Betrayed by your kin, slaughtered for your power. We offer you a new start in a new world, and the safety of your family in their next life. Yet this offer shall not be without price. We warn you, as the world will be far more dangerous than the one your soul currently inhabits. However, the rewards that can be obtained from this world are likewise incomparable to those your world can offer. Should you accept our offer, revenge will forever be lost to you as you shall become our Champion. Do you accept? (Yes) (No)

  As Reduran stared at the window floating in front of his eyes, blood lay seeping into the stone around him. Darkness so thick, even his Dwarven eyes could not pierce it lay over him, as if a blanket comforting a child. Yet the darkness was not comforting fro Reduran. He could no longer feel the iron in his blood, nor the metal veins flowing through the stone. He could not feel them, and the lack of their constant presence terrified him.

  From birth, Reduran had always felt the metal around him. He was a dwarf, and on top of that he was a Crimson-Axe dwarf. Metal was his heritage, controlling it and shaping it had been his everyday life from dawn till dusk. And now he could no longer feel it's presence. For he was dying.

  The Crimson-Axe clan was a smaller clan, however each one of it's members was worth 100 dwarves. Every dwarf had a connection to metal, be it to the degree where they could mine it slightly better to being able to control it without requiring the assistance of mana. The Crimson-Axe could connect with metal so well, even the iron in blood could not escape their control. Highly regarded, Reduran lived the life of a prince for 214 years. Now middle-aged, the dwarf had a family of his own and a reputation as the best blacksmith in thousands of years. He was even being considered for the title Paragon! 

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Unfortunately, that was when the Gods decided magic could not be allowed to exist. Some human mage had built a tower too high and attacked the Gods. The mage lost, but the Gods were angry. Dwarves were nothing if not pious, in their own way, and quickly a genocide began. Unfortunatly, one of the Crimson-Axe's political enemies took use of this situation to brand them mages, due to their unnatural control over blood. And so, the Crimson-Axe clan began its fall.

  Another ten years pass and Reduran lay dying in his own blood. Blind, he knew his wife lay with his children somewhere close, yet not close enough that he might lay next to her in death. All he could feel were the tears leaving his eyes.

  'So many dead... For no reason... OH GODS WHY!? WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO DESERVE THIS?! Please... somebody...save my family... please.' 

  However, he knew nobody would answer his silent prayer. The gods did not care for mortals, no. They were so high and mighty they would smite all that may pose a threat to them without caring for the innocents caught in the crosshair.

 It was at this moment that he recieved the message. Never having seen such a thing, his blood-deprived brain had trouble understanding what it was that was being said. Yet, by some miracle, he managed a moment of clarity.

  'My family... will be safe... Any deal... is worth that.' And so, the (Yes) option was pressed, through a force of will and desperation. At that moment, the dwarven body that housed the soul of Reduran Crimson-Axe died, and the souls of his family that floated above their corpses waiting, as well as his own, did not go to the domain of the God who had forsaken them, but rather elsewhere.