Timeline: Two months after the Fall of Halburn
Location: The Ruins of Halburn → Vandor
Tone: Lost • Detached • Cold • Heavy with self-pity
The Last Sunset of Halburn
The skies of Halburn still burned red.
Once, they shimmered with floating citadels and radiant fleets of light. Now, the horizon was a graveyard of twisted mecha husks and broken towers, half-buried in glassed sand.
Kaleo trudged across the ruins in silence, the last son of a world that no longer sang his name.
His cloak was torn. His blade cracked. His eyes—once golden like twin suns—were dim, reflecting the blood-red glow of a dying sky.
The ground trembled beneath his steps. Every sound echoed through hollow streets once filled with laughter.
He didn't look back. He couldn't.
The Ring of Halburn, the divine spatial ring of his house, gleamed faintly on his hand. Once, it commanded fleets and held relics beyond mortal imagination.
Now, it was nothing but a coffin of memories—a vault of ghosts.
"What's the point of divinity," he murmured, voice hollow, "if the stars can still fall?"
The Pawn of the Fallen
The orbital ports above Halburn were half-dead, run by scavengers who stripped the corpses of gods for power cores.
Kaleo walked among them with his hood drawn low. No one recognized him. No one could.
His once radiant armor was dulled with scavenger plating. His divine aura—sealed by his mother's final spell—was gone.
He stopped at a trader's stall. Floating drones scanned his items for energy traces. The merchant, a large man with augmetic eyes, grunted.
"Selling?"
Kaleo nodded and began unloading what little he had left.
Broken crystals. Damaged mecha parts. Faded sigils of Halburn—which he carefully scraped away before offering them.
Each sale was a cut.
Each coin, a wound.
When he reached for his mother's pendant, his hand froze. The crystal shimmered faintly in the dying light.
He clenched it tight.
"Not this one."
The Four Things He Kept
By the time the shuttle lifted off, Halburn had vanished beneath storms of ash.
Kaleo sat in silence as the planet shrank into a fading spark.
He was leaving everything—everyone—behind.
Everything except four things:
The Ring of Halburn — his mother's last gift, and his secret curse.
The Divine Armor, sealed and dormant.
The Memory Crystal, holding the three-stage Halburn Legacy Manual — Earth, Heaven, Divine. Only the first was accessible.
His Sword, Veyra's Edge, cracked, humming faintly with ancient sorrow.
He traced a finger along the fracture.
"You and I both… just remnants."
The Adventurer of Vandor
Vandor — the refuge of the fallen.
A world of rusted steel and neon dust, overrun with beasts and broken dreams. The air reeked of mana oil and gunpowder, its skies veiled by crimson storms.
Here, Kael Varen was born — or rather, reborn.
He registered as an A-Rank adventurer under that name. To the locals, he was just another off-worlder trying to survive.
No one knew he was the last Halburn.
Not even Lyra Vale.
She found him on his second week—helping her group fend off a pack of shadowbeasts outside the city walls.
Lyra, a fallen noble like him, carried her scars with elegance. Her dark bronze hair shimmered faintly in the neon haze, her voice calm and sharp as a blade.
"You move like a noble," she'd said once, teasing. "But you curse like a miner."
He had only shrugged.
"Must've picked it up along the way."
She smiled, though her eyes searched him—as if trying to find the truth he refused to speak.
The Weight of Days
Two months passed in silence and survival.
Kael — the Immortal Rookie, they called him.
Every week, he took suicidal jobs: ruins crawling with voidspawn, fields tainted with chaos storms.
Every week, he came back bleeding, limping, but breathing.
Some said he was blessed, He says he is cursed.
Nights were quiet. In his tiny metal apartment, he watched flickering holograms from his Memory Crystal — his father laughing as he taught him swordplay, his mother sealing his power, whispering,
"When you wake, Kaleo… may the stars still know your name."
He shut the crystal off and leaned back, eyes hollow.
"They don't," he muttered. "No one does."
The S-Rank Exam
The Guild's S-Rank trials opened once every few cycles — in ancient rifts left behind by celestial wars.
Most who entered never returned.
Kael signed up anyway.
Lyra grabbed his wrist when she saw the notice.
Lyra: "You're not ready for this."
Kael: "I've fought worse."
Lyra: "You've fought hopeless battles. There's a difference."
Kael: "If I pass, I can leave Vandor. Maybe… I'll find something worth dying for."
Her voice softened.
Lyra: "Then promise me something. Come back alive — just once, for yourself."
He almost smiled.
Kael: "I'll try."
The Pocket World
The Eternal Rift was supposed to test courage.
Instead, it became a massacre.
A storm of corrupted gravity split their formation. Runes ignited underfoot. Adventurers screamed as the ground twisted open.
"Kael! Move!"
"It's collapsing—!"
Lyra's hand reached for him—then the light swallowed her.
Kael fell.
He woke in silence.
Floating shards of crystal surrounded him, glowing with cold starlight. The air here was heavier—thick with divine resonance.
A pocket world.
Forgotten. Hidden.
And then came the roar.
A shape emerged from the fog—a beast plated in obsidian and gold, its eyes like miniature suns. Its presence crushed the air around him.
Kaleo froze.
"No… impossible."
The Divine Beast lowered its head, ancient power radiating from its scales.
"Descendant of Halburn," it rumbled. "You carry the scent of Aether."
Kaleo raised his cracked sword, hands trembling.
"I don't know what you mean—"
"Then learn," it growled, "through pain."
It lunged.
Light exploded as steel met divine scale.
Every strike rattled his bones. Every roar shook the ground.
He moved on instinct—his body remembering what his sealed soul could not.
Each motion was pure Halburn grace—divine technique in mortal form.
But he was fading. His strength was nothing against the beast's might.
Still, he smiled through blood.
"If this is how I die… then fine."
He leapt—drove his cracked sword across the beast's face.
A shallow cut, but enough to make it scream.
The tail came faster than light.
CRACK.
Veyra's Edge shattered.
The blow hurled him into a crystal spire. He hit the ground hard, coughing gold-tinged blood.
"Guess that's… it," he whispered.
Darkness closed in.
~The Silent Pulse~
As his blood touched the ground, the Aether Core sealed within him stirred.
A faint hum. A whisper.
Golden veins flickered across his skin—pulsing once, twice—then vanished.
The shattered pieces of his sword trembled… then slowly fused together, reforged by unseen power.
The Divine Beast hesitated. Watched. Then retreated into the fog.
Kael lay motionless, unconscious, unaware that the heartbeat of the stars had begun to stir again.
The Aether Core pulsed once more.
A whisper—faint, almost tender:
"Soon."