Season 1 — Prologue
Prologue — The Price of Power
There was no wind in the Valley of Black Threads.
Only the silence of stillborn prayers.
The ground bled with the remnants of a sealed ritual — burnt sigils, crushed bones, threads of molten silver curled like veins under cracked obsidian soil. A circle of thirteen stood, cloaked in tattered silence, their shadows flickering despite the absence of light. One by one, they began to fall.
Not by blade. Not by curse.
But by the weight of the vow.
At the center of the ritual, a boy knelt — skin pale as moonstone, eyes dark enough to drown in. He didn't tremble. He didn't weep. The world around him was breaking, and he… remained.
His hands were stained with the ink of Shēath, the forbidden script used only in the deepest oaths. Lines of binding contracts shimmered across his arms, chest, neck — living words crawling beneath his skin like snakes searching for escape. His heartbeat was silent, as if afraid to make a sound in the presence of what he had become.
"Do you accept the final clause?" The voice was not spoken. It slithered through his mind — cold, genderless, ancient.
The boy raised his gaze.
He was no older than fifteen. But his eyes were not young. Not anymore.
"I accept," he said.
A pause.
Then the voice whispered:
"Even if it means you will never be loved?"
"Even if your soul corrodes?"
"Even if your name is forgotten in all records of light?"
He didn't blink.
"I never asked to be remembered."
The circle ignited in blue fire. One by one, the cloaked figures disintegrated — not into dust, but into ink, letters, fragments of vows fulfilled. Their deaths were payment. Their purpose: completed.
As the fire reached the boy, it licked his skin but didn't burn. Instead, it was drawn into the words etched upon him — absorbed, consumed. A howl erupted from the valley, but it wasn't human. It was the scream of reality folding. A contract sealed between a soul and the laws that govern power.
And in that moment, the System was born.
Not a mechanical construct. Not a game interface.
But a living curse. A bound god. A judge.
Somewhere far beyond that valley — across oceans of salt, over mountains whose peaks tore the clouds — a child was born with two shadows. One wept. The other waited.
And the world forgot what had been buried that day.
Until now.
End of Prologue.