Ruination focuses on a dark story of a fallen Runeterran kingdom, centered around a king's descent into madness and a sadistic, power-hungry warden in a tragedy that leaves its main characters undead wraiths. It's little wonder there's plenty of horror to be found.
- Erlok Grael is evil long before he's even near being Thresh. In particular, he abducts the Prefect that catches him hoarding magical artifacts in his hunt for power, torturing him for as long as he can, and frames him for his own crimes to ensure the Masters won't look for him. What's worse is that this works— Grael gets promoted when the Prefect goes missing, taking his position and getting away with his crimes. While the reader is thankfully spared descriptions of the torture, this serves to provoke the imagination.
- Viego's increasing descent into madness. The moment Isolde is poisoned, he's prone to rages on his own servants, willing to get physical the moment he's not given something he wants. His desperation and horror lead him to be a complete wreck, unable to leave Isolde's side. The worst part? As Isolde tells Kalista and mentions in her own writing, Viego was already descending— while Isolde's poisoning sped it up, Viego had started down a path of insanity already, ignoring Isolde and growing gradually more obsessive, even telling her he couldn't live without her. Isolde's pity for his state is only matched by her horror toward what he might do if things get worse.
- Kalista's return to Camavor is an utterly horrifying sequence, showing a once prosperous kingdom descending into bloody violence.
- The guards are exercising Police Brutality on the starving citizens, and martial law is in place, allowing the guard to indulge in all the violence they please.
- All Viego's changes in attempts to aid the poor, with the coffers emptied and the kingdom in incredible debt, have collapsed completely while the guard and citadel hold all the remaining resources, leaving the lower classes starving in squalor.
- Hecarim and the Camavoran military have been sacking neighboring kingdoms, including their own allies.
- Executions have grown so common that the gates to the citadel are decorated with human heads, a monument to a terror Camavor now strikes within its own citizens.
- Viego's state is utterly horrible. When Kalista gets in, it seems that nothing much has happened and Isolde remains, albeit still dying. She's wrong. Dead wrong— as in, Isolde is dead. Viego has been spending weeks tending to a corpse, unwilling to pay attention to his duties, being effortlessly manipulated, and utterly delusional. As Nunyo notes, the only reason Isolde's corpse isn't just rotting is due to the healing measures already taken. Viego doesn't even notice she's dead, and has responded violently to everyone who says she is dead, even imprisoning Kalista when she refuses to give him what he wants.
- The Ruination, the apocalyptic event that turned the prosperous Blessed Isles to the wastes of the Shadow Isles.
- First off, the build-up. After a heartwrenching moment where Viego finally accepts his wrongs and his wife's death, returning to a kinder path... Erlok Grael tells him that the Waters of Life are real, and that the Masters have kept them from Viego. Viego... doesn't take this well. Opening the mists to reveal he'd already brought Hecarim's army, Viego orders them to invade Helia.
- The sheer slaughter of the invasion of Helia. Innocent citizens are slaughtered with glee, Kalista and the Host barely holding the primary entrance. The invasion is all the worst traits of Camavor's army brought to the forefront, brutalizing the citizens as they can. Bodies pile up at the entrance the streets as Hecarim's troops are flung into the meat-grinder of battle against Kalista's Host.
- Amid the chaos, Grael sneaks Viego off into the Well of Ages, and after never showing action the entire book, Viego reminds the reader that he is a terrifying mage when he massacres the guards, crushing them with magic, slicing them apart, and killing them in a myriad of cruel and violent ways to vent his rage, all while forcing his own soldiers to carry Isolde's body.
- Kalista's death is equally awful. Ledros has been mortally wounded, but Hecarim negotiated to a surrender after they spared him— only for Kalista to turn around to look at Ledros, and be run through by Hecarim, bleeding out while Hecarim breaks the Host's lines and sends his men to loot Camavor.
- Ryze tries to keep the civilians safe, but it becomes more difficult as soldiers flood the city with every intent to murder the innocents within its walls— not stopping to spare old men or even children.
- Viego finally gets Isolde to the waters of life, but she revives as a horrified, shrieking spirit. Grael never stops him out of sheer curiosity, leading to Viego gleefully exclaiming how Isolde has returned to him. After begging Viego to let her die, Isolde finally turns against Viego and runs him through with his own sword. The Waters try to heal Viego's wounds, and their instability leads to utter terror marked by three words.
Ruination was unleashed.- The Ruination rolling across. The dead rise, the land itself is ravaged into a wasteland, the architecture reforming wrong, and those who have fallen turn into spectres and wraiths, shells of their former selves. Any peace the Blessed Isles once had disappears into Black Mist.
- Kalista's corruption after the cataclysm Viego caused. As she tries to cling to her humanity, she is turned by force into the Spear of Vengeance before Ledros' loving eyes.
- Erlok Grael abandons his former identity in the wake of the Ruination turning him into a powerful, immortal wraith. Despite his initial fear, he realizes quickly that he got exactly what he wanted— he's immortal, and a lack of a soul does nothing to him. Grael relishes every second of torturing the survivors of the Ruination, and takes up a new name. Erlok Grael is dead, but Thresh has come.
