The sky above the Draxen Wastes was always grey. Not the comforting kind that promised rain or storm—but the lifeless grey of a forgotten canvas. No sun. No stars. Just silence.
In a village nestled beneath the jagged rocks of the eastern cliffs, a child was born under that lifeless sky. The midwives whispered and crossed themselves. The mother screamed once and then fell silent forever. And the baby—he didn't cry.
He just stared.
Eyes black as the void. Skin pale like dust. No breath for a moment. No pulse. And then, as if the world reluctantly allowed it, his tiny chest rose.
They named him Graxion. But in the village, they had another name for him: Null-Blood.
He grew, but never like the others. Animals avoided him. Shadows seemed to cling to his feet longer than they should. When other children awakened their first sparks of elemental energy—water, wind, flame—Graxion had nothing. No aura. No affinity. No color.
Just absence.
The priests declared him cursed. The elders agreed. By the age of seven, he was banned from the temple grounds. By ten, he was beaten in the streets for simply passing by. By twelve, he stopped speaking altogether.
One day, he was dragged before the village council after the crops in the eastern field blackened overnight. No disease. No pests. Just rot.
> "It's him," the chief said, pointing. "He brings the void."
> "Kill him now," muttered one of the priests. "Before whatever is inside him grows stronger."
But the moment they raised a blade to him, the torches around the room went out.
Not flickered.
Not dimmed.
Extinguished.
A sudden cold swept through the hall—not of winter, but of space between stars. A crushing stillness. The guards dropped their weapons. Some fell to their knees, clutching their heads as a strange pressure invaded their minds.
And in the center of it all stood Graxion, untouched… and finally smiling.
That night, he fled into the wasteland, leaving behind smoke and screams.
---
He wandered for days, eating nothing, drinking only dew from stones. He didn't know where he was going—only that something was calling him.
On the sixth night, he found it.
In the heart of a crater, surrounded by blackened stone, was a rift in the air—like a wound in the sky. A tear in reality. It pulsed, a heartbeat made of whispers.
He stepped closer.
And it answered.
> "You were cast out," it said.
"As was I."
"You were nothing."
"So become the thing they fear most."
The shadows poured from the rift—liquid, alive, crawling over his skin like a thousand tendrils. They entered his mouth, his ears, his eyes.
He should have screamed.
But instead… he laughed.
When the sun rose, the boy that had been Graxion was no more.
What emerged from the crater was the beginning of something new.
Something that would outlast blood, gods, and even death itself.
Something the world would one day name:
> The First Shadow.