⚔️ Chapter 1
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The wind outside had gone still again. Through the narrow window of his room, Kairu Ryoku could see the faint shimmer of Nirath's twin moons hanging above the distant skyline of Velis Sol, the city of silver towers and shadowed alleys. The air hummed softly, carrying the static glow of the great Ether conduits that pulsed like veins through the heart of the city.
His room was small, its walls cracked and gray, lit only by the blue pulse of the conduit line that ran outside his window. A desk cluttered with half-burnt candles, an old radio that barely worked, and a single framed photograph—faded almost to nothing—sat beside his bed. The mattress sagged under his weight as he sat up, his chest still heaving from the dream.
The scent of rain clung to the air.
But it hadn't rained for days.
He rubbed his temples. The whispers had followed him again. That same voice—neither male nor female, yet older than the stars—still echoed faintly in the corners of his thoughts.
> "Blood remembers."
The words felt like a curse branded into his mind. He glanced at his reflection in the cracked mirror across the room. His hair—dark as ink—hung messily over tired eyes of pale gray. He wasn't handsome, but there was something striking about his face: a quiet depth, a kind of haunted calm that made others uneasy.
The clock on the wall ticked once. Then again.
And then stopped.
Kairu frowned. He reached out, tapping its glass face, but before he could, the light from the window flickered.
The air thickened—like the world had inhaled and forgotten to exhale.
Then he saw it.
At first, only a faint distortion—like heat rising from metal—hovering near the corner of the room. But slowly, it grew darker, edges sharpening until the shape of a figure emerged, rippling in and out of sight.
A shadow. Watching him.
His pulse quickened. He didn't scream; he never did. He had seen these things since childhood—shapes that drifted between the folds of light, whispering without mouths, moving where no breath should move. No one else ever saw them. Not his teachers, not the doctors, not even his parents before they left him behind in the lower districts.
He'd long learned that fear didn't make them go away.
The shadow lingered a moment longer, its form bending toward him like smoke reaching for flame—then, as suddenly as it appeared, it recoiled, dissolving into the air as the wind outside stirred again.
The clock resumed ticking. The light steadied.
Kairu exhaled, his hand still pressed to his chest.
He didn't know what they wanted—these fragments of darkness—but each time one appeared, he could feel something within him answering. A pulse, deep and foreign, echoing beneath his skin like a second heartbeat.
He stood and crossed to the window. The city below stretched endlessly—silver spires climbing toward the clouds, woven with glowing channels of Etherlight. Between them, shadows of floating transports drifted silently through the fog. The world of Nirath was beautiful from afar, but down here in the underdistrict, beauty came with rust, smoke, and the constant thrum of forgotten machines.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, the ancient mountains of Tsukuyomi's Rest loomed—black ridges that marked the ruins of the old world. The place from his dream.
He could almost feel its pull.
Then, from outside, a sudden boom cracked through the night. The glass trembled. A flash of violet light tore through the clouds, briefly illuminating the city's sprawl.
Kairu stepped back, eyes wide. The light wasn't lightning—it shimmered, spiraling downward like falling dust, vanishing into the lower district streets. Then came the faint echo of a scream.
And silence.
He hesitated only a second before grabbing his coat. The air outside was cold and heavy, the ground slick with metallic dew. Lights flickered in the mist as he ran toward the sound, heart pounding—not from courage, but from the strange certainty that whatever had fallen was connected to him.
As he reached the street corner, he saw it—an alley bathed in violet haze. The walls pulsed faintly, like breathing stone. At its center lay a crater no larger than a doorframe, steaming faintly. Inside it, a sigil burned—ancient, shifting, written in light rather than ink.
And above it hovered a small, trembling fragment of Ether—shaped like a wing, glowing faintly with divine residue.
Kairu froze. His vision blurred for a heartbeat as the world seemed to bend around him. The sigil pulsed, once, and the shadow of a thousand forgotten voices brushed across his mind.
"The vessel awakens."
He stumbled backward, clutching his head, his breath sharp and uneven. The sigil faded—but its mark remained, branded faintly into the pavement… and into the skin of his palm.
When he looked down, a faint, silver chain of light now traced itself across his hand, vanishing beneath his sleeve. His heart thundered.
Far above, the twin moons dimmed for a moment—
—as if the planet itself had noticed.