The village of Loban was located within the territory of the Second Zealand Federation, which governed the continent of Zealandia. The Federation was divided into 13 regions, each ruled by a Prince, but each Prince controlled only a small portion of their territory. The remaining lands were governed by feudal lords, who collected taxes from the villages within their territories and paid taxes to the regional Prince. Loban was among the poorest of the 13 Federation regions. Therefore, the regional lord who controlled the village demanded very high taxes, which he used to pay the taxes demanded by the regional Prince. Otherwise, the Prince could remove him from his post and strip him of his status as a landlord. For this reason, the landlord, Sezan, increased taxes and pressured the people of Loban.
Grafet was a poor man living in the village. For many years he had made his living from his fields. But for the past two years, his crops had been rotting. One day, when he woke up, his neighbor Heley came to visit him. Heley was an old woman who earned her living by making leather-covered shoes. Heley began to speak at the door:
"Sezan wants you to leave. He said you have no right to stay in this village because you don't have the money to pay taxes. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do."
That day, Grafet left the village. If he resisted, he would certainly be killed. He couldn't even take food with him when he left. No one gave him any because everyone was already poor and hungry. They could barely feed themselves. After Grafet left, he walked for a few hours. As the sun was about to set, he found an abandoned tower. The door was broken off, and the walls were covered in moss.
He entered, and the first thing he saw was a spiral staircase leading upwards. On the upper floor of the tower were tools he had never seen before. Two walls of the room were also completely lined with bookshelves filled with books. One striking feature was a 25-centimeter-diameter hole in the roof that looked up at the sky, and beneath the hole, on a table, was a lens and an unknown, esoteric reflector. Grafet didn't dwell on these details. He continued to examine his surroundings. There was a bed against the wall and a toilet with a pipe that carried waste down to the bottom of the tower. Grafet slowly realized he could live here. He could meet all his needs inside. There were vineyards surrounding the tower and a river nearby. Besides, he was somewhat literate and had plenty of books to read for the rest of his life.
After a few days, Grafet had settled into life in the tower. He could now begin reading the books. These books belonged to the tower's previous owner. They generally contained technical and esoteric details that Grafet couldn't understand. What Grafet vaguely understood were the worlds said to be beyond the glaciers. There were many continents, countries, and peoples there. One of the books was about how the esoteric device on the table worked.
The description explained in detail how the device originally served a communication purpose and what conditions were required to activate it. Grafet was too lazy to bother with the device for a few days. What good would it do him? He was already living a perfectly normal life. What use would activating the device be? But his curiosity grew with each passing day. The most important catalyst for this was, of course, books. The world beyond the glaciers, new continents and races. These added fuel to the relentless fire of his curiosity. One day, Grafet decided to tinker with the device.
The exotic materials needed for the device to work were stockpiled in the lower levels of the tower. Presumably, the tower's previous owner had planned to operate the device multiple times. What happened to the tower's former owner remains a mystery. Grafet crafted the exotic materials by identifying which were which based on their descriptions in the books. He placed the materials next to the table and began arranging them according to the instructions in the book. The device consisted of concave and convex lenses and esotericly clustered hexagonal shapes of unknown origin. The lenses were arranged in different forms and patterns within the hexagons. At the very top was a final lens aligned with a hole extending from the roof. Grafet finally placed the materials. The book specifically stated that the device should be operated at night.
When night fell, Grafet began activating the device, following the instructions in the book. He placed the materials and waited. After about two minutes, a blinding light burst from the device. This light exited through a hole in the roof and formed a shape towards the sky. Grafet experienced temporary blindness, and when his vision returned, he realized the device had switched off. Grafet sat for a while to compose himself. After some time, he began to hear a humming sound from outside the castle. At first, he thought it was coming from his ears, but the humming sound was getting louder. Finally, when he looked outside, there was nothing remarkable. However, when he looked at the sky, he noticed a star moving. Looking more closely, he realized it wasn't a star, but an object. Grafet was shocked because he had never seen such a large object flying in his life. As the object approached, small details began to become visible.
The object was an ellipsoid, gray in color. Except for a square-shaped protrusion, it was completely smooth. The area around the object seemed to bend and drag along with it. The object stopped 3 meters above the ground, 15 meters south of the tower. Then the square protrusion slowly slid back down, and an open shaft descended from the object until it touched the ground. Grafet couldn't comprehend what he was witnessing. He was frozen in place. Humans fear the unknown. Grafet felt that fear to his very core. From the shaft descending from the object, a gray humanoid, resembling a grotesque, dried-up human body, emerged. The creature headed towards the tower. Grafet was frozen in shock. His fight-or-flight instincts were locked. The creature entered the room where Grafet was and pressed one of its fingers into the middle of Grafet's forehead, between his eyes. Grafet lost consciousness.