Chapter 1: Inside the Cave
The storm had a voice. It howled through the jagged peaks of the Hollow Peaks, a mountain range known to the people of Prodio as the "Bones of the Forgotten." Legends claimed the caves here were once temples to gods who had turned their backs on the world and tonight, the gods seemed to weep. Rain lashed the stone like a scourge, and thunder growled like a waking beast.
Deep in the heart of the caverns, where the air smelled of damp earth and old magic, a baby cried.
His wails were raw, desperate, the kind that spoke of hunger, cold, or abandonment. No blanket swaddled him, no parent soothed him, just a shallow depression in the rock, lined with tattered cloth that might have once been a traveler's cloak. Had someone left him here? Or had something far stranger happened?
Footsteps echoed against the wet stone, deliberate and heavy. A figure emerged from the shadows, his long coat dripping rainwater onto the cave floor. His name was Dain Marr, though few in Prodio knew it. A wanderer. A seeker of lost things.
And tonight, he had been drawn here, not by the child's cries, but by the absence of something.
Dain crouched beside the infant, his All-Seeing Eye, a relic embedded in his right palm, flaring to life with an eerie blue glow. The Eye revealed truths: the flow of mana in all living things, the hidden scars of spells, the lies woven into the world.
But when its light passed over the child, Dain's breath caught.
Nothing.
No shimmer of mana. No dormant potential. Not even the faintest pulse that even the lowest insects possessed. It was as if the child were a void, a living anti-spell.
"Impossible."
Prodio was a world where mana was life, where every breath, every blade of grass, every drop of water thrummed with it. To have none was to be dead. And yet, this child lived.
Dain exhaled sharply, running a hand through his rain-slick hair. He had no love for children, no patience for weakness. But this… this was something else. A mystery. A danger, perhaps.
He stood, turning toward the cave's entrance as if to leave. Let some other fool take the boy. Let fate decide.
But then—
A whisper. Not from the wind, not from the child. From the walls.
"He will unmake you."
Dain froze. The caves were said to speak in riddles, but he had never heard them so… clear.
His jaw tightened. He had walked away from enough omens in his life. This time, he would not.
From his coat, he retrieved a small vial, its glass fogged with condensation. Inside rested a single Mana Radiation Pill, its surface etched with glowing runes. It was one of the last of its kind—a relic from the Old Alchemists, capable of forcing dormant mana to the surface. He had stolen it years ago, saving it for a moment of true need.
"And what greater need is there than this?" he thought bitterly.
Prying the child's mouth open, he placed the pill on its tongue and forced it to swallow. The infant coughed, whimpered then fell still.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then—
A pulse. A wrongness. The air itself seemed to recoil as the child's skin flickered, shadows writhing beneath it like trapped smoke.
Dain stumbled back, his All-Seeing Eye burning with a light so fierce it near blinded him.
"No…" he whispered, voice fraying.
The pill hadn't awakened mana.
It had created it and forced it into existence where none should be.
But that wasn't the true horror.
As the Eye's vision cleared, Dain saw it: layers. Five concentric seals, coiled like serpents around the child's core. Each one thicker, darker, more ancient than the last. The first had cracked, just a hairline fracture from the pill's power.
"A Fifth Lock," he realized.
In all his years scavenging relics and lost lore, he'd only heard whispers of such a thing. A mana so potent it had to be bound, not absent. A power that didn't obey the laws of Prodio.
And this child,this thing had survived it.
The cave's warning echoed in his skull: "He will unmake you."
Now, he understood. It wasn't a threat. It was a fact.
Rain still hammered the cave mouth, but Dain barely heard it. His hands shook not from fear, but from something worse. Curiosity. The kind that had made him steal the All-Seeing Eye in the first place. The kind that got men killed.
The baby stared up at him, silent now. Its eyes gold-flecked, almost luminous held no innocence. Only a weight. A challenge.
"What are you?" Dain muttered.
The child didn't cry. Didn't blink. As if it knew the question wasn't for it.
A laugh clawed its way up Dain's throat, raw and unsteady. "Of course. Of course you'd be like this."
He scooped the infant up, tucking it against his chest. The movement was awkward, he'd never held a child before but the weight felt… right. Like picking up a weapon he'd forgotten he owned.
"Rydan," he said abruptly.
The name came from an old dialect of the Hollow Peaks. It meant "storm-born" or, in the tongue of outcasts, "the one who breaks chains."
Fitting.
Dain's home wasn't far, a reinforced bunker dug into the mountainside, hidden behind a waterfall of rusted pipes and dead ivy. Modern enough to have a solar grid, ancient enough to smell of damp concrete and gun oil. Not a place for a child.
And yet.
He glanced down at Rydan. The boy's tiny fingers had curled around the strap of Dain's coat, grip stubborn. The fractured seal in his core pulsed faintly, a slow, rhythmic glow.
"You're going to be trouble," Dain said.
Rydan blinked. Almost like he agreed.
Dain exhaled through his nose. He'd spent years avoiding attachments. Now, in the span of minutes, he'd tied himself to a walking cataclysm.
"Fine." He adjusted his grip, stepping out into the storm. "But if you explode, I'm leaving you in a ditch."
The lie tasted bitter. They both knew he wouldn't.
~END OF CHAPTER 1~