Chapter Text
"I am a fool... who finally met his match."
Bound in chains within the heart of the Black City, the Last of the Firstborn turned the words over in his mind. Of all he had spoken in his long, long life, these might have been the wisest. And he couldn't help but wonder—if he had come to that realization sooner, how many mistakes might have been avoided?
"Dirth ma, harellan. Ma banal enasalin. Mar solas ena mar din."
Trapped in the place where time and thought twisted, where nothing but eternity remained, the Rebel God of the Dalish replayed the events that led him here. And as he did, one question echoed louder than the rest: what did it say about him that a Fear Demon had foreseen his downfall long before he did?
A former Spirit of Wisdom. Brought low by his own pride.
"Varric taught me well. And you killed him."
And now, as Fen'Harel—the Dread Wolf—stewed in bitter defeat, he asked himself if every life he'd taken, every soul lost in pursuit of his grand goal, had been for nothing. Sacrifices burned away by one final, spectacular failure. Guilt gnawed at him, sharp and ceaseless. Perhaps, in the end, the true price of his choices wasn't the world—it was the weight of surviving them.
"You don't need to destroy this world. I'll prove it to you."
"I would treasure the chance to be wrong once again, my friend."
And as Solas sat in the darkest corner of the Fade—alone—he wondered: if he'd listened to his friends, just once… really listened… would he be here now? Would he still be facing the weight of his regrets in silence?
How many times had he dismissed such words as naïve?
How often had he clung to pride, certain that no one else could see the truth he carried?
In the end, it was that same pride—his pride—that had undone him.
Solas let out a hollow laugh. The sound vanished, swallowed by the endless void.
Once, he had been many things: Fen'Harel. The Dread Wolf. Trickster. Rebel. Liberator. A so-called god.
Now, he was simply a prisoner of his own making. Bound by the very chains he once forged for others he once loved and called kin.
And for the first time in a long, long life, Solas understood what it meant to be truly alone and afraid in the dark.
But before he could sink further into regret and despair, the Fade shuddered.
Solas lifted his bloodied head.
A tear opened across the sky above—jagged and seething with unnatural light. From within it, a shape descended. Vast. Chitinous. Its tendrils writhed and groped across the edges of reality like they were feeling their way through existence itself.
It was not a spirit. Not a demon. Not a Blight-twisted horror.
It was something wholly alien.
Solas barely had time to process the sensation of falling—
—before everything went black.
A sharp, wet gasp tore from Solas' throat as consciousness returned in a violent rush. Cold air burned his lungs as he was greeted by the sight of the outside world.
He lay on uneven ground, face pressed into blood-wet dirt and sand. Ash clung to his skin. The blue sky above churned with smoke, casting the landscape in shades of ruin.
This was not the Black City nor anywhere in the Fade.
He groaned, pushing himself upright with trembling arms. Pain flared through his ribs and shoulder—something had hit him hard enough to break bone. The last thing he remembered was the shudder—the Fade itself tearing, a howling storm of something else flooding in. And then—blackness.
His eyes adjusted slowly. The beachside around him was scattered with the strangest of debris—twisted flesh-metal, shattered crystals, broken bodies of all sorts of shapes, sizes…and races?
Nothing elven. Nothing dwarven. Nothing Qunari. Nothing resembling Thedas in any way he knew from before or after the Veil was placed. Strange, chitinous fragments littered the earth around him, still twitching like dying insects. The air was thick with heat, oil, and the copper tang of blood.
He blinked, dazed.
Was that a… ship?
A massive, half-embedded structure lay crumpled in the ocean near him. It looked like a creature hollowed out and shaped into transport, its outer shell torn wide open from the crash. Veins of purple biolight flickered weakly within, like a dying heart.
Solas stared at it, breath shallow.
A sharp, wet clicking sound pulled his gaze downward.
It was crawling toward him.
At first, Solas thought it was some dying beast, perhaps a creature native to this realm of smoke and ruin—but the shape was unmistakably wrong. Thin limbs dragged along the dirt, bones shattered in places, yet it pulled itself forward with unholy resolve. Its long robes were torn, blackened by fire, and its head—spirits, its head—was a mass of half-melted tendrils, some severed entirely, others twitching as though still searching blindly for prey.
He did not know the name, but he knew instinctively that this thing did not belong to any realm of spirits or demons.
It was dying. Slowly. And yet still it reached for him.
Solas tried to move, but his limbs were slow to respond. He had been thrown—perhaps from the sky itself—and his magic, whatever fragments remained in the aftermath of the backlash caused by the use of the fake Lyurim Dagger, flickered dimly within him like a sputtering candle. He clenched his teeth and began to crawl backward.
The creature hissed—a guttural, wet sound that bypassed his ears and went straight into his skull. Words formed not in speech, but in thought.
'Survive.
Need vessel.
Yours. Take yours.'
Solas froze. He knew possession. He had faced demons who tried to wear his flesh, who whispered truths and lies with equal fervor. But this… this wasn't seduction. It wasn't even madness. It was need in its purest form—raw and animal, drowning in agony and hunger.
The creature collapsed mere feet from him. One twisted arm clawed at a sac on its side—ruptured flesh, torn open to reveal a pulsing, translucent pouch.
Within it, something moved.
A parasite. Small. Writhing. Radiating purpose.
"No—" Solas hissed, trying to pull away, but the creature moved with unnatural speed. Not through strength—through desperation. It gripped his jaw with broken fingers and forced his mouth open, its other hand plunging the tadpole forward, fingers slick with its own black ichor.
He choked, gagged—felt it enter.
'OBEY.
SERVE.
MIND. JOIN. ALL.'
Agony split through his skull like a blade of light. He screamed, fists digging into the dirt as the thing burrowed behind his eyes. He could feel it, clawing through thought and memory, mapping him like prey, binding—
—and then the connection broke.
Not cleanly. Not like chains being shattered.
Like a thread being burned at both ends.
Solas gasped, eyes wide, body trembling. Something inside him shifted—a scream echoed in his skull, then went silent. The presence was still there, coiled within him, but not whole.
No commands. No collective. No link to the hive.
Only… silence.
Solas lay there, stunned. The creature had gone still. Dead. Its corpse twitched once, then dissolved into a thick, black slurry, the body collapsing inward like ash in the wind.
Once again, he was alone.
The wind howled.
For a long time, Solas did not move. He lay on his side, fingers clawing at the dirt, breath ragged. His mind felt… wrong. Off-balance. His thoughts were his, but not untouched. Memories fluttered at the edges of his vision—not his own. Flashes of hunger, of flight, of alien skies streaked with stars.
And beneath it all, the pulse of something living inside his skull.
He sat up slowly, gaze shifting back toward the shattered wreck of the chitinous ship. Solas gritted his teeth, clutching his temple as another pulse rolled through his head. The pain subsided, but the presence remained. Dormant. Waiting.
He had been infected.
But the link was broken.
Why?
Was it a defect? A mercy? A trick?
Or something far, far worse?
"So... this is how the end truly begins," He murmured bitterly. "Ripped from one prison... to die to another growing from within me."
But he was no prisoner now. And he would not be prey.
Whatever force had pulled him into this world—whatever parasite had chosen him—had made a mistake.
He was not just a vessel.
He was Fen'Harel. The Dreadwolf. The Last of the Firstborn.
And though his magic was weak, his body battered, and his mind compromised… he would learn of this world.
For how else was he supposed to reclaim his title as a Spirit of Wisdom?