The Kingdom of Asteria pulsed with a storm waiting to break.
Every inch of the kingdom—its marble towers, bustling markets, and even the quiet alleys—buzzed with anticipation. The Grand Sword Assembly had returned, and with it came warriors from across the vast continent of Dummer. Blades would clash. Aether cores would burn. Lives would be rewritten.
And among the crowd, two names whispered louder than any trumpet.
Seraphina of Asteria — the Moonblade, first daughter of the imperial sword.
She was forged from discipline and sharpened by blood.
In the palace courtyard, beneath a sky laced with rolling thunderclouds, her blade danced. Not like a soldier's. Like something divine.
Aether surged from her core, visible in faint silver streams that glimmered around her skin. Her opponent, a decorated knight with two decades of battle, was driven to his knees by a single stroke of her blade—clean, merciless, beautiful.
"Again," Seraphina said, her voice cold as winter steel.
The knight hesitated, swallowing fear. Even the marble beneath her feet began to crack, unable to contain the pressure of her refined Aether. The ground trembled—not from arrogance, but sheer control.
She wasn't just strong.
She was inevitable.
Far beyond Asteria's polished splendor, in the deathly embrace of the north, stood the Hunger Clan—where strength was earned, not inherited.
Alder Hunger, the son of the brutal north, stared down his father within the clan's bone-forged hall.
"You will fight in the Assembly," the patriarch commanded. "It is time our name to be remembered ."
Alder's gaze didn't flinch.
"I don't fight for names."
Behind him, the cold winds howled through broken mountain peaks. His Aether core beat like a black sun—dense, vicious, ancient. Where Seraphina's Aether shimmered like moonlight, Alder's burned like hunger itself.
He stepped into the arena not to win.
But to devour.
When they met—Seraphina and Alder—it was not a duel.
It was prophecy made flesh.
The skies above the colosseum cracked open with lightning as both prodigies stood before one another, silent and still. Then—without signal or word—they moved.
Steel shrieked. Wind howled. The earth shattered beneath their feet.
Each blow rattled the bones of every spectator. Waves of raw Aether burst from their cores, twisting the air with power. Crimson arcs clashed with streaks of silver light. Stone pillars fell. Walls split. Rain fell upward.
Time blurred.
And when the dust cleared, they both stood.
Swords lowered.
Equal. Untouched by defeat.
A draw.
But no one cheered.
The crowd was silent—not from disappointment, but dread. They had witnessed two monsters who were not meant to exist in the same era.
They had not seen a climax.
Only a beginning.
And far beyond the eyes of the world, hidden beneath the shadowed canopies of an ancient forest—
A white-haired youth walked.
Blood splattered across his bare chest, arms, and face. In his right hand, he held something that resembled a severed human head—its expression frozen in terror. Several more heads dangled from the rope tied around his waist, blood dripping with every step he took.
In his left hand, he carried a long, weathered bamboo stick.
Each footstep was silent. Each breath—measured.
He did not rush. He did not hide.
The forest seemed to recoil around him, as if the trees themselves feared what walked beneath them.
His Aether core burned faintly—barely visible.
But the blood told a louder story.