A wretched man finds purpose in a terrible place. (Cut lore entry from Once Glorious Artahk)

There once lived a loathsome man named Alarus Veer. He hated the world. Hated the people around him. Hated himself. It was all he knew, and all he wished to know. He travelled the world in willful exile, bitter and alone.

His path led him, one day, to a village torn asunder. Buildings razed to broken rubble, foundations choked by wicked vines with toothy barbs. Bodies eviscerated beyond what words can recount.

Alarus was in awe. He saw a twisted beauty in the devastation. There, surrounded by carnage absolute, something beyond hate first stirred in his loathsome soul.

Lying in the dirt at the center of it all, he found a jagged tooth. It called to him, drew him in. Any other would have been driven mad when they plucked it from the ground, but a mind as wretched as his was already filled with naught but teeth. He felt, instead, invigorated. He felt seen. He felt, at last, a sense of purpose.

A terrible, twisted purpose.

That night he dreamt of a wolf painted black. It snarled and gnashed its teeth, yet in his mind he swore he understood it as speech. He spoke aloud the words he heard:

“I am hunger. I am wrath. I am the knife that cuts lies from reality. There is one truth: everything was born to die. There is one path: everything must die to be free.”

The wolf then pounced and tore him to shreds, while cicadas buzzed in his ears. He did not wake until its vicious feast was through.

Alarus understood the path before him. He mantled himself a prophet, spreading the word of the beast of hate, calling it instead a god of finality, of the only truth that mattered. His hatred became his resolve. His life, at last, had meaning.

He became a scourge on this world, spreading untold devastation for years in his crusade to honor the dark spirit. Never was he satisfied, for he was hunger. He slaughtered all those that stood in his way, for he was wrath. He knew his god was pleased, for through his bloody work he cut away the lies of reality.

In time, he knew the freedom of his own death was nearing. A lifetime of devotion laid behind him, and he began to crave recognition. He knew his god must be pleased, yet he yearned to stand before it and be acknowledged before the end. He dedicated himself to a new goal, corrupting the methods of the sages toward a forbidden end: summoning the spirit of hatred and wrath.

He prepared the ill-begotten ritual, and knew at once he had succeeded. His vision blurred, his heart raced, his flesh began to feel like it was tearing itself apart. 

Before him stood the great spirit in all its terrible glory: Black tar flesh melting in a lupine guise; countless maws of gnashing teeth set upon it in ways that defied logic, red eyes glaring back from the limited space between.

Alarus knelt before it in the dirt, and for the first and last time in his life, he laughed. For in his final moments, he gazed upon the wolf his god and saw that it was naught but a feral beast. 

The words had always been his.