Prologue

On this cold night, thirty-one-year-old Stormwind architect Oliver had just left the home of Widow Canspa and tightened his collar to keep warm. Before their parting kiss, he had promised to bring her more firewood next time.

"Nobles give their lovers diamond rings, and all I can offer is a bundle of firewood," he couldn't help but mock himself. He had been out of work for six months since failing the royal architect qualification exam.

He only hoped that when he returned home, his wife and children would be asleep, so he could secretly take a bundle of firewood from the basement and hide it in the long-abandoned stable in the backyard.

To visit Canspa's house, he had to pass through the notorious Throat Slashing Alley in the old city district. It was the only thing he had ever complained about to Canspa, but he never told her why.

Today, as usual, he paused at the entrance of the alley and peered inside. The cold wind blew out from the narrow alleyway, as if a dying man was exhaling a putrid breath.

There's no one there, Oliver told himself. Not a single person.

He couldn't help but quicken his pace.

In the dwarf district, he found a ragged man curled up at the intersection. There were more and more homeless people in Stormwind lately, and they always reminded Oliver of his own childhood, begging with a small tin plate, forcibly wiping the axles of passing carriages, and then asking for a tip or getting kicked in the stomach by the carriage owner.

Not long after passing the man, Oliver suddenly felt a sharp tearing sensation in his ankle. His entire body fell forward, and as the pain of his severed Achilles tendon erupted, Oliver's back was stabbed with a knife, causing his head to involuntarily lean back.

Someone grabbed Oliver's hair and pressed a dagger against his jaw.

"This is what you deserve," the person said, and then pulled the dagger.

Oliver saw his blood splatter on the stone wall, like a bucket of bright red paint pouring into the sea.

Canspa, he thought. I'm sorry.