Chapter One: A Spark in the Darkness
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Night had stretched over the remote village of Istra like a heavy black cloak, speckled with faint stars barely visible. The wind howled between the dry trees, as if warning of something not of this world.
Inside a small, worn-down hut near the edge of the forest, Rayen Kaur sat before his dim fireplace, staring into its flickering flames with eyes devoid of memories. He didn't know where he came from, or even who he was. He had simply awakened a year ago on the riverbank—wounded, and with a heart weighed down by emptiness.
He was about seventeen years old, with silver hair that sometimes covered his eyes, and garnet-colored eyes that burned with constant anxiety. Old burn marks covered his arms, but he couldn't feel them. The only pain he knew was the pain of not knowing himself.
And on that evening, just as he rose to put out the fire, he heard the whispers.
"Release me... I am within you..."
His limbs froze. He looked around quickly, but the hut was empty, save for him. The whispers came again, closer this time, as if they rose from within his chest.
"Who's there?!" he shouted, as the fire in the hearth began to glow with an eerie blue hue. The flame swayed, danced, then rose in a vortex toward the ceiling.
Rayen trembled, but instead of fleeing, he stepped closer. There it was... a flame unlike any he had ever seen. It glowed like the sky before a storm and emitted a humming sound, as if speaking to his soul.
Suddenly, the flame ignited and leapt toward Rayen, entering his chest directly. He fell backward, screaming and writhing on the floor, his veins glowing with a celestial blue.
Then...
Everything went still.
He opened his eyes. The fireplace was shattered, but there was no ash—only a complex, fiery sigil glowing on the floor, like an ancient seal.
A third voice reached his ears—a man's voice this time, deep and icy:
"The flame has awakened... The countdown has begun."
Rayen's heart trembled—not from fear, but from a feeling he had never known before...
A power rising within him, igniting something hidden in his veins.
Far outside the village, miles away, an old man with one eye gazed at the sky, which for a moment had flared with blue light before fading.
He muttered in a trembling voice:
"The new bearer is born... Damn that flame."