Eldoria was never to be changed. It was a land of stern rules, old magic, and a balance of millennia. And on the night the Rift opened, everything shatters.
Aeron never considered himself special. He was just a simple blacksmith's apprentice in the quiet village of Eldrin, far from the grand cities of the kingdom. But fate rarely asked permission before turning a life upside down.
A night of mist thickened the air as Aeron lugged the last batch of horseshoes from the forge, his arms sore from a long day's work. He stopped near the well in the village square to take a deep breath—when the world shuddered. A strange hum filled the air, the kind that set his bones on edge. The sky above twisted, bending unnaturally as cracks of violet light ripped through the heavens.
Then came the scream.
Not human. Not anything natural.
Aeron just barely turned in time to see a rift open in the center of the village square—a jagged wound in reality itself. From its depths spilled a wave of shadowy creatures, their eyes glowing with eerie blue fire.
Chaos erupted. Villagers ran, screaming for their lives. The creatures moved unnaturally fast, their clawed limbs tearing through wooden stalls and stone walls alike. Aeron's heart pounded. He had no weapon—only a hammer. But as one of the creatures lunged at a fleeing child, instinct took over. He swung.
The hammer connected, and something strange happened. The creature recoiled, not from the impact, but from a pulse of silver light that erupted from the hammer's head.
Aeron barely had time to process it before a voice echoed through his mind.
"You have been chosen."
He gasped, clutching his head as memories that weren't even his rose in his mind—visions of ancient battles, of warriors wielding heavy weaponry infused with raw magic, of a quest that had begun long before he was ever born.
Then, without warning, as violently as it had started, the tear pulsed and sucked itself in. The creatures that hadn't been killed were yanked back into the void, and the village sank into eerie silence.
Aeron stood there, hammer humming in his grasp. His days as a lowly blacksmith's apprentice were over.
And his travels had only just started.