Prologue: The Forgotten God
The sky wept blood the night he was born. Crimson streaks stained the stars, and the moons—three of them—hid their faces behind a veil of storm clouds. The village nestled beneath the cliffs whispered of omens, of gods long angered and retribution long overdue.
In the shadow of the spire, two figures ran. His mother, draped in silver silk, cradled him against her chest. His father, sword drawn, whispered prayers to gods that would never answer. The air thickened, weighed down by the presence of something unseen but felt in the marrow.
The child did not cry. He stared at the sky with eyes far older than his form, as if challenging the heavens to break him.
"He carries a flaw," his father said, voice trembling. "They will come for him."
His mother kissed the child's forehead, her tears falling into his hair. "Then they will forget."
The gods descended in fire. Pillars of light, cloaked in wrath, shattered the ground beneath their feet. His parents' screams joined the wind and were swallowed by silence.
But the child remained. The flaw burned within him, an ember untouched by divine flame. One by one, the gods turned their gaze to him—and, as if the world itself blinked, they forgot.
The boy was erased from the ledger of fate. Yet, even in their forgetfulness, the gods sensed a ripple.
And ripples, in time, become waves.
The classroom window overlooked the dividing wall—the invisible boundary that separated the Væstren Kall from the Azhmarak. Beyond that wall, spires of iron and glass stretched skyward, etched in shadow and flame. On this side, marble halls gleamed beneath golden banners, each inscribed with the crests of noble families who bent knee to the gods.
Eirian leaned back in his chair, boots crossed at the desk. The weight of the teacher's stare lingered on him longer than the rest of the class. He was used to it.
"Eirian," the teacher called, lips pressed thin. "Since you find today's lesson dull, perhaps you'd enlighten us on the significance of the Fourth Reckoning?"
Murmurs rippled through the room. Eirian glanced up, meeting the gaze of his peers. To his right sat the heirs of the Væstren Kall, garbed in robes of white and blue, their paths carved in stone from birth. To his left, the Azhmarak students wore no colors. Their flaws marked them—tattoos of shimmering ink that crawled along their skin like living veins.
He belonged to neither side.
And yet, he straddled both.
No, he was something else entirely.
"The Fourth Reckoning?" Eirian said slowly, as if tasting the words. "That's when the gods butchered the world and told us it was salvation."
Silence.
The teacher's knuckles paled as she gripped her lectern. "Careful with your tongue, boy."
Eirian smiled, though there was no humor in it. "Apologies. I meant to say it's when the gods culled the 'unworthy' and gifted power to those they could bind."
The Azhmarak students grinned. The Væstren Kall heirs scowled.
Beyond the two factions, though, sat a handful of others. Neither marked by flaw nor bound by profession, these students were whispered about in hushed tones—the Askarï, 'The Untouched.'
They bore no crest, wore no badge of allegiance. The gods turned blind eyes to them, and the world followed suit.
Eirian had no marks upon his skin. No divine brand, no flaw coiling in shadow. But the Askarï's gaze flicked to him, recognition flickering in their eyes.
They thought him one of theirs.
The wall outside the window seemed to pulse with life.
Eirian could feel it—the faultline between two worlds, and the flaw that beat within his chest, unseen by all but himself.
A flaw the gods could not erase.