The Deck of Crows
In the forgotten realm of Virellia, where the sun had not pierced the ash-ridden skies in over a century, there was a place called the Hollow Throne — a broken citadel where the Sorcerer Aeskavar ruled with a crown of black iron and breath like smoke.
The rivers ran thick with soot, the trees bled sap the colour of rust, and the wind carried whispers of the dead.
All hope had bled out of the land — except for one: a wanderer wrapped in rags, wearing a cracked bone mask, and carrying a leather-wrapped deck marked only with a single black feather.
They called her Noira — though whether it was her name or a title inherited from death itself, none could say. Noira did not draw her blade like other warriors. She drew cards.
Each card she pulled was not fortune, but fate — not for herself, but for the world.
🃏 Card I – The Tower
She stood at the edge of a ruined village, its spires collapsed, corpses hanging from splintered gates. Her fingers trembled as she drew the first card: The Tower.
As the image stared back — lightning shattering a crumbling keep, two figures falling from its heights — a real tremor tore through the earth.
In the distance, atop the Hollow Throne, Aeskavar’s citadel split, a glowing seam forming like a wound across its spire. His power was beginning to fracture.
Noira smiled, though her teeth were bloodstained.
Each card drawn brought her closer.
🃏 Card II – Death
On the seventh night, as she crossed the Withered Vale, Noira collapsed. Her lungs wheezed with the black spores that choked the air. Around her, the dead — hundreds — rose from shallow earth like marionettes.
She drew her card with a shaking hand: Death.
The skeletal figure on horseback stared back at her, sickle raised, eyes hollow. The moment it touched the wind, the corpses stopped. They dropped their weapons. They bowed.
Noira did not know why they obeyed. Only that the cards wanted her to succeed — for now.
🃏 Card III – The Devil
Deep in the catacombs beneath the Obsidian Forest, she came upon a mirror of flesh and bone — a creature bound in chains of soul steel, with her face. It whispered in her voice.
"You think the deck is your servant? Noira... it's the master."
She drew another card. Her breath caught.
The Devil.
Horns. Chains. Fire licking the edges.
Behind her, the shadows moved. A whisper slithered behind her ears.
Free me, the creature said, and I’ll give you the sorceror’s heart on a silver platter.
Noira looked down. The card had changed. Now it showed her — bound, laughing.
She burned it to ash.
🃏 Card IV – The High Priestess
At the gates of the Hollow Throne, the final guardian waited: a blind woman draped in star-drenched veils, her voice a melody of lost dreams.
“You seek to kill him,” the woman said. “But that’s not your purpose.”
Noira drew: The High Priestess.
Mystery. Hidden knowledge. The veiled truth.
The woman vanished, and in her place stood a child — her own reflection as a girl, before the famine, before the slaughter, before Aeskavar stole her village and stitched its souls into his sky.
Noira did not cry. But the card did, black tears bleeding onto her palm.
🃏 Final Card – The Magician
Inside the throne room, Aeskavar sat atop a mound of skulls, each one marked with runes of torment. His body was draped in robes stitched from the shadows of kings. His eyes were stars gone nova — burning black and blinding.
“You bring a blade?” he laughed. “A curse? A god?”
She said nothing.
She pulled the final card.
The Magician.
Power. Will. Creation.
Aeskavar froze.
“That card was destroyed…”
Noira stepped forward. The card pulsed like a heart. Light and darkness spiralled from it, weaving around her fingers like puppets on strings.
“I am the blade. I am the curse,” she said.
“And I am the god your magic forgot.”
☠️ Epilogue
The Hollow Throne is now a ruin among ruins. The skies remain grey, but stars are visible once more.
Noira never returned from the final battle. But sometimes, when the fog is thin, a traveller may find a single card resting on the road.
It is always the same.
🃏 The Fool — a figure stepping off a cliff, smiling.
They say it’s the beginning of another story.
And the deck waits.