This is the English version of the novel Huyết Dạ Trường Ca.
I'm Vietnamese and not fluent in English, so please forgive any mistakes or awkward phrasing.
Thank you for your understanding.
"When blood began to fall from the sky, it was already too late to pray."
Ethanol was once whole – four grand continents, four sovereign realms, four Arcane Pillars shielding humanity from the Ancient Darkness.
The rulers were not kings or queens, but the Wardens – beings half-human, half-soul, bearing the blood of primordial magic.
Each realm worshipped a different faith. And together, they kept the Interdimensional Gate sealed.
In the Year 0 of the Black Sun, the realm of Daksoul (Land of Shadows) broke the forbidden seal.
They believed they could command the ancient gods, merging human souls with monsters from the Abyss – to forge a new race: the Ascended Undead.
The ritual failed.
The Abyss did not merely crack – it tore the sky apart.
The Gate was shattered.
Darkness Returned.
Cities fell.
Magic was corrupted.
Creatures from a nameless world began hunting humans like beasts.
The Wardens fell.
Some went mad.
Some betrayed their kin.
The rest vanished.
The vast continent was overrun.
With 80% of humanity's lands lost, the survivors joined forces and built the last human sanctuary.
To preserve the fragile peace between humans and monsters, the rulers of the realms sacrificed themselves, drawing their bones and marrow into the walls of unbreakable bastions, simultaneously binding the demons once more.
For a while, humans lived again – not in fear, but in fragile hope.
---
The village of Arven, nestled at the foot of the Faryne Mountains, was nothing remarkable.
Thatched roofs, winding dirt roads, and a humble folk who lived off farming, hunting, and occasional trade with border caravans.
The wind here always carried the scent of melting snow, mingled with earth and burning wood.
In this seemingly peaceful place lived a boy named Lioren.
His mother had named him so – in the Old Tongue, it meant "Little Light of Dawn."
He grew up in a creaky wooden house at the village's edge, where at night, the howls of wolves merged with the wind like eerie lullabies.
His mother died young; his father vanished on a hunting trip.
Villagers often whispered he was "the child forgotten by the forest," yet he lived on – silent, enduring, like a stone in the stream.
Lioren was different.
Not for his amber eyes, cold and piercing, nor his hair black as cinders – but because of the flame.
An unseen flame whispered within him, burning whenever anger flared, whenever pain tightened its grip.
Once, after being teased by other children, a water jug exploded in the village square.
They called it an accident.
Lioren wasn't so sure.
That day, his hand had glowed with a heat like molten iron.
That night, in a strange dream, he stood amidst a sea of fire.
Houses in ruins.
Screams echoing as if rising from the earth itself.
In the ashes, something glowed – a crimson stone: the Firestar Crystal – a relic destiny would one day place in his hand.
The fated day came in the winter of his thirteenth year.
A rift split open in the northern woods, spewing forth twisted beasts reeking of scorched metal.
The villagers fought.
They died.
In his terror, Lioren screamed for his mother.
And fire erupted from his hands.
No one lived to tell the tale.
When Talion – a wandering old mage – and his young disciple Liora arrived, all that remained was ash.
And a boy, standing in the eye of the storm, no tears left in his eyes – only a blazing fire.
"What is your name?" Talion asked.
The boy replied, "Lioren."
Talion looked into his eyes.
In them, both light and abyss coexisted.
A child... or the seed of catastrophe?
The tale of the little light of dawn began on the day it burned the night to ash.