This story was originally published in the Wiki101 - OCs Discord server on April 26, 2024. You can see the original post here.

The next morning, well after the fires had stopped burning, the invaders began surveying the ash and rubble for whatever they could salvage. One of the soldiers was picking through the shards of wood and other material that had formerly made up the Carras homestead when she heard what sounded like a young child crying for help. The soldier yelled for assistance from her comrades, who helped her lift away the wood from the source of the sound. Underneath, they found Christopher laying on the ground. The child was without even a minor scratch despite having been covered by smoldering lumber for many hours. Shocked, the group of soldiers called out for their leader to assess the situation.

The master-general of the invading force and the dark wizard whom ruthlessly claimed the lives of Tobias and Iris Carras was the infamous Damien Clawthorne. Since he was a young man, Damien had led his forces, known as the Knights of Virtue, across the Spiral with the purpose of spreading Light and eliminating Shadow, Hoodoo, and other forms of "impure" magic. But there was a deep irony in the fact that Damien himself was a user of dark, experimental, and unsafe magics. He told his followers that in order to truly eliminate these forms of magic from the Spiral, he himself must understand them to their full potential.

Damien walked over to the rubble where Christopher had just been uncovered. He was impressed but perplexed by the child's complete lack of injury, and ordered his men to give him passage onboard their ship as they prepared to return to their homeworld of Darkmoor.

There, Christopher was introduced to the Knights of Virtue's figureheads, and it seemed like the organization was already keen on making him one of them. Damien saw potential in the young child - and if Damien believed strongly of anything, then the Knights would too. It wasn't long before Christopher was being taught about the Knights' history and even taking up some child-friendly arms to learn to defend himself. He did not know why he was in this new environment or what exactly had transpired back in Westvale, but he was forced to adapt. With his real parents out of the picture, Damien would become the closest thing he had to a father figure.

As the childhood years went by, Christopher was trained further and further in the art of physical combat, graduating from the faux-arms to real swords, staves, maces, and other weapons. Over and over again he impressed his trainers with his prowess. But this was not enough. He was jealous of Damien's usage of magic, and wanted to wield it himself. However, the Knights were forbidden from using magic at all - even the "pure" forms. Christopher questioned this and would always ask why he couldn't be trusted with magic, but he would simply be told that it was how things had always been.

Into his early teens, Christopher retained his thirst for the magical arts. It wasn't until he met and grew acquainted with Damien's similarly-aged daughter Vera that he would finally find a way to learn magic for himself, under the noses of everyone around him...