The rain had not stopped for hours.
Each drop echoed through the alleyways of Sythra City like tiny needles falling on rusted steel. Waylen pulled his thin hoodie tighter around his shivering body, trying to ignore the dull pain in his ribs. The fight—or more accurately, the beating—he had just survived at school still throbbed under his skin.
He was sixteen. Weak. Powerless. Forgettable.
In a world where every citizen was measured by their strength, Waylen barely qualified to exist.
People awakened magical affinities by age twelve. Fire, wind, lightning, shadow—even rare elements like void or time. Some families passed down sacred weapons, others trained from birth. But Waylen? He awakened nothing.
And everyone knew it.
"Freak," someone had called him today. Again.
"Just drop out already."
Waylen didn't fight back anymore. What was the point?
His footsteps carried him up the old mountain trail outside the city. No one went there anymore. The elders spoke of a shrine to the cursed, abandoned after the great war. Just stories. But tonight, the silence of the woods felt like comfort.
And then he saw it.
Tucked between two massive stone cliffs stood an ancient structure—half-collapsed, overgrown with moss, and forgotten by time. Statues lined its path, faces broken and eyes hollow. The air felt different here—heavier. Charged.
Drawn by instinct—or something deeper—Waylen stepped inside.
The shrine's heart was dark, silent, and soaked from the leaking roof. Vines grew between stone tiles, and shattered offerings littered the floor. But at its center stood a cracked pedestal… and something pulsed inside it.
A sword.
No—not just a sword. A sealed blade, its hilt hovering above the stone, wrapped in chains etched with glowing runes.
Waylen's breath caught. It was beautiful. Thin, curved slightly like a fang, the metal shimmered with a dull red glow.
He reached out.
Suddenly, a whisper echoed in his mind.
"Unworthy... yet untouched by power… perfect."
His hand made contact. The chains shattered in a burst of crimson light. Energy surged through his arm, and the world around him blurred. Symbols ignited along the walls, and wind howled inside the shrine.
Waylen collapsed to his knees, gasping.
The sword pulsed once.
> "You are weak, boy. But I am not."
"Together, we rise. Together… we break them all."
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