-📖 Title: Eclipsed Destiny
Chapter 1: The Shattered Sky
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The world had always been fragile, though no one truly realized it until the night the sky broke.
It began as a distant rumble, like thunder beneath the fabric of reality. Cities across the continent of Avarion froze when the stars themselves began to flicker. A thousand pinpricks of light dimmed, then reignited in patterns no astronomer could explain. Priests called it a prophecy fulfilled. Scholars insisted it was an astral storm. But those who stood outside in the silence of that night felt something deeper—something far older—stirring awake.
Among them was Kael Ardyn, a seventeen-year-old boy with storm-grey eyes and a scar that ran like lightning across his jaw. He lived in the modest mining town of Brime, tucked between the steel-veined mountains. His life, until that night, had been unremarkable—days spent hauling ore, evenings listening to his grandfather's stories of the gods who once ruled the earth. Kael never believed them.
But when the sky cracked, belief was no longer optional.
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The mountains trembled as if struck by an unseen hammer. Across the heavens, a jagged tear of violet light stretched open, bleeding sparks that rained down like embers. People screamed, pointing at the impossible: a rift wide enough to swallow constellations.
Kael didn't scream. He simply stared. For in the glow of that rift, his scar burned—not with pain, but with power.
The air shifted. From the fissure, something fell. Not a star, not a meteor, but a sphere of obsidian flame. It plummeted into the forests just beyond Brime, carving a crater so vast the shockwave shattered windows across town. Kael felt his knees weaken, as though the impact had reached inside him.
Then he heard it—a voice, not carried by sound, but carved directly into his thoughts:
"The seal is broken. The vessel awakens."
He staggered, clutching his head. Around him, townsfolk wailed prayers, others ran for cover. No one else seemed to hear the words.
No one but him.
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Kael's best friend, Lyra Veynn, grabbed his arm. She was sharp-eyed, with copper hair always tied back, and a stubborn courage that often bordered on recklessness.
"Kael! Did you see that? We have to check it out!"
He swallowed. "That… thing? Lyra, if we go near it—"
"Then we'll know what it is," she cut in. "Don't tell me you don't want to find out."
Her grin was fierce, even in the chaos. Kael wanted to argue, but deep inside, the burning mark on his face whispered otherwise. It wasn't curiosity driving him. It was inevitability.
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That night, while soldiers locked down the roads and priests declared omens from the temple steps, Kael and Lyra slipped away. They followed the plume of smoke rising from the forest, their footsteps crunching on broken branches. Every mile closer, the weight in Kael's chest grew heavier.
When they reached the crater, the world changed.
The sphere lay at the center, pulsing like a heartbeat. Its surface was black glass, veined with fire. The trees around it had been reduced to ash, yet the sphere itself was untouched.
Kael stepped forward. His scar seared. And then—the sphere cracked.
A figure emerged.
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It was neither man nor beast. The figure's body shimmered like liquid shadow, limbs stretched too long, its face hidden behind a mask of fractured bone. But what struck Kael most were its eyes—one a molten crimson, the other a void-black abyss.
The figure looked straight at him.
"At last," it whispered. "My vessel stands before me."
Kael froze. Lyra grabbed a rock, her instinct to fight igniting instantly.
"What the hell is that?" she hissed.
The creature tilted its head. "I am Shade, the remnant of what your world sealed away. And you…" Its finger pointed at Kael. "…you are the key."
Before Kael could reply, the forest erupted. Soldiers had arrived, blades drawn, torches blazing.
Shade turned. With a flick of its hand, darkness burst outward like a storm. Men were hurled into the air, torches extinguished, steel bent like clay. The night filled with screams.
Lyra shouted, "Kael, we have to run!"
But Kael couldn't move. His body was locked in place, caught between terror and a strange pull toward the shadow. His scar blazed like fire.
Then Shade's voice carved through his mind again:
"Choose. Run with them, or accept
what you were born to be."
And in that instant, Kael's destiny began to unravel.