When Light and Darkness Fell
The night the world almost tore apart began with a scream from the sky.
Lightning split the heavens, painting the clouds gold and black. The air shimmered with energy — light and shadow twisting around each other like serpents trying to strangle the same prey. Inside a small house by the forest's edge, Kael Ardyn, only seven years old, hid beneath a wooden table, his hands clamped over his ears.
His mother's voice cut through the thunder. "It's happening again!"
His father stood in the doorway, his body outlined by flashes of silver fire. "They've broken through the seal!"
Outside, the world blazed. Two colossal figures hovered above the valley — one wreathed in golden flame, the other cloaked in endless shadow. Their voices made the earth tremble.
"You think yourself pure, Liora, yet all light casts a shadow!"
"And you, Umbra, think darkness eternal, yet it dies at every dawn!"
They collided, and the world screamed. Mountains cracked in the distance, the moon fractured into twin reflections, and the air began to splinter — not break, but fracture, like glass struck too many times. Through those cracks, something else stirred — whispers, shapes, and eyes not meant for mortal sight.
Kael's parents stood between the forces, their hair and clothes whipping in the gale. His mother's eyes burned with both fear and resolve.
"If they keep fighting, the veil will collapse!"
His father nodded grimly. "Then we end it. We bind them — before they destroy everything."
They clasped hands, and symbols flared beneath their feet — circles of light and darkness intertwining.
"By soul and seal," his father chanted, "let war find peace in one vessel."
"By blood and bond," his mother continued, "let balance dwell in the child of our making."
Liora turned in fury. "You dare bind me to that filth?"
Umbra's voice rumbled like thunder. "Better death than to share a prison with light."
But their rage came too late.
A beam of blinding energy surged outward, wrapping around them both. Their bodies twisted into raw power — a storm of white and black — which rushed toward Kael. He screamed as it struck him, the force burning through his chest.
Then — silence.
When he opened his eyes, the house was in ruins. The sky had cleared. His parents were gone.
Only the faint mark over his heart — half radiant, half shadowed — pulsed with a slow, living light.
And in the hollow quiet of his mind, two voices echoed — filled not with peace, but venom.
"I will tear you apart for this, shadow."
"Try it, light. Let's see which of us breaks first."
Kael whimpered in the dark, clutching the charm his mother had left him — unaware that the war within him had only just begun.
---
Outside Aestara
Far beyond the stars, in the endless silence between worlds, something stirred.
Where existence ended and nothing began, the Forsaken awakened.
They did not breathe.
They did not think as mortals do.
They sensed.
And they felt it — the tear.
A faint ripple through the eternal dark, like a heartbeat echoing through dead space.
"The seal weakens…"
"The veil breathes again…"
"Fifty years no more. The balance falters — twenty-five, perhaps less."
Eyes — thousands of them — opened in the dark, each burning with a color that didn't exist.
A shape unfolded from the void, vast and shifting, neither flesh nor smoke.
> "The gods fight once more," a voice whispered, like a storm beneath an ocean.
"Let them. Their light and shadow will pave the way."
Then the void stilled again.
But the silence that followed was no longer empty — it was watching.
The countdown had begun.