As told in Lockhaven’s lower taverns, with embellishments and ale-fueled bravado

“Raise your mugs, ye fools and fighters,
For the king who dared the dark!
Myriad Alsup, light’s last rider,
Faced the curse with fire and spark!”

They say the Shadow Curse came crawling from the east — not fast, not loud, but slow and vile. Crops withered. Graves stirred. The soil itself turned against the living. No one knew its name, but every child in Lockhaven grew up fearing the phrase: “The dead don’t sleep east of the river.”

During his reign, King Myriad Alsup saw the signs. He didn’t wait for the rot to reach his gates. He called banners from every corner of Elarion — even from houses that barely spoke the same tongue. Dominik Aurion, Yorg Sarene, Randall Kaldrin — their ancestors rode beside him, blades drawn, oaths sworn.

“Three kings came, but one stood tallest,
With sunbound steel and eyes like flame.
He led the charge where gods were lawless,
And carved his mark in death’s own name.”

The coalition marched east, through fog and bone. Lockhaven’s own scribes claim Myriad wielded a blade forged in the Temple of Tyber — though scholars say it was just steel, blessed by a half-mad cleric with a flair for drama.

They fought for weeks. Months. Some say years. The dead didn’t fall easy. The soil screamed. The sky wept. But Myriad never turned back.

And when the final battle came — at the edge of the Severed Star — it was Myriad who stepped forward. Alone. Cloaked in light. And struck the heart of the curse with a blow that shattered the sky.

“He broke the dark with dawnlight fury,
Though the wound it left would never heal.
And Lockhaven sings — in truth or blurry —
Of the king who made the shadows kneel.”

Some say the curse still lingers. That it waits. That it remembers.

But in Lockhaven, they raise their mugs and sing.

Because Myriad Alsup didn’t just fight the dead.

He made them fear the living.