The wind howled across the obsidian plains of Vaeltherra, a continent where magic coursed not through veins—but through weapons.
A flash of steel cut through the violet dusk. A young man stood on the ruined balcony of an ancient citadel, blood dripping from a chipped blade. His breaths came in sharp gasps, not from fear… but from the awakening.
Not far below, the battlefield smoked. The corpses of beasts, constructs, and men alike lay sprawled in twisted forms. Shattered spears glowed faintly with runes. A grimoire still burned with embered pages beside a fallen mage. There had been no victory—only survival.
The young man looked to the stars.
They called the planet Aerthun, a mirror of the lost Earth in name only. This world was wild, fragmented into eight great realms, each ruled by powers both arcane and alchemic. Nations warred with enchanted blades, not bullets. Empires rose on the backs of tamed beasts, not tanks. Power belonged not to who had the loudest weapon—but to who understood it.
And among them, the boy with storm-gray eyes was fated to understand them all.
His name was Kael Virek.
Nineteen, orphaned by war, raised in the lowest caste of the technomagical city Draventa, where alchemic fumes darkened the sky and the elite forged living weapons from bone and blood.
But Kael was different.
He could hear weapons.
Not just wield them—hear them.
The first time it happened, he was thirteen, caught in a street brawl over stolen bread. A rusted short sword lay discarded near the gutter, and as he reached for it, the world stopped.
A whisper. Soft. Metallic. "I was born in fire… don't die in filth."
Since then, they spoke to him—every weapon. Some cursed, some noble. Some ancient, some yet unfinished. It was more than telepathy. It was resonance. Echoes of purpose, of history, of hunger.
He trained in secret. Learned to decipher their voices. To bond with them. He studied forbidden texts on Arcalchemy, the lost art that fused elemental mana with material transformation. And when the Academy rejected him because he had no bloodline, no sponsorship, no pedigree—he forged ahead on his own.
And now, six years later, the world would change.
Because the Seal of the Ninefold Armory had broken.
And Kael had survived the first awakening.
From the wreckage of the citadel, a figure emerged—an older man with silver robes burned black at the sleeves. His arm was missing, torn by one of the summoned beasts. Yet his eyes burned with certainty.
"You heard them too, didn't you?" he asked.
Kael didn't answer at first. He gripped the sword tighter, its edge still humming with residual ether.
"Yes," he said at last, voice calm. "But they said more than you could."
"Then it's true…" the man muttered. "The Echo-Blood is real."
Kael frowned. "What did you call me?"
"You are not just a Weapon Seer. You're the Echo-Blood—the one prophesied in the Alkamn Codices. The one who will master them all. Blade. Bow. Staff. Flame. Wind. Ether. Bone. You can hear their true names, can't you?"
Kael's jaw tightened. "Why do you care?"
The man stepped forward, though weakly. "Because the world is dying, Kael. And only you can reforge it."
The sky above them cracked—not metaphorically, but literally. A shimmer of light tore through the clouds, revealing a rift: wide, ancient, and slowly growing.
Behind it, something moved.
Not gods.
Not demons.
Something far worse—the Voidforged, ancient sentient weapons that had no wielder and no master. Forged from hatred, they had once nearly consumed Aerthun. Now, they were returning.
And the world needed a Weapon Master.
Far across the world, in the sapphire forests of Len'Caria, a girl with lavender eyes trained alone with a bow made of starwood.
In the volcanic ravines of Moltherra, a boy with copper skin chanted into a staff carved from draconic bones.
In the alchemic ruins of Thermeos, a rogue grimoire fluttered its pages, drawing blood from the stone floor to write warnings in forgotten tongues.
They did not yet know Kael Virek.
But soon they would.
And together—or divided—they would determine whether Aerthun would be reforged… or shattered.
And so, the echo begins.
The boy who heard the blade's first cry will walk the path of a thousand weapons.
The bow will bend.
The spear will spin.
The grimoire will burn.
The blade will sing.
And the world will follow.