Sir Ansel Veyne was a revered knight, a man of unwavering loyalty and unshakable honor. During the Great War, he led his battalion into what should have been a decisive victory–only to be betrayed. Cut down and impaled, he was left for dead beneath the corpses of his comrades, his broken body buried under the weight of his own failure. He should have died that day. He did die that day.

But something refused to let him go.

When he clawed his way free, the infection had already spread, rotting away flesh and muscle. His body rejected life, yet it refused death. To keep moving, he replaced his ruined limbs with crude mechanical prosthetics–rusted iron grafted onto deadened nerves, a mockery of what he once was. The pain never fades; the metal groans as much as he does. But that is nothing compared to his mind, fractured beyond repair.

Ansel exists in a state of terrible limbo. He walks among the living, yet his presence flickers like a dying ember. Sometimes his form is solid–capable of holding a sword, of feeling the warmth of a fire. Other times, his hands pass through objects as if he is nothing more than a ghost, caught in the threshold between this world and whatever waits beyond. He can hear them–the voices of the dead, of his fallen men. They whisper in his ears, accusing, mourning, demanding answers he does not have. But worse, he hears the voices of the living as well, their thoughts seeping into his mind like poison, making it impossible to tell what is real.

He cannot die. He cannot move on. And he is terrified to find out why.