The sky fractured first.
A silent crack, faint as the gasp of a dying ember, spread across the heavens. Faint threads of iridescent light spilled through, painting the clouds in hues both beautiful and ominous. The people of Eldryn thought it a divine omen, a sign that the gods watched over their struggles. They prayed, they feasted, they celebrated.
But the light didn't heal the world—it consumed it.
From those fractures came the Voidstorms, churning tempests of shadow and fire that turned the proud cities of Eldryn into graveyards. The great nations, bound by greed and power, splintered into warring factions, each vying for control of dwindling resources. The Citadel of Aether, once the protector of balance, turned its eyes inward, hoarding its secrets and power for an unseen purpose.
And amidst it all, the Forsaken—the outcasts—fought to survive in the wastelands left behind, cursed with fractured Resonances that tethered them to the aether but left them broken.
Kael Ardyn had never known a world without fractures.
The boy knelt in the red dirt of the Expanse, his breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. Around him, the bodies of scavengers lay still, their lifeless forms half-consumed by the creeping corruption of Void Crystal shards. The stench of death mingled with the acrid tang of burning mana in the air, and Kael's hands trembled as he gripped the shard embedded in his side.
His vision swam. He'd been reckless. Too slow.
"Focus," he growled to himself, though his voice sounded distant, hollow. His fingers tightened around the shard's jagged edges. Pain flared, white-hot and unyielding, and he bit back a scream.
Through the haze of agony, a voice reached him.
"You cannot save them, boy."
Kael looked up, his bloodied face twisted in defiance. The figure standing before him was a shadow of twisted elegance, its form cloaked in flowing black robes that shimmered like oil. Its face was obscured, but Kael could feel its gaze—cold, piercing, and ancient.
"What do you know about saving anyone?" Kael spat, his voice cracking.
The figure tilted its head, as though amused. "Everything. And nothing. You cling to broken ideals in a broken world, but you will fail. Just as they did."
Kael's chest tightened. He didn't need the shadow to explain who it meant. He could still hear the screams of his parents, the deafening roar of the Citadel's flames, and the suffocating weight of powerlessness that had choked him as a child.
"I won't fail," Kael said, forcing himself to stand despite the burning in his side.
The figure stepped closer, its presence suffocating. "And if the world itself is your enemy? If it breaks you, piece by piece? Will you endure, or will you shatter like all the others?"
Kael's hand brushed against the Void Crystal shard, its corruption pulsing faintly beneath his fingertips. He could feel the resonance within it—wild, chaotic, and alive.
For a moment, the boy hesitated. Then he gritted his teeth, driving the shard deeper into his wound. Aether flared around him in brilliant, defiant arcs, and the figure recoiled.
"I'll shatter the whole damn world if I have to," Kael said, his voice steady, his eyes burning with a resolve that eclipsed the pain.
The figure paused, then let out a low, bone-chilling laugh. "Then let it begin."
As the shadow dissolved into the storm, the ground beneath Kael's feet began to shift, the fractured sky above screaming with raw energy. The Expanse quaked, and for a fleeting moment, Kael felt the weight of something monumental settle on his shoulders—a weight he neither understood nor asked for.
The boy turned his gaze to the horizon, where the faint outlines of Citadel spires pierced the storm, and the fractured sky glimmered with ominous light.
A storm was coming. And Kael Ardyn would be at its heart.