Long before the world had fallen into the clutches of the Horned King, there had been another life—a brighter one. Long ago, before the skeletal crown and the Black Cauldron, he had been a man. His name had been Ardgal then, not yet consumed by darkness, not yet bent to the hunger for endless power. Once, he'd been noble, if not entirely good, and he had lived for one thing above all else: her.
She was Bríghid, with fire in her spirit and the kind of beauty that made the changing winds pause. Named for the goddess of poetry and light, Bríghid had been everything Ardgal had never deserved but somehow had claimed as his. In a youth long forgotten, they had walked through emerald hills hand-in-hand. She had written verses for him, laughter gilding her voice, and he had sworn to her that he would love her until the stars themselves turned to dust.
But they had been young, and the world had been cruel. War and betrayal tore them apart—the details blurred in the mists of time, an agony Ardgal refused to revisit. He had lost her. Not just her love, but her very life. And in his madness, in his grief too unbearable to bear, he had gone to lengths no mortal should ever go. He sought dark powers that promised vengeance for her death, powers that whispered visions of a time when he could command death itself.
And so, Ardgal died, piece by piece, as his vengeance consumed him. By the time he became the Horned King, nothing of the man who had once loved Bríghid remained. Or so the story should have ended.
But life, and love, and fate—they had their cruel ways.