"The Blackstar shall deliver us all to paradise.

We stand guard against the darkness

'till the day we breathe our last.”

This mantra was the only ever-present constant in their lives, along with the unforgiving shifts and tides of the war waging across crimson sands.

But three years had passed since the Blackstar fell in the far west,

and paradise was nowhere in sight. Everything the elders foretold never came to be,

while the endless stream of monsters crawling out of the dark pits showed no signs of abating.

"Hear me. For I am the curved blade of Aal,

the master who shall unleash his raging winds and sands.” 

For only Hashashin could cut through the chaos,

by faith alone he had overcome the gruesome training and the grief of returning from battles where his countless of his comrades had fallen.

It was none other than Kayal Nesser, an outsider, who broke this vicious cycle.

A bastard of the Royal Family of Valencia, 

and next-in-line to lead the order as Qabal, “The One at the End”.

It was Kayal who had long kept the fragments of chaos at bay with his comrades,

but in the end, it was he who ran away. The elders, full of scorn and hate, preached:

“The Blackstar of Salvation has yet to descend, for there are those weak of faith.”

“None but us, the souls who’ve endured through the tragedy of battle, can enter paradise.”  

“For Kayal has failed to wash away the blood of hypocrites.”

Forced once more to enter the blood-stained battlefield, Hashashin awaited salvation, yet doubts still remained. 

"Why do the people of the war look upon it with disdain and call

“what the rest of the world knows as the Blackstar as the Redstar?”

Once planted, the seed of doubt in the back of his mind could not be uprooted and only grew.

Kayal’s desertion, the existence of monsters, the meaning of salvation, the Blackstar’s identity.

He questioned the truth behind the teachings and scripture of Aal, but his search for answers only led to more questions and festering doubt.

It eventually spurred him to leave his life behind and stow away on a boat. 

Then a black energy--one whose red eyes glistened with glee and had been waiting by his side for so long--finally began to possess him.