From Ash, We Build
Kairo Veldt was just another man lost in routine — a quiet job, a quiet life, and dreams that never left the blueprint stage. As a safety manager at a woodworking shop, he spent more time watching others build than creating for himself. But one ordinary morning, the world changed.
Without warning, reality fractured. His workplace dissolved, time froze, and a single word echoed through his soul:
Create.
Kairo awakens in a vast, untamed land — a place without cities, without history, without even a sky he recognizes. Others have arrived too, dazed and disoriented, drawn from different lives by something unseen. There is no instruction. No guide. Only a strange structure standing in the middle of an open field: a stone pillar called the Job Stone
One by one, the Job Stone assigns each new arrival a role — Fighter, Pathfinder, Builder — based not on choice, but on some buried truth in their hearts. When Kairo is named Builder, a simple chisel appears in his hand. And in that moment, everything changes.
What begins as a struggle to survive — crafting shelter, foraging food, navigating wild terrain — soon becomes something larger. Kairo starts to build not just tools and structures, but order. Systems. A way forward. He earns trust, enemies, and influence. But with creation comes conflict. Others seek to lead, to control, or to destroy what’s being built. And beyond the visible dangers of the land — orcs, beasts, even intelligent creatures — lies a greater truth: this world is reactive. It remembers. It grows. It punishes weakness, and rewards legacy.
As new “waves” of arrivals appear, each starting with nothing, Kairo must choose what kind of world he’s building — and whether it’s meant for everyone, or just those strong enough to shape it.
But the more he builds, the more his memories slip away. Names. Faces. Even the feeling of home.
What remains is the instinct to craft, the chisel in his hand… and a vision etched into his soul:
A world worth living in. A world built by human hands.
