Prologue – Echoes of Yesteryear

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I had never questioned those words. Until now.

They pressed into him—into flesh and bone, through limbs that had once sacrificed beyond their limit; through skin that caught the faintest winds; through eyes and ears that bore witness to both sides of a world unlike his own.

The time to choose is nigh, young man.

The fate of many worlds rests on your shoulders.

Fulfill your promise, for now is the time.

For thousands of years, I have waited. Now, go forth—

The voice dissolved into silence. The words slipped away like smoke, but the sound lingered—deep, familiar, as though Raiden had forgotten something vital.

And yet he remembered his name: Raiden Rymboven. He remembered his parents, his family, fragments of his childhood. His mother’s tale of his birth echoed louder than the dream: how a thunderstorm had torn through Laudenfel on the night he was born. How prophecy named such a child the Calamity, doomed to bring misfortune.

He still remembered a night from his sixth year, crouched beneath the stone steps as older children pointed and jeered. Curse-born, they called him, laughing as thunder rattled the shutters. One boy spat at him. Another whispered that he would “bring storms until the roof caved in.” He hadn’t understood why people despised him so much. To hate someone for being born seemed illogical. Strange. Yet the whispers clung to him like damp cloth.

From the moment he could walk, prejudice shaped his earliest memories.

At fifteen, he had left. Not in rebellion, nor escape, but to enroll in the Altherian Royal Academy. Four years later, the whispers followed, sharper than any blade.

And through all that, one curse remained undefeated: waking up on time.

“Dammit!”

Raiden bolted upright, heart hammering. His bed was buried beneath books, scrolls, dirty clothes, and wooden plates. Randall, his meticulous, tidy roommate, wasn’t in the room—but Raiden could already imagine his reaction. Randall would scold him for the mess, probably shake his head at the chaos. Then, sighing, he’d quietly begin stacking the books, folding the clothes, bringing some semblance of order back.

Randall never raged at the disorder. He just disliked it, the same way he disliked seeing a sword left unpolished or a meal eaten half-finished. Order calmed him; disarray itched at him. Raiden, meanwhile, seemed born to disrupt it.

Raiden grimaced and promised himself he’d tidy up before nightfall.

Sunlight streamed through the dormitory windows. The hour was already past midday.

He scrambled into his uniform: linen tunic, hose, doublet, and belt. He pulled on his scuffed leather boots, tightening the laces with a frustrated grunt. His cloak lay on the floor, still stained from yesterday’s misfortune. He left it.

The stairwell groaned under his hurried steps, boots thudding against stone worn smooth by generations of students. As Raiden descended, the air shifted from the musty warmth of the upper dorms to the cooler breadth of the entry hall.

Its ceiling vaulted high, banners of House Lynthor draped from beam to beam—the Legendaire House that had birthed the High Arcane Art. At the center of the hall stood a towering bronze statue: Lord Regnalion Lynthor, robes flowing, staff raised toward the heavens. Torchlight gleamed off his metal face, austere and unyielding.

Every morning, students crossed beneath his gaze. Some saluted. Some sneered. Raiden usually passed with his eyes lowered.

Whispers rose as he moved past groups of students gathered at the hall’s edges.

“Arkantez colors.”

“Then that’s him…”

“The Calamity boy.”

“Why’s he still allowed here?”

He kept walking, collar tugged high, trying to let the words slide off. They didn’t. They never did.

On the stairwell landing, a sharp collision nearly sent him sprawling.

“Sorry!” A high voice. Then: “Oh—Raiden.”

He turned, irritation flaring. “Ophel.”

“I said sorry, alright?”

Ophelin Harg—his friend, rival, and irritant in equal measure—stood smirking. Her uniform bore the amber crest of House Zoven, firm and unyielding, like the earth it represented. The Zovens were famed as protectors, shield-bearers, and stalwart guardians. The Hargs, their blood-kin, were the point of the spear—always pressing the attack while the Zovens held the line. Ophelin carried both legacies in her stance, half shield and half hammer, grinning as if daring anyone to test her.

“You never look where you’re going,” Raiden muttered.

“And you never wake up when you’re supposed to,” she shot back.

They traded barbs as they crossed the grounds together, sarcasm masking a familiarity no one else would dare show Raiden. She called him lazy; he called her muscle-brained. She laughed; he scowled. Beneath the words ran an ease only years of friendship—or rivalry—could forge.

By the time they reached the training field, their insults almost felt comforting.

And then their paths split.

His instructor’s judgment was swift: twenty laps for arriving late. The track stretched three hundred meters around.

Raiden ran.

Leather boots pounded the dirt, lungs burned, sweat poured. The sun pressed down like molten iron. Around him, classmates readied for mock combat: wooden blades clacked, shields thudded, groups sparred in circles, calling out drills.

Some glanced at him with amusement, voices carrying across the field.

“Still running? Pathetic.”

“The Calamity can’t even finish a lap.”

“Don’t pair me with him—curse might rub off.”

Each jeer cut sharper than the stitch in his side. He gritted his teeth and forced his legs forward.

Sweat stung his eyes. Breath tore at his chest. His body screamed to stop.

Keep going. Just one more.

Above, clouds gathered—dark, heavy, unnatural for a summer sky. Between ragged breaths, he noticed them. The thought pierced him: Storms again… always storms.

By the seventeenth lap, his vision blurred. By the eighteenth, his legs trembled like reeds. Nineteenth—his chest heaved, lungs clawing for air. On the twentieth, his knees buckled. The ground rushed up, and darkness swallowed him.

The world turned inside out.

One moment, dirt scraped against his palms, lungs wheezing for air. The next, silence. He stood in a boundless expanse where azure sky bled into white horizon, weightless as if reality had thinned. The suddenness left him spinning, as though he had been flung from his body.

His heartbeat still thundered in his ears, then dimmed, muffled, as if swallowed by a tide. Sweat cooled unnaturally fast on his skin. The rowdy clamor of the training field vanished. Only silence remained—oppressive, endless.

The voice returned, reverberating through the void.

The world of Shanjinn is running out of time. You can no longer linger.

Raiden staggered, disoriented. His voice cracked in the silence: “Who are you? What are you talking about? What promise?”

No reply. Only proclamations.

You made a promise—to end the calamity consuming this world. To finish what you began. Six thousand years ago, your life was too short. There was too much yet to prepare. But now, the time is ready.

Raiden froze. Six thousand years? His stomach turned cold.

“Me? What promise? What are you—” His words broke, half a shout, half a plea.

Confusion roared inside him. None of it made sense, and yet the words pressed against something buried deep.

Then came a different sound: a chime, soft and ringing, from behind.

Raiden turned.

A sphere of light hurtled toward him. It struck his chest—
and shattered into him.

Agony followed. Muscles seized, head splitting, voices crashing like waves inside his skull. Memories surged, layered upon his own, overwhelming, unstoppable.

Faces blurred. Landscapes he had never seen burned into him. Blades clashing, towers falling, oceans boiling.

And then—

A shadow cut across a sky of white and blue.

A great eagle, its wings gilded in sunlight, feathers glinting like molten gold. Its beak shone silver, sharp and regal, its cry splitting the heavens. The image seared into him with a weight unlike the others, as though it belonged to him, not borrowed from some unknown past.

Before he could grasp it, the vision shattered.

The pain crested, broke—

—and he woke.

The dormitory ceiling loomed overhead. He was back in bed, breath shallow.

Randall sat beside him, brows furrowed with concern. Ophelin leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching with forced nonchalance.

“You’re awake,” Randall said. “Finally. Three days, Raiden. You’ve been out for three days.”

Raiden’s throat tightened. He looked at them—recognized them—yet felt estranged, as though his memories were no longer his own. They were real, lived, but distant, like someone else’s story he had borrowed.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ophelin asked, frowning.

He almost told them. About the voice, the storm, the visions. About the golden eagle. But the words stuck in his chest. They wouldn’t believe him. He barely believed himself.

And even now, behind his eyes, the eagle’s cry echoed—shrill, piercing, as if daring him not to forget.

So he stayed silent.

And that silence marked the beginning of everything.