PROLOG: A Golden Cage Over Hell
Orbis... A land abandoned by the gods.
That sentence surfaced on its own, floating on the surface of my consciousness before I even opened my eyes.
Pain was the first thing to greet me. A sharp throb at my temples, as if someone had just dissected the contents of my skull, taken the memories within, and stitched it back up with coarse thread. I groaned softly, forcing my eyelids open.
I expected a prison ceiling, or perhaps a dirty field hospital.
Instead, I was greeted by silent luxury.
The room's ceiling was high, adorned with intricate cornice carvings layered with real gold. A crystal chandelier—a Mana-Chandelier—hung in the center, emitting a steady, warm light, not the flicker of cheap neon.
I tried to sit up. My body sank into a bed that was too soft, covered in silk sheets as smooth as water. The air was cool, smelling of lavender and pure ozone, conditioned by magic circuits embedded in the marble walls.
Where is this?
I touched my head. No blood. I tried to remember my name, my parents' faces, or what I did yesterday. Empty. Only thick fog and pain.
I got off the massive bed. My feet touched the perfectly polished dark parquet floor. On the black Obsidian Valdor glass bedside table lay a crystal glass of water and an ID card.
I picked up the card. It was heavy, made of premium metal with a slowly blinking holographic chip.
NAME: WYNTER ASH$$$$STATUS: HIGH SENATE GUEST / PRIORITY ACCESS LOCATION: APEX TOWER - PENTHOUSE LEVEL
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"Wynter Ash," I whispered. The name felt foreign on my own tongue. And this status... High Senate Guest? If I were that important, why did I feel so hollow?
I walked towards the giant glass wall stretching from floor to ceiling. The heavy velvet curtains opened automatically, detecting my presence.
And the view beyond it stole my breath.
I was at the top of the world. Or at least, at the top of Zero Point City. From the height of this "Penthouse," the city below looked like a living yet dying tactical map.
My eyes swept the horizon, tracing the dividing lines of the three great districts that formed this city's face.
To the North sprawled the Iron Plaza, the domain of the Valdor Empire. The scenery there was hard and brutal. Black concrete buildings rose stiffly like giant tombstones, surrounded by never-ending industrial smoke—The Eternal Grey. Even from this height, I could see the red flashes from steel smelting furnaces and faintly hear the hum of never-sleeping war machines. It was a zone without color, where humans were forged into tools.
To the East, a painfully contrasting sight greeted me in the Neon Harbor, territory of the Aurum Republic. Purple and gold hologram lights pulsed wildly through a perpetually pouring artificial rainstorm—The Neon Monsoon. Glass skyscrapers reflected that light, hiding the squalor of the alleyways below where fates were traded as cheaply as peanuts. A beautiful yet toxic monument to greed.
Then my eyes shifted South, to White Avenue, the heart of Aethelgard Theodocy. Silent. Too silent. White marble streets stretched neatly between lush enclosed gardens and Gothic-style hospitals. No smoke, no neon, only a thin mist carrying the scent of soporific flowers. A forced tranquility, The Stagnant Spring, where purity was built upon a suffocating dogma.
Three different hells, separated by thin energy walls yet united by the same hunger.
But right in front of my window, splitting the view, stood The Great Tether. A giant black tower connecting earth and sky.
From this luxurious suite, I could see the giant transparent pipes coiling around that tower very clearly. Inside them flowed a dazzlingly bright liquid.
Ambrosia. Liquid gold.
The fluid moved upward, siphoned from the suffering of the three nations below, towards Aetheris—the island of the Gods beyond the clouds.
I touched my hand to the cold window glass. Here, in this comfortable room, I was safe. I was warm. I lived in luxury paid for with the blood of the people down there.
My brain worked on its own, cold and sharp. Analyzing without emotion.
5 Tons of Wheat = 1 Liter of Ambrosia.
Thousands of lives = One sip for the Gods.
That wasn't an offering. It was a Tax. Or worse... it was a Harvest. And the fact that I slept in this luxurious room meant I was part of that harvesting system. Or perhaps, its watchdog.
I stared at my reflection in the glass. Red eyes, messy black hair, the face of a stranger.
I didn't know who I was. I didn't know if I was good or evil.
And so it was... a being who knew nothing, who didn't even recognize the face in this mirror... yet ironically, I knew the single most tragic truth about this world.
That we were merely livestock waiting our turn.