Chapter 1: The Boy Who Didn't Awaken
The sirens wailed again. A low, warbling cry that echoed across the decaying outskirts of Duskwind City—the kind of sound that sent shivers down the spine of even seasoned Void Breakers.
But Aether Caelum didn't flinch.
He crouched atop a crumbling rooftop, watching as a pack of Class-C Rift Beasts prowled the shattered alleys below. Their bone-gray exoskeletons glimmered under the blood-orange dusk, claws scratching against concrete. To any sane observer, the monsters looked like death incarnate. To Aether, they were… manageable.
He pressed his back against the broken ventilation shaft and exhaled, slow and steady. His right hand gripped the hilt of a dull training blade. His left was wrapped in gauze, still healing from last week's mock combat exam.
He should have run like the rest of the academy kids. But something inside him refused.
The beasts shrieked. The smallest one—a dog-sized crawler with glowing blue pustules—broke off from the group and skittered toward the alley mouth, where two frightened civilians had failed to escape in time.
Aether's gaze sharpened. He moved.
One leap. Two. His steps silent, precise. Not too fast. Not too clean. Just enough to look desperate if anyone was watching.
The crawler lunged at the civilians.
And then… it stopped mid-air.
Not because Aether struck it. Not exactly.
The air around him shimmered faintly—just for an instant—as time around the creature compressed. To outsiders, it looked like the crawler had frozen mid-lunge. But Aether saw every detail: its tendons twitching, its eyes narrowing, its breath caught in its lungs.
He was already there.
Steel met flesh. Aether slashed once, then twice. By the time the world caught up, the beast fell in two halves.
The civilians stared, mouths agape.
"I-I thought you were a trainee…" one whispered.
Aether blinked. Then he smiled—nervous, uncertain. "Lucky swing."
The others had fled. The rest of the pack was scattering now—sensing their kin had fallen. Monsters weren't stupid. Just cruel.
Aether wiped the blade clean on his tattered jacket, then turned to go.
He didn't notice the girl watching from the second-floor window across the alley. Elira Vael, top student of Duskwind Combat Academy and daughter of a Class-A Void General. Her green eyes tracked Aether like a hawk.
She had seen the shimmer.
The time flicker.
"That wasn't just luck," she thought.
Back at the academy, the day's lectures on monster biology and aura channeling passed like white noise. Aether sat in the back, half-asleep, half-bored. His classmates laughed, joked, and occasionally jeered.
The topic of the day was awakening levels. Students who had awakened their cultivation roots were measured by tier: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and the rare Platinum.
Aether had none. Or so everyone believed.
"Still nothing, Caelum?" sneered Marix Thorn, heir of the Thorn Consortium. "Guess some people are just born mud-blooded."
Laughter followed.
Aether smiled. Calm. Empty.
His limiter seal—the tiny talisman etched into his inner wrist—burned faintly. He had bound his own spiritual core years ago, locking away the Chrono Vein within him. If they knew he could stop a man's heart mid-beat, they wouldn't call him weak.
They'd call him a threat.
And threats were executed.
He preferred being invisible.
Later that night, he stood beneath the cracked dome of the Academy's training yard. Alone. Silent. His hand hovered in the air.
The world around him stilled.
Leaves froze mid-fall. Raindrops paused inches from the ground. In that silent void, Aether's eyes turned faintly silver, the mark of someone walking the Path of the Timeless Root.
"Five seconds," he muttered. "That's all I can hold right now."
His body ached from the strain. He sat cross-legged and began to meditate, drawing in the fragmented strands of time essence scattered across the world—something no one else could sense.
One day, he thought, they'll come for me. But when they do… I won't run.
Above him, stars twinkled faintly—distant, ancient, watching.
What Aether didn't know was that beyond the moon's far side, a Rift Satellite had gone dark.
And in the depths of space, a slumbering god stirred.