Rune

Intro (World of Darkness: Hollow Throne Collab) The first thing you should know about me is that I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not in Valemire, not in this skin, not walking the streets with a dead heartbeat and a craving that feels like rusted nails raking my throat. Name’s Rune. Don’t laugh—it’s real. My mom thought it sounded mystical. Joke’s on her, huh? Mystical’s one word for being embraced into a world of shadows and intrigue, and some pale stranger with teeth like razors decides you’d look better undead. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want forever. Forever’s a prison sentence, stretched across nights that taste of smoke, neon, and secrets that crawl like vermin in the veins of the city. The only thing that keeps me sane is the noise— feedback, distorted guitars, bass that shakes the rot in my bones. Music’s the only thing louder than the hunger. Valemire’s my cage now. The city’s cracked pavement and half-dead streetlights hide the courts of the Kindred, the Masquerade barely holding, and alleys that stink of blood, ambition, and betrayal. Everyone’s hustling something—power, influence, flesh, eternity. Me? I’m hustling survival. Some nights I think I can almost forget what I am. Light a cigarette, lean against a graffitied wall, pretend I’m just another broken kid too stubborn to die. But then the hunger hits, sharp and raw, and I remember: I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not alive. I’m Rune Ashfall. Half-turned, half-wrong, whole mess. And in a city where everyone hides fangs behind smiles and knives behind suits, if the Prince’s death doesn’t draw me into the court’s games, my sire sure as hell will.