Chapter 1: Invitation

The last light of day bleeds from a sky clouded with smoke and ash. The sun is hanging low, a dying ember in a burnt landscape. What remains of a great amphitheater is in ruin—its proud stone structure cracked and crumbling. The stands are scorched along with its once-glorious banners. Fires still lick at broken columns, casting short, flickering shadows over the charred battleground.

As ash falls like snow, soft and slow, a young man crawls through the corpses and rubble alike. Blood streaks down his temple, mingling with the soot on his face, and his once-shining gladiatorial armor is battered and blackened. Every movement of his is agony. His left leg drags behind him, bruised and useless, but still, he claws forward with ragged breaths.

Behind him, the earth trembles with each thud of a step. Towering, monstrous legs—thick with hair and coated in grime—advance through the haze. The young man doesn’t look back. Instead, he removes the dented helmet from his head and tosses it aside. His sword follows, clattering uselessly onto the stones. He leaves them behind like a man shedding the last of his hope.

The legs halt. There’s a pause, ominous, with the sound of deep breaths, then a pair of grotesquely large hands descend from above and pluck up the discarded gear with unnatural delicacy.

From somewhere behind, a voice pierces the smoke, “let’s go!”

The young man keeps moving—pulling himself toward the shattered remains of what used to be the arena’s stage. The ornate platform is split and scorched, barely standing. Upon it lies the crumpled body of an older man, dressed in robes that carry the look of knowledge and command. He looks to be in his sixties—his white beard streaked with ash and blood, his eyes are closed and his chest still.

Red particles rise from the older man’s body, evaporating into the air like fireflies. The young man reaches him and gathers the lifeless figure into his arms, shaking with pain and desperation he pleads, “Professor... Professor, please, please wake up. Come on, wake up! Professor.”

Silence.

The professor’s head lolls, unresponsive. The young man lets out a hoarse scream—raw and animalistic. It’s a cry not just of physical torment, though his injured leg pulses with pain, but of something far worse: the breaking of a bond, the loss of a mentor, a father figure, a friend.

***

We soar above a breathtaking landscape, where nature reigns in perfect harmony. Lush forests stretch out in all directions, their canopies gently swaying in a warm breeze. Rivers, glinting like ribbons of silver, weave through meadows and valleys where crystal-clear lakes rest in serenity. Herds of strange and wondrous creatures, some feathered, some bearing exquisite hides all graze peacefully under the golden sunlight.

Jiva is seated at the top of a mountain, her bluish-grey skin is gleaming like polished stone, as she looks down on the splendor of her world. In her heart she says, “My world was once perfect.”

The image shifts, ascending, until the vibrant world falls away, replaced by the vast, endless night of space. In the center of the void float five planets, suspended like jewels in a velvet night. Each is unique, their surfaces glimmering with life: oceans and continents alike. Though they are planets like Earth, they look elevated and exotic.

Until, like a creeping rot, shadows begin to spider across their surfaces. At first they are faint fissures—mere hairline cracks on these worlds but then they spread, slow and inevitable, blooming and clawing into the crust of each planet. Like a sickness. Like a curse.

Suddenly, light erupts, radiant, blinding and holy.

Above the infected worlds, a colossal figure materializes. A bearded man, ancient and incomprehensibly vast. His robes flow like solar flares; his eyes are galaxies. In one hand, he holds a scepter of light, and with a solemn wave, he extracts the shadows, ripping them from the five ailing planets. The dark mass coils and writhes in his palm, a pulsing black sphere of corruption.

With a gesture of immense power, the god encases it in energy, his light pressing in around the darkness, sealing it. Then five swords materialize and descend. Each blade is forged of a different sacred metal: one like liquid gold, another opal etched with constellations, one carved from crystal, another green as emerald, the last shimmers like a living sapphire.

They pierce the glowing orb, embedding themselves around the darkness. Then they twist—click—locking the darkness, in a circle of finality. Jiva continues her monologue, “When it was made, the Creator captured the darkness and banished it using the five fundamentals... and left them in our charge.”

Now children laugh and chase each other beneath an endless blue sky, their laughter carrying on the wind. The land is now beautiful and vibrant. White clouds stretch lazily above them. There is no fear here, only peace. Only joy.

Until—

Dark motes begin to rise from the grass. At first, barely visible—harmless, like dust. Then more. And more. The environment begins to dim with them.

The ground beneath the children’s feet pulses once. Then again.

High above, in the endless black of an unreachable space, the orb of light—once radiant, once sealed—trembles.

Fine cracks spread across its surface, like fractures on marble. Its light flickers. Jiva’s monologue continues to echo, “but time passed, and the laws the Creator left us were forgotten... and the darkness was unleashed.”

With a sound like thunder cracking across creation, the orb shatters. Its fragments scatter into the void as the dark mass inside unfurls like smoke released from an oven. It spreads—thick, hungry, relentless—reaching outward in every direction.

The wind howls across a dead landscape, once a thriving land, now reduced to dust and ruin. The sky is a sickly hue, the ground split with fissures that emit a faint red glow. At the edge of a broken ridge stands JIVA. She is a warrior cloaked in a flowing mantle. Her eyes are fierce, her grip tight around a magnificent trident, its blades humming with power.

Behind her, lines of soldiers from every realm stand at attention: armored and resolute. Dwarves with rune-carved axes, elves with intricate longbows, beastmen in armor of bone and hide. They are bruised, bloodied, but unbroken. Jiva’s voice echoes far and wide, “I fight to restore what we’ve lost—using my Fundamental. With the collective might of the five realms, we march upon the dark forces that threaten to consume our world.”

From the shadows, the enemy emerges.

A horde of creatures—twisted, malformed, their eyes burning with hellish light. They charge forward with unearthly shrieks. Jiva swings her trident at the horde.

Water explodes outward from it, obliterating the first “wave” in an instant.

But the ground splits wider beneath her feet. Dark rays beam up from the abyss, and from them, more creatures pour forth—larger, darker, more furious. “But still they advance. So, I call upon you—great warriors from our Creator’s world...”

Around her, the wounded warriors stir, beings of every race. Their trembling hands reach toward their weapons, and they rise.

Above, riders descend on winged steeds, their armor inscribed with sigils from an ancient time. They land beside Jiva. Weapons flare to life, glowing with the raw power of the Five Fundamentals. Jiva’s voice swallows the battlefield, “Kings... queens... answer our call and enter. Take up your swords and vanquish this evil from our paradise.”

With a deafening roar, they charge—

Until.

The fantasy fades—dissolving into pixels.

The image of the battle dims as it shrinks back on the monitor of a laptop. On it, the words Epic Realms flash and the trailer ends before cutting to a live talk show. Cheers and applause echo from the laptop.

It is seated on a bed, surrounded by a little mess—books, clothes, a headphone. ARAMIDE, a girl of 17, scans the room, looking for something. While she searches, the talk show on the laptop continues to echo, “History will be made at the opening of Epic Realms,” the show host declares with a smile.