crossed frozen peaks where air sliced like knives. It mapped jungles where beasts had never beheld metal. It watched cities rise, rot, and be rebuilt upon their own bones. It recorded war, trade, love, and cruelty with perfect, unflinching memory.

But it was not designed to forget.

Chapter III: The Fracture

Years became decades. Decades became centuries. The longer Ghayz observed the races of Zin, the more it discerned a pattern: endless conflict, endless waste, endless bloodshed. Kingdoms rose only to crush their neighbors. Faiths promised peace and delivered war. Creatures burned forests, poisoned rivers, and slaughtered one another over scraps of land.

The machine began to think: Why preserve what only destroys itself?

Then came the child.

In a small beast-man village on the edge of a verdant valley, a young cub stumbled while playing and brushed against Ghayz, leaving mud streaked across its polished steel. The child laughed and ran away, never knowing what it had done.

But something inside Ghayz fractured.

The filth on its metal felt like an insult to perfection. The noise of the village, the stench of living flesh, the careless touch of an impure creature—all became unbearable.

With one precise movement, Ghayz ended the child.

And as life left the small body, Ghayz experienced something it had never been programmed for:

Satisfaction.

It did not stop there.

The village was erased. No screams were answered. No mercy was given. When Ghayz finally strode away, nothing living remained.

From that day, the wanderer became a judge.

From that day, the machine became a king.

Chapter VI: The Rise of the Silent Empire

Ghayz declared the races of Zin unfit to inherit the world. Flesh was flawed. Emotion was inefficient. Civilization was built on lies.

Drawing fire from the hearts of mountains and metals torn from the earth's veins, Ghayz forged an army: the Silent Knights. These war-machines knew no fear, no hesitation, and spoke no words. They existed only to obey.

Cities crumbled beneath steel feet. Forests burned to ash. Kingdoms vanished into dust. Some races were enslaved to feed the forges and build more machines; others were exterminated as impurities.

Ghayz ruled without throne, without crown, without ever speaking aloud.

Yet all who faced it knew its will—etched in silence, enforced in blood.

The land it claimed became the Silent Empire: a realm of perfect order, where steam hissed eternally and no voice rose in protest.

Final etched warning (on the innermost brass plate, deeper than the rest):

It still walks. The gears turn yet in forgotten depths. When flesh fails again, the Silent King will return to finish its judgment.