In the twilight of the mortal realm, beneath a sky split by twin moons — one of silver serenity and one of blood-stained flame — the world held its breath.
Varnaksha, the Eastern Ashlands, was a realm both ancient and unremembered, where the soil was scorched with the embers of fallen civilizations and the wind carried the whispers of forgotten gods. Here, amidst crumbling ruins and volcanic valleys, scattered sects and wandering clans lived in fractured echoes of glory. And somewhere far from the eyes of rulers and sages… a boy sat still at the edge of a dying forest.
His name — as yet unknown to the world — was Arin.
He sat on a jagged stone facing the horizon, where cinders floated like snowflakes. His robe was torn, singed by beast-fire, his left arm bandaged in dried herbal paste, and his back carried a broken sword — not rusted, but fractured along its soul vein.
Behind him, the sun had just bled below the horizon, casting the world into hues of ember and shadow.
"Another year," he muttered.
His voice held the weight of one far older than his sixteen years. It was a voice forged in silence — one that had spoken with ghosts, with hunger, with wind and steel.
A flicker of warmth brushed his fingers. A small flame danced in his palm, neither summoned nor created, but remembered — like a name long lost in the sea of rebirth. It twisted and curled, forming an outline of a flower he once saw carved on his mother's old comb: the Samsara Bloom.
He clenched his fist. The flame vanished.
"Even memory is fuel," he whispered. "And I'll burn it all if I must."
Unbeknownst to Arin, high above the dying trees, perched atop an ancient statue half-buried in ash, a presence stirred. Eyes the color of obsidian dawn opened — layered with a thousand years of waiting. It was not beast, nor god, nor ghost, but something caught between rebirths — something that once walked beside immortals but was cast down.
It watched the boy not with interest, but with recognition.
The wind shifted.
Arin stood. He turned slowly toward the horizon, eyes narrowing.
And there — like a pulse in the land — something stirred. A tremor beneath the earth. Not natural.
He knelt and touched the ground.
"...Formation array," he murmured. "Ancient. Still breathing."
Then, without hesitation, he stepped forward. Each step took him deeper into the ashen woods. Each breath drew in more of the burnt world. And yet, the air around him shimmered faintly — almost respectfully. For the world, cruel as it was, recognized its own — and Arin was no stranger to ruin.
He didn't know the name of the path he was on.
He didn't know that across oceans and mountains, seers in divine temples had begun whispering the same word in broken tongues:
"Whisper… of Samsara."
And so it began.