Elarion: the obsolete world (part 1: Reality Collapse)

Owen had spent years perfecting the delicate balance of not making life harder than it needed to be.

He wasn't lazy—just efficient. He didn't waste energy on pointless things, and he sure as hell didn't invite unnecessary trouble into his life. His daily routine was simple, structured, and entirely his own.

Wake up. Make coffee. Enjoy the brief silence of the morning. Walk to school without drawing attention. Get through classes with minimal interaction. Go to work, come home, repeat.

It was a system, carefully maintained and meticulously followed. Some people found comfort in chaos, but Owen thrived on predictability. The world was already complicated enough without adding personal drama to the mix.

He even had a financial plan—his parents worked abroad, sending him enough money to live comfortably, but instead of splurging, he saved. The goal? Study abroad next year. Every yen was accounted for, carefully budgeted. Daily expenses—rent, food, utilities, transportation—were covered by his part-time job. It was the reason he lived in a rundown apartment in a less-than-ideal neighborhood, where the streetlights flickered like horror movie props and the tap water had a distinct personality of its own. The cracks in the ceiling mapped out constellations he'd memorized on sleepless nights. The leaky pipe under the sink kept time like a metronome. Small sacrifices for a bigger goal.

And above all, he avoided drama.

No getting involved in other people's messes. No school gossips. No sudden life-altering decisions. Simple. Easy.

And then Lilith appeared.

The first cracks in his perfectly functional existence had been easy to ignore. A strange girl standing under a streetlamp? Not his problem. A chance encounter turning into a conversation he didn't ask for? Mild inconvenience, but whatever.

Then she transferred to his school. Annoying, but not life-changing.

Then she started showing up everywhere. Weird, but manageable.

Then she followed him home. Major problem.

And then, without warning, she stepped into his house and declared, with complete certainty, that they were now a couple.

"Now that you've invited me in, we are bound together. According to my world's laws... we are a couple."

That was the moment the cracks turned into a full-blown collapse.

At first, he did what any sane person would do—ignored it. Pretended it wasn't happening. Assumed she'd get bored and move on.

"Interesting. "

But she didn't.

Quiet mornings? Gone. She was always there, moving through his space like she belonged, as if this had always been her home.

Solo commutes? Also gone. Now, they walked together, her presence impossible to ignore, and people stared—not at her, but at them.

School, once a place where he could blend into the background, became a theater where he was unwillingly cast as the male lead. Everyone knew him now, or at least knew of him—the guy with the strange, beautiful transfer student who followed him like a shadow.

His last stronghold, his part-time job at the bookstore three train stops away, was the only thing she hadn't touched. Yet. He clung to those evening shifts like a lifeline—the single remaining piece of his carefully constructed routine that remained intact.

He had let it slide, had convinced himself it was temporary. That eventually, she would grow bored of whatever game she was playing and leave him alone. Return to her "kingdom" or wherever she really came from.

But the truth sat there, undeniable.

She wasn't leaving.

And one evening, as he stepped into his apartment and saw her sitting on his couch like she owned the place, something inside him finally snapped. The thin thread of patience he'd been clinging to for a whole week gave way all at once.

He dropped his bag, rubbed his temples, and exhaled sharply.

"Okay. Enough," he said, voice tight with frustration. "You're explaining everything. Now."

Lilith looked up at him, completely unfazed, like she had been waiting for this moment all along.

And then, with an eerie calmness that made the air in the room feel suddenly heavier, she smiled.

"Ah," she said, "so the time has finally come."

***

A long time ago, Elarion was not as it is now.

Before the towers, the cities, the kingdoms—before the first written word or the first spoken oath—the world existed in a state of raw, untamed chaos. Aether, the very essence of existence, flowed freely, shaping landscapes, molding life, expanding and contracting like a living thing.

But then came humanity.

They carved their names into the land, built monuments, raised cities, and imposed order upon the formless. They created systems—laws, magic, civilization—forcing the wild forces of the world into submission.

And the world pushed back…

No order lasts forever.

What was once stable began to decay. Reality, bent and molded for centuries to accommodate human ambition, started to reject them. Cracks formed in the sky. Entire cities disappeared overnight. What should have been impossible became inevitable.

Some saw it as a curse, an act of evil daemons. Others saw it as a correction.

There were those who believed that the world was simply reclaiming itself, unraveling the fabric of human dominion and resetting existence to its original, untamed form.

But the rulers of Elarion refused to accept this fate.

They turned to the ancient texts, the whispers of the past, searching for a solution. And they found it—a prophecy, buried within the oldest of records.

"When the land fractures and the skies bleed, summon the one who will mend what is broken. He shall come from beyond, where the weight of existence is light. But only in death shall he be reborn."

A hero from another world.

A soul plucked from distant lands, reforged by the cycle of life and death, born anew in Elarion's time of need.

But the method was not straightforward.

“The hero must first perish in his own world. By the hand of one from ours.”

Only then could he cross the boundary, only then could he fulfill his purpose.

But even beyond that—the hero could not be chosen.

No king, no scholar, no oracle could declare who he would be. No ritual could select him. No spell could force his arrival.

Only the hero himself could prove who he was.

By finding her.

Lilith's voice softened as she continued her tale, eyes fixed on something distant, something Owen couldn't see.

"I spent six months in this world. Six months wandering its streets, standing beneath its flickering streetlights, waiting."

Six months where no one so much as glanced in her direction.

She had walked among them—these people of a world so similar to hers, yet impossibly distant. She had stood in crowded streets, whispered to strangers, reached out, tried to touch.

Nothing.

No one saw her. No one heard her. No one reacted.

She did not exist.

At first, she had tried to rationalize it. Maybe it was an effect of the summoning, a delayed process before she could fully manifest. Maybe her presence would strengthen over time.

Days passed. Then weeks. Then months.

The realization crept in like a slow-moving frost.

She wasn't hidden. She wasn't invisible.

She was simply not there.

It was a cruel joke, really. Sent to find the hero—but unable to even exist in his world.

She could still feel hunger, exhaustion, the biting chill of night air against her skin. But the world itself denied her presence.

She had no shelter. No food. No warmth.

All she had was the ancient prophecy.

"The hero shall find you."

It was all she had to cling to.

So, she waited.

She found a place beneath the streetlamp—a single point in the city that she could return to each night, the only marker of her existence. A fixed point in a world where she had no footprint.

She had lost count of how many nights she stood there.

And then—

He saw her.

A boy, walking home in the dim light of evening. Black hair. An air of disinterest.

Owen Kyokai.

His gaze flickered toward her, then away—then snapped back.

And just like that, the silence shattered.

Lilith hadn't spoken, hadn't moved. But his eyes had locked onto hers, his brows furrowed in confusion. Not just a passing glance. Not just a trick of the light.

He saw her.

And at that moment, she knew.

It was him, the long-awaited future hero of Elarion and prince of Alaric.