Chapter 1: The Boy Without a Shadow
The sky was bruised with shades of purple and gray, a color it only wore when something was about to change.
Beneath that dying sky, a boy crawled through the skeletal remains of a forgotten city. His fingers, scraped and scarred, rummaged through piles of rusted metal, broken stones, and twisted roots. Every piece he touched was worthless to most—but to him, it was hope.
His name was Kaen.
Born with no Eclipse Mark on his back, he was considered Shadowless—a cursed fate in the world of Auraterra, where every child was born with a sigil tied to the ancient relics of power known as the Relics of Ecliptica. These sigils were everything: identity, fate, strength, future.
Kaen had none.
In a world where strength defined worth, he was nothing more than a ghost. Not hunted, not praised—just ignored.
A cold wind howled through the crumbling towers. He pulled his threadbare cloak tighter and continued digging through a collapsed stairwell.
"Hey, garbage rat!" a voice barked from the alley behind him.
Kaen froze.
Three figures emerged from the mist, clothed in ash-colored uniforms stitched with glowing emblems—the Academy elites. Their leader, a broad-shouldered teen named Turo, grinned while twirling a length of iron chain in his hand.
"What are you scrounging for this time? More scrap to build your imaginary glory?" Turo sneered.
Kaen said nothing. He kept his head down and resumed his search.
"Still pretending you belong in this world? Still dreaming you'll awaken some great power out of pity?" Turo stepped closer, each word heavier with mockery.
Kaen didn't flinch. He had heard it all before.
But fate, cruel as it was, had a strange sense of timing.
The ground trembled.
A low hum rose from beneath the rubble—unnatural, ancient, alive.
Then—BOOM!
A violent pulse of energy exploded beneath Kaen's feet. Dust spiraled into the air, and a strange red-black light surged through the cracks. The other boys stumbled back, coughing and panicked.
"What the hell is that?!" Turo shouted.
Kaen turned slowly. Amid the rubble, something hovered—a sphere the size of his fist, glowing with pulsing veins of gold across an obsidian surface. It floated toward him like it had been waiting centuries just for him.
And then—
> "At last…"
"You've returned to me, bearer of ruin…"
The voice wasn't heard—it was felt. A whisper inside Kaen's bones. A memory that didn't belong to him.
Without understanding why, he reached out. The sphere met his fingertips, and the world shattered into black.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer in the ruins.
The sky was torn velvet, stitched with lightning. Oceans flowed upside down. Mountains drifted in the sky like islands.
A realm between realms.
> "Welcome to Nexveil."
The voice returned, clearer now. Kaen looked around—no sun, no ground, no horizon. Just a surreal landscape that pulsed with forgotten history.
From the mist, a figure emerged—tall, cloaked, wearing a featureless mask etched with countless ancient runes.
> "You have touched a Fractured Relic. One that no chosen dared to bind."
"You should not have survived. And yet, here you are."
"Why?"
Kaen stood slowly, his breath visible in the cold air of this strange world.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But… I've got nothing to lose. So if you brought me here for a reason—tell me what I have to do."
The figure tilted its head. "Bold. But boldness is not strength. Archeflare must be earned."
"Archeflare?" Kaen asked.
The figure extended its hand. A weapon materialized—a blade half-consumed by flame, half-frozen by ice, locked in endless conflict.
> "The Archeflare is not power. It is belief made real, a weapon forged by what drives you. But power here demands a price."
"Are you ready to pay it?"
Kaen stared at the weapon. His hand trembled as he reached for it.
He remembered every punch, every insult, every night he slept hungry, every name he was never called—brother, friend, student, son.
"Yes," he said. "Take what you want. Just give me the strength to change it all."
As his fingers closed around the weapon, the world roared.
A torrent of memories not his own flooded his mind—wars fought in forgotten ages, voices crying in languages he didn't understand, creatures too vast to exist.
The blade ignited with a blaze of black fire, and Kaen screamed as something ancient tore into his soul.
Back in the real world, his body levitated, eyes glowing with a faint ember-red light.
Turo and the others watched in paralyzed horror as the ruins behind Kaen burst into flame. The sphere was gone. In its place, a mark burned onto Kaen's back—a crescent eclipse surrounded by shattered chains.
He fell to his knees, gasping. He was bleeding. Crying. Laughing.
For the first time in his life, he felt seen. The world had spoken to him. Chosen him.
But the last words of the masked figure echoed in
his mind—
> "Power does not make you a god. It reveals what kind of monster you truly are."
End of Chapter 1