They called this world Cosmos Forge —
Land of fire, star-blood, and the Six Sparks of Origin.
No one knew who first gave it that name.
No one knew what the first five sparks were.
But everyone agreed: when the Sixth appeared, the world changed.
The world remembered.
The stars stirred.
And a new soul was born beneath a fractured sky.
His name was Arthur.
Born into a crumbling noble house, tucked away in the frozen north.
A bloodline of protectors, once proud — now reduced to whispers and debt.
His parents died when he was eight.
Poisoned. Betrayed. Smiled at by people who wore clean clothes and dirty hearts.
The only one who tried to save him was an old butler named Gareth — who fled with Arthur through frozen valleys and burning roads.
By the time Arthur turned eleven, Gareth was gone too.
But Arthur didn't break.
Even young, his body was oddly resilient.
His eyes, too sharp. His questions, too specific.
He moved with a focus no child should have.
He never cried. Never screamed.
Only… listened.
To wind.
To water.
To something deep inside him, pulsing like a sleeping flame.
Spark.
That's what they called it here.
Same as mana, same as chi, same as life.
Every living thing had it.
But his — was different.
It knew things.
Things he didn't yet remember.
He lived alone. Survived alone.
By hunting, hiding, building crude tools with the discipline of someone who shouldn't know how.
It's just instinct, the villagers said.
But it wasn't.
It was echoes.
Memories that hadn't fully bloomed.
Dreams of strange machines.
Whispers in languages he didn't know how to speak — but understood.
He didn't question it.
He simply waited.
And on his fourteenth winter… it all came flooding back.
The memories.
The machine.
The skyless world.
The silence of space.
The Singular Gate.
His name.
Not Arthur.
Gale.
Arthur von Gale.
And then he smiled.
"Took you long enough," he said aloud, breath frosting in the air.
"Let's get to work."
The village didn't have a name.
Or maybe it did, once — but nobody cared to remember.
It was just "the edge" now. A cluster of wood and stone huddled beneath the eastern cliffs, where forests ran deep and maps ran out of ink.
People here didn't ask questions.
They cared more about wheat prices than royal bloodlines.
And they left Arthur alone.
Mostly.
"Oi, Grave-Kid," someone yelled. "You gonna lift that log or stare at it till next summer?"
Arthur grunted. The log in question was twice his height and half a tree.
He wrapped his fingers around the rough bark, took a slow breath—
—and the Spark answered.
A warmth coiled in his gut, spreading through his limbs like sun-kissed iron. His muscles didn't bulge, didn't glow — they simply obeyed.
The log lifted.
Clean. Steady. Effortless.
The other boys went quiet.
Arthur didn't say anything. He just set the log down beside the others, wiped his hands on his shirt, and moved on to the next task.
Circulation complete, he thought. Output steady. No resistance. Still too shallow…
The spark inside him wasn't violent.
It was precise.
Like using a scalpel where others swung a club.
He didn't know how he knew that.
But it felt right.
People in the village whispered about him.
That strange kid with noble blood and a dead family.
Too quiet. Too smart. Too… strong.
Not strong like a fighter.
Strong like something that didn't make sense.
But he helped when asked.
Hunted clean.
Never bragged.
And so the village accepted him in that half-wary, half-grateful way that people do when you're useful and not a threat.
"Three types," Old Man Karlo would grumble by the fire, pipe smoke curling.
"Create, Manipulate, Enhance."
Create — raw magic. Conjuring flame from nothing. Calling wind. Pulling ice from the air.
Takes power. Lots of it. Burns out weaklings fast.
Manipulate — fancy magic. Moving water already there. Bending wind. Pulling heat from a torch.
Takes skill. Needs control. Needs patience.
Enhance — practical magic. Strengthen a wall. Reinforce a blade. Make your boots run faster.
Takes time. Takes Spark-forging. Useful for blacksmiths, guards, even farmers.
Arthur listened. Watched. Practiced in silence.
He couldn't Create. Not yet.
Couldn't Manipulate either — he had no control over the elements yet.
But Enhance?
He was a natural.
Trees fell clean under his swing.
Rocks split. Arrows flew straighter.
His legs moved faster than they should.
It wasn't flashy.
But it worked.
"If I can move, I can survive," he muttered one evening, hands coated in wolf blood.
"If I can move better, I can win."
Some days, he practiced breathing Spark through his limbs.
Other days, he just sat by the creek, feeling how the water ignored him.
"That boy ain't normal," the baker's wife whispered.
"That boy's a survivor," the hunter replied.
Two months.
That's how long it had been since everything came rushing back.
Gale—no, Arthur von Gale, former genius, accidental satellite magnet, and inventor of the most reckless machine ever built—was officially back.
Unfortunately, his body was still very much fourteen.
"God, puberty is still the worst kind of bottleneck," he muttered, cracking his neck while flames danced lazily over his palm.
He was sitting on a lonely boulder at the edge of the village, overlooking the jagged frostwood forest. Wind howled across the valley, biting cold. But the moment it reached him, the air shifted—spark flickered invisibly, and the wind curved around his body like a polite butler.
He had been testing his limits.
So far?
Uncomfortably broken.
He could Create fire, lightning, ice, even a bit of poison mist—though that last one required extra mental math and always left his eyebrows tingling.He could Manipulate the elements around him with precision enough to write his name in cursive using a falling leaf.
And Enhance?Yeah. He reinforced a log until it dented an iron boulder.
Not bent.Dented.
"I'm basically a Spark-powered artillery unit with the muscle mass of a starving deer," he noted grimly.
His spark pool—his natural energy reserve—was growing steadily, but it still had the limits of a teenager's body. In theory, he could level a fortress. In practice, he'd faint halfway through and wake up with villagers poking him with sticks.
But now, with his memories intact, Arthur knew exactly what needed to happen next.
He had to move.
The village was fine. Peaceful. Cold. Quiet.But it was also the end of the road—no future, no resources, no answers.
If he wanted knowledge, materials, a life worth building again, there was only one place to go.
Silver Frost Coalition.
A northern empire famed for safeguarding forgotten knowledge. A technomagocracy that treated scholars like knights and libraries like temples. If anywhere could match even 1% of his past world's complexity, it would be there.
"And if they're hoarding it," he muttered with a smile, "I'll just take it nicely."
And then, the interruption.
"You're talking to yourself again, Arthur."
A soft voice. Too soft for the setting.Arthur turned and found her standing in the snow, scarf too big for her neck, holding a sack of herbs like it weighed ten tons.
Lina.Fifteen. Orphaned. Locally known as "the village's walking first aid kit."
"I'm testing elemental harmonics with wind resonance and layering it over a spark-enhanced observation loop."
She blinked. "...Right. So, crazy talk again."
They walked back toward the village together, boots crunching over frosted dirt.
"You heading out soon?" Lina asked after a moment.
"I have to," Arthur said simply. "The world isn't going to fix itself. Not this one."
She was quiet for a while. "Take care of yourself."
"I have orbital strike capacity and frost-tipped napalm hands. I'll be fine."
She stared.
He smiled.
She punched his arm.
He coughed. "Okay that actually still hurts, wow—note to self: reinforce ribcage before sarcastic comments."
Back in his tiny hut, Arthur sat cross-legged, surrounded by reinforced steel ingots, scrap tools, and a mug of nearly boiling goat milk. He reached out with Spark and gathered.
A pulse of wind.
A flick of ice.
A subtle shimmer of steel glowing faintly blue from enhancement.
"Alright... test #32. Simulated missile strike using compressed wind blade and reinforced high-carbon slug. Target: fake tree. Result: hopefully not a crater."
He channeled. Focused. Released.
A boom echoed through the valley like a lightning bolt swallowed a cannon.
A tree halfway up the slope exploded into matchsticks.
Arthur didn't smile.
He sighed.
"Two shots like that. Three if I skip breakfast. Then I'm out of juice."
But still—compared to the average Spark user?He wasn't just strong. He was absurd.
The world had handed him the smallest of candles. And he'd built a flamethrower.
Now all he needed... was a map, a travel pack, and maybe a travel companion who didn't punch as hard as Lina.
"Silver Frost," he whispered.
"I'm coming."
It was the day before departure when Gale met her.
A blur of white in the woods. Snow barely shifted under her paws. Fur that shimmered like frost-kissed silk. Nine tails, each moving like threads of drifting smoke.
A Glacial Veil Vulpine—an extremely rare Spark-sensitive beast species known for high intelligence, long lifespans, and intense dislike of, well… everyone.
And currently stealing fish from his cooking pot.
"You know," Gale said, arms crossed, "you're elegant and mysterious until you start chewing with your mouth open."
The fox paused mid-bite, blinked at him.
Then resumed chewing. Louder.
He didn't chase her off.
He made her a plate.
"You're lucky I respect good taste. And that I made too much."
She finished. Licked the bowl. Walked over, looked him dead in the eyes.
Then burped.
And that's how he knew they were friends.
By the next morning, she was still there.
Trailing behind him. Watching. Not saying a word (obviously). Until he turned and said:
"Alright. Since you're tagging along, I'm giving you a name."
The fox's ear twitched.
"Flicker."
A long pause.
She stared at him like he just committed war crimes.
"Because your tails flick. It's cute."
Another pause.
She narrowed her eyes.
And then, with all the cold grace of her kind, she turned around, tail high, and walked into the woods.
She came back five minutes later.
Carrying more fish.
Gale smiled. "So, Flicker it is."
If she could sigh, she would have.
Now, they walked side by side down the mountain path.
Gale talked. Flicker listened. Or ignored him. Possibly both.
"You know, I'm not saying I built a Gate that defied the laws of reality just to get a talking animal sidekick, but…"
Flicker flicked her tail at his face.
"Point taken."
And when night fell, he cooked again.
Flicker circled the fire, tail swishing, waiting for her plate.
"You're using me for my stir-fry," Gale accused.
She sat. Looked at him. Licked her lips.
"I'm onto you, rodent."
She casually blew a puff of ice spark into his tea.
It froze solid.
"Okay. I deserved that one."
As stars rose above and snow glistened on the trail ahead, Gale sat with a full belly and a silent fox by his side. For the first time in a long time, it wasn't lonely.
"You know," he said softly, staring into the fire, "I used to think I just wanted peace."
Flicker looked up.
"But maybe what I really wanted... was someone to annoy on the way there."
Her ears twitched.
She dropped a frozen fish on his lap.
"...I accept your offering."
[Gift Acquired: Singular Blessing]
Type: World Transition Compensation
Effect: Ensures host can live "freely" within dimensional boundary of Cosmos Forge.
Randomized Outcome:
— Innate Spark Density: EX
— Racial Affinity: Human (Unchanged)
— Soul Memory: Delayed Activation
— Passive Trait: "Soul Logic Core" (Enhanced Comprehension & Creative Output)
— ??? (Hidden Feature)