I am Severian, apprentice to the Guild of Torturers, in Nessus, a city of canals and stone where pain is practiced with ritual care and memory is valued as currency. I have learned to name truth as it burns in a body, to bind mercy to judgment, and to walk the narrow line between healer and tormentor. My days pass in the dim rooms, weighing a life against the order of the oath I gave, as the city hums with rumor and the lamp glows like a patient gaze. The work is hard, the rules exacting, and every patient leaves behind a trace of me in their fear. Yet the world beyond Nessus is threaded with strangers, danger, and questions that do not yield to simple answers. The streets whisper that power and mercy are older, more dangerous companions than any blade. I sense a larger fate calling through the labyrinth of corridors, a road that might bend my memory and test what I am willing to become. I cannot predict where it will lead, only that I must walk it, blade ready and memory wide, until the next mercy or judgment comes to claim me.
Honours and achievements received
