The night sky hung heavy with the promise of change.The moon, low in the heavens, cast an ethereal glow over the Forbidden Forest. The air pulsed with a strange, otherworldly energy. Tonight, something was different. Something ancient was stirring—and the world was about to feel its tremor.
A crack in reality split the heart of the forest, a jagged scar stretching across the sky. It was a tear in the fabric of existence—a rift, woven by forces no mortal could comprehend. Lightning arced through the rift, its crackle echoing like a deep roar from the heavens. The land trembled. The sky split open. And from the tear, a figure emerged.
Vesperian.
He formed from the chaos itself, shaped not by human hands but by the swirling energy that birthed him. Snow-white hair framed a face that was both flawless and uncanny. His ruby eyes glowed faintly, shifting like molten lava. He looked human, but something was off. Something not meant to be.
Power radiated from his body, yet an eerie calm surrounded him—an absence of emotion that made him seem more vessel than man. It wasn't anger or sadness that defined him. No. It was something colder. Something older.
He stood tall, his feet sinking silently into the grass, the world seeming to bend around him. The air hummed with unnatural energy, and the moonlit forest shimmered strangely as he stepped forward. The very ground beneath him seemed to resist his presence, as if it knew—knew he was something unearthly, not meant to walk here.
His gaze swept across the darkened landscape, his expression empty, unreadable. The world felt so alien to him, yet somehow familiar, like the haunting echo of a dream. His very being hummed in tune with the magic that flowed through this land, an energy both foreign and deeply rooted within him.
This world felt both familiar and foreign.
From the rift's remnants, he sensed it—a fragmented energy, his own. But it was incomplete. It tugged at him, sharp like a splinter under his skin. Something was missing. No—someone.
A piece of him, torn away long ago when he was first created. Separated, severed. Yet still... connected. He could feel it out there, calling to him like a distant echo. A presence both alien and intimate.
He didn't need it. That much he knew. But with it—he would be stronger. More complete.
Still, that wasn't his concern. Not yet.
He had arrived with a purpose. One he couldn't fully grasp—but one that burned inside him like a whisper too faint to hear.
The air crackled with latent power. But it was the academy in the distance that drew his attention. Its silhouette rose like a shadow on the horizon, ancient and waiting. The gates of the place seemed to acknowledge him, humming softly, almost reverently. He could feel them, even from this distance—a force, sentient and alive, drawing him in like a moth to a flame.
Astralis Arcanum. The name whispered in the back of his mind, though he had never heard it before. A place of power, a sanctuary for those attuned to magic, martial arts, and the ancient arts of breathing styles. A place where his path might begin—or where it might end.
His feet carried him forward. Each step was guided not by thought, but by instinct—as though something within the academy called to him, resonated with the energy that pulsed within his core. Every breath he took seemed to synchronize with the hum of the world around him, his presence becoming a thread woven into the tapestry of this place.
As he approached, the iron gates creaked open on their own, the sound echoing through the forest. No one greeted him, but the gesture was clear. Welcome. Or warning. It didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered anymore. He had come this far. The answers waited beyond these gates.
The academy was unlike any other. The magical flora whispered of long-forgotten secrets, of ancient power still alive. Within those walls, answers waited. The energy inside him—shifting, unstable—needed a place to grow. To be understood.
Here, he might finally learn the truth: Why he had been created. Why he had been torn apart. Why he had been cast into this world, unfeeling and alone.
Far away, in a place untouched by moonlight and cloaked in silence, another pair of eyes opened.
He gasped—not from pain, but from absence. Something had shifted. A pulse he had never known he was missing now beat faintly in his chest.
His breath quickened as the sensation flooded his senses, filling him with an unfamiliar longing. The obsidian mist around him thickened, almost as though it could sense the shift. His skin prickled as his mind tried to comprehend what he was feeling. It was subtle at first—a whisper, a tug. But it grew stronger, sharper. A connection. A presence, far away yet close enough to send ripples through his being.
He sat up slowly, his surroundings hazy and unfamiliar. Crystalline structures loomed over him, whispering forgotten names. His fingers grazed the cold, jagged surfaces of the stone, and for a moment, he was lost.
A glimmer of recognition flickered across his face—not of a person, but of a presence. Something deep within him stirred, the connection forming like a spark in the darkness, his own soul's echo calling out to the one who was far from him.
"You've awakened," a voice murmured from the dark.
He didn't answer. He couldn't. He was listening, to something far beyond his immediate world. The pulse in his chest grew louder, more insistent. A tear in reality. A name. Carried through the echo of a soul.
Vesperian.
And though he didn't know why, he whispered back:
"...Brother."