Chapter One: The First Cry
The world was like a cage—vast enough to make you believe you were free… but never wider than the boundaries of blood.
The wall surrounding the city of Ontalis stretched twenty kilometers in every direction, made of black stone that shimmered under the sunlight as if it swallowed the light itself. No one had seen it being built, and no one dared climb it. Only the elders whispered that the wall wasn't there to protect them from the outside—but to protect the outside from them.
Kain was fifteen. A lean young man with sharp eyes, he didn't believe in old tales. Yet he heard them every night from his mother, who always told him:
> "When the horns sound, don't look back… Run, Kain. Run until your legs give out."
He never understood those words… until that day.
On a crisp autumn morning, the first cry rang out.
It was deep… wounded… unlike any human scream or animal howl. As if the earth itself bled through that sound. And then, the wall trembled.
For the first time in centuries… it cracked.
People poured out of their homes, faces tense, eyes scanning the sky. Then the horns sounded—three broken notes, heard by every soul in the city, even the deaf.
Mothers screamed. Children ran. Doors slammed shut.
But Kain… he stood frozen, as something massive began to emerge from the crack in the wall.
Fingers—long, scorched—forcing their way in.
A soldier shouted, "They… have returned!"
But Kain didn't run.
Because he heard the voice inside his head:
> "Kain… be the next call… be the doom that wakes the sleeping."
Then his left eye glowed red—
And the wall collapsed completely.