---
In the city of Hanseong, an unnatural quiet had fallen.
The throne room of Gyeongbok Palace was a ruin, a tomb of broken bodies and shattered stone. But outside its breached walls, the city itself was still, unaware of the silent massacre that had taken place at its heart.
Slowly, painfully, the city began to stir.
The palace guards, the ones Alaric had slammed to the ground with his Vulcan ability, began to wake up, one by one. They pushed themselves up from the cold marble floors, their heads throbbing, their armor dented and askew.
"Huh?"
"Ughh..."
"...What... happened?"
Confusion was a thick fog in their minds. They remembered responding to an alarm, a commotion. They remembered a sense of overwhelming force. But the fight itself? It was a blank space, a missing piece of time. They looked around at their fallen comrades, at the destruction, with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
And then, the world lit up.
A brilliant, silent flash of golden light erupted from high above, so intense it obliterated the night, turning the sky into a sheet of pure, blinding radiance. Every cloud in the heavens vanished, vaporized in an instant.
The people of Hanseong, those who were awake, looked up, their hands flying to their faces to shield their eyes from the impossible light.
Then came the sound.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
It was not a sound that could be heard with the ears alone. It was a sound that was felt, a deep, soul-shaking concussion that vibrated through the very foundations of the earth. The ground trembled violently, not like a natural earthquake, but with the sharp, brutal shock of a colossal impact.
Windows shattered across the city. Roof tiles rattled and slid to the ground. The great palace walls groaned, hairline cracks appearing in the ancient stone.
Panic erupted.
"What the hell!?"
"Are we under attack!?"
"Jenjang!" (Damn it!)
"Are the gods... angry?"
People poured out of their homes into the streets, screaming, running wildly, their earlier, enforced calm shattered by a primal, cosmic terror. They pointed towards the sky, their faces pale with awe and fear.
But most of them, after their initial panic, simply stopped. They stood in the middle of the trembling streets, staring up at the heavens, ready to accept their fate. What could a mortal do against the wrath of a god?
---Space---
The explosion was silent, a beautiful, terrible flower of pure energy blooming in the void.
The fused Apples of Eden, their immense, corrupted power finally unleashed, detonated with the force of a small star. For a few brief, glorious seconds, a new sun burned in the darkness, its golden light washing over the distant, blue-and-white marble of the Earth below.
As the initial blast faded, it left behind a breathtaking spectacle. A vast, swirling nebula of golden energy, an aurora of impossible beauty, spread out across the vacuum of space. It shimmered and danced, filaments of light twisting and weaving like cosmic silk. It was majestic, magnificent, a sight no human had ever witnessed.
But in the very heart of this celestial artwork, where the explosion had been most intense, something remained.
A single point of fire.
It was a tiny, defiant spark of crimson flame, burning alone in the cold emptiness. It flickered, almost died, then flared with a sudden, impossible life.
Slowly, deliberately, it began to grow.
It drew in the residual golden energy of the aurora around it, feeding on the raw power of the dead artifacts. The spark became a flame, the flame became a bonfire, the bonfire became a raging, white-hot inferno.
The flames were wild, chaotic, yet held a strange, beautiful harmony. They swirled and danced, coalescing, taking shape.
From the heart of the fire, a form began to emerge.
It was the naked body of a man, forged from the very essence of the flames. His skin was flawless, glowing with a soft, internal light. His muscles were perfectly defined, not with the bulky mass of a brute, but with the lean, powerful grace of a god of war. His hair, a brilliant platinum blonde, floated around his head as if underwater, each strand a flickering tendril of white fire.
He hung there in the center of the inferno, surrounded by the silent, majestic beauty of the golden aurora, the blue sphere of the Earth a distant backdrop. He looked like a newborn deity, a God of Fire taking his first breath in a universe he now seemed to command.
Slowly, his eyes opened.
They were no longer just blue. They were the color of twin supernovas, swirling with an inner fire, holding the light of the cosmos within them.
He looked around, at the silent stars, at the beautiful, terrible nebula he had created. He looked down at his hands, at the body born from his own eternal rebirth. He looked at the distant, fragile world he had just saved.
A single thought, clear and certain, echoed in the silent expanse of his mind.
A single word, whispered into the void.
"I'm alive..."
---
People poured out of their homes into the streets, screaming, running wildly, their earlier, enforced calm shattered by a primal, cosmic terror. They pointed towards the sky, their faces pale with awe and fear.
But most of them, after their initial panic, simply stopped. They stood in the middle of the trembling streets, staring up at the heavens, ready to accept their fate. What could a mortal do against the wrath of a god?
Within the ruined throne room, a grizzled General of the Royal Guard pushed himself to his feet, his head spinning. He barked orders, his voice hoarse, trying to bring some semblance of order to the chaos.
"Get up! On your feet, you fools! Assess the damage! Headcount, now! I want to know how many are still breathing!"
His men, still dazed, scrambled to obey. They began moving through the wreckage, checking on their fallen comrades, their faces a mixture of confusion and fear.
"Jang-gunnim!"
The General spun around. A subordinate, a young officer, was running towards him, his face pale. He was carrying a woman in his arms, her body limp, her reddish-brown hair fanned out against his armor.
"Jang-gunnim! (General!) I found a woman near the King!"
"Huh?" The General strode over, his eyes narrowing as he took a closer look at the unconscious figure. Her features were sharp, foreign. "Wait... she looks like a westerner..."
"Yes, Jang-gunnim," the subordinate replied, holding the woman tightly. "Is she an envoy from the western countries?"
"Why are you asking me that!?" the General glared, his patience worn thin by the night's impossible events.
"Ah... sorry..." The subordinate smiled wryly. "Ah, by the wa-"
He was cut off as he noticed his fellow soldiers suddenly stopping, their faces turning upwards, their mouths falling open in awe and terror.
"Huh?"
The General looked up as well.
"What is that?"
"A comet?"
"A shooting star?"
"Wait... isn't that..."
"Shibal... isn't that coming towards us!?"
A point of brilliant, crimson light was descending from the heavens, growing larger and larger with terrifying speed. The soldiers who had just picked themselves up from the floor began to scatter, shouting in panic, convinced this was the final, divine blow.
But then, the impossible happened again.
The "comet" began to slow down. Its furious descent eased, the fiery trail it left behind dissipating until it was hovering, motionless, just ten meters above the highest, shattered floor of the palace.
The crimson light faded, revealing its true nature.
"Wait... that's not a comet..."
"That's a man!"
And they were right. It was a man, floating in the air as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He was tall, impossibly so, with long platinum-blonde hair that seemed to catch the first faint light of dawn. He was dressed in a fine white shirt, dark trousers, and a magnificent crimson coat that billowed gently around him, untouched by gravity.
It was Alaric Jonathan Kenway.
He had retrieved a fresh set of clothes from the storage seal on his shoulder during his descent, a small act of vanity in the face of cosmic events.
Alaric looked down at the scene below, at the ruined palace, at the terrified soldiers, his expression unreadable. Then, he descended, his boots touching the floor of the highest remaining level of the throne room with a soft, silent thud.
His presence alone was suffocating. Every soldier froze, their fear so palpable it was a physical force. He was a giant among them, a being who had fallen from the stars.
Alaric ignored them. His gaze swept across the room, finally landing on the young officer who was still holding Caroline. He began to walk forward, his steps slow and deliberate.
The soldier carrying Caroline felt his breath catch in his throat. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe, pinned in place by the sheer pressure of the approaching man's stare.
Alaric stopped directly in front of him. He didn't speak. He simply lifted his hands slightly, a clear, commanding gesture. Give her to me.
Without a second thought, without conscious control over his own limbs, the soldier obeyed, carefully transferring the unconscious woman into Alaric's waiting arms.
Murmurs, quiet and terrified, rippled through the assembled soldiers.
"Is the woman his wife?"
"Who is he?"
Alaric gently cradled Caroline, her head resting against his shoulder. He looked back at the crowd of soldiers, his face twisting into a mask of pure annoyance.
He yelled, his voice booming through the ruined hall, his Korean perfect and laced with a cold fury.
"Geu yeo-ja neun nae sachon ya, i gaesaekki deul-ya!" (She's my cousin, you sons of bitches!)
The soldiers stared, their shock compounding. He spoke their language. Flawlessly. The man who fell from the sky, who commanded such terrifying presence, was not just some foreign demon. He was something far more complex, and far more frightening.
Alaric, his annoyance spent, could only sigh and look up through the hole in the roof at the slowly brightening sky. 'How long did it take for me to resurrect? Since it's almost morning here, it should be night time back in Pennsylvania…'
The crowd watched him, a thousand questions burning in their minds. How did he know their language? How did he come from the sky? Who was he?
A few of the braver officers, perhaps spurred by duty, opened their mouths to ask, to demand answers.
But the moment the first syllable left their lips, the man holding the woman simply… vanished.
One moment he was there, a towering, crimson-coated figure cradling his family. The next, there was only empty space, the faint scent of ozone, and a profound, echoing silence.
"...What..."
"...What just happened?"
"...Am I dreaming?"
"...Yeah... we're all just dreaming right now..."
.
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