Tharion Baal Calyx

Tharion’s earliest memory is one of filth and hunger. He was one of many “Urchins”—children bought and traded for little more than a mug of ale. Cast aside by his own father, Tharion was quickly swept into the city’s underbelly, where he learned to beg coin from even the cruelest of passersby.

By the age of ten, he was wiry, angry, and hardened by street life. Yet he held fast to one vow: to never become the man who abandoned him. It was this promise that kept him from slipping into deeper darkness. The matron who had “purchased” the urchins saw potential in him and selected Tharion for training as a male courtesan. Refusing to submit, he fled into the night with his closest friends—Veresa and Romeo.

The three of them scraped by on the fringes of the city, dodging the matron’s hired thugs and avoiding the law, who sought them for theft. In poverty but free, they survived through begging and petty larceny, sharing everything between them. Over time, their schemes grew more ambitious.

On the eve of his eleventh nameday, Tharion tried to con a sharp-eyed merchant. But Darius was no ordinary vendor—he was a seasoned sorcerer who had traveled far and wide. He saw through the boy’s ruse and swiftly bound him with a simple spell.

Yet instead of turning Tharion in, Darius made an offer: abandon the streets and train under him. Tharion never understood why Darius extended the offer, but he accepted.

Darius took in all three of them. For seven years, he trained them in both the arts of sorcery and the subtleties of trade. Under his guidance, Tharion flourished—his sharp tongue honed into a silver one, his instincts refined into business acumen. With the coin Darius provided, Tharion opened a modest alchemical shop, and his influence began to stretch along the roads Darius had once traveled.

In his nineteenth year, Darius entrusted Tharion with his most valuable contracts. Veresa and Romeo appeared pleased, but within months, cracks formed in their bond. What began as minor quarrels grew into festering rifts. Tharion tried to mend things, especially with Veresa, but each attempt only deepened the divide.

Then came the day he returned home to find Darius murdered—his throat cut.

Worse still, the inheritance meant for Tharion had been forged, redirected to Veresa.

She used her thugs to seize control of Darius’s estate—his shopfronts, his ledgers, even the keys to the vault. Tharion barely escaped with his life, slipping out through a hidden passage Darius had once shown him in a rare moment of drunken candor. Romeo was nowhere to be found.

At first, Tharion believed Romeo had fled—frightened, perhaps, or unwilling to choose sides. But whispers in the city’s gutters eventually revealed a crueler truth.

Veresa had sold him.

Too loyal to Tharion, too vocal in his doubts, Romeo had become a threat. Veresa traded him to a foreign trafficker in exchange for rare reagents and influence beyond the city’s southern walls. When Tharion finally found him, Romeo was a ghost in human skin—emaciated, empty-eyed, his soul splintered by the hands of those who had owned him.

Tharion tried to save him, but Romeo was too far gone. He lingered for a few months more in a quiet room above a nameless tavern, then faded from the world with a whisper rather than a scream.

Betrayal tasted bitter, but loss—true, irreversible loss—was worse. Darius had been a father. Romeo, a brother. Veresa hadn’t simply stolen a fortune—she had razed the foundation of Tharion’s life and salted the earth.

But Tharion did not crumble.

He vanished from the city, a shadow fleeing a fire—but not in retreat. In preparation.

He has wandered since, honing himself like a blade—learning new tongues, mastering forbidden magics, striking quiet bargains in forgotten corners of the world. Every scroll, every spell, every favor called in is part of a larger design. Veresa sits on a throne built of theft and blood. She believes Tharion is gone, scattered by fear or failure.

But he is still out there.

Watching. Gathering. Growing.

And when the time is right, he will return—not as a broken boy, but as a storm she never saw coming.