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Chapter 1 - Prologue – The Scar and the Compact

Part I - The Legend

 Long ago, the skies broke and the earth screamed. Rivers turned black, forests burned, and mountains split asunder - this was the First Scarring, when the myths descended upon Tilbara. Some say it was not beasts nor gods, but memories given flesh, testing humankind.

 The clans of Tilbara fought one another as much as they fought the storm. Villages fell to ash. Brothers raised blades against brothers. It was an age where even the strongest walls could not shield a child from sorrow.

 But when all seemed lost, the leaders of the clans gathered upon the ruins of a shattered pain. There, amid the smoke and blood, they forged the Compact of Ash and Dawn - a vow to unite. To seal the torn ley-lines with stone and steel. To raise Stations not only as homes, but as anchors, binding Tilbara together against the chaos

Durama, the fortress heart.Evalia, the crown of peace.Harama, the cradle of the next generation.Shinganatsu,the mirror checkpoint.Amakatsu,the northern wall.

 

 Each station was more than walls. Each was a promise that Tilbara would never again let war or myths consume it.

 Yet, across the northern sea, not all believed in balance. Those who hungered for forbidden knowledge, those who believed myths were not to be sealed but wielded, were cast out. They crossed the jagged waters and claimed the black cliffs of Kurogane. There, in exile, ambition hardened. If Tilbara vowed to preserve, Kurogane swore to conquer.

 Thus, two islands were born as mirrors of one another: Tilbara - balance. Kurogane - ambition.

 

Part II - The Dream

But history is not remembered only in books. It lingers in dreams.

He didn't know whose blood stained his hands.

It wasn't fresh, but it was warm. As if the memory had just happened - again.

 The trail beneath his feet was old, lined with cracked bells and the shattered bones of names long lost. The trees above did not move with the wind. They moved with whispers.

"You've walked this path before."

A child's voice. Or maybe a ghost's.

 He turned, but there was only fog. And mirrors. Broken, nailed into the trees like warnings. In each reflection, a different version of himself stared back. One younger. One burned. One smiling with teeth that weren't his.

"You can only take the trail once," the voice said again. "But you'll forget you took it."

The sky was stitched with theater curtains now. Red. Endless. Waiting to fall.

He dropped the blade in his hand, but it stayed in the reflection.

And the boy - no, the king - watched the curtain above ripple, and whispered:

"If I ever forget who I was… let the world end before I become what they wrote."

 

Part III - Seeds of the Present

 Generations passed. The scars of the First Scarring became the foundations of the present age. Children were sent to the Shinobi Academy in Harama, to learn not as rivals of clan against clan, but as brothers and sisters. To fight as one, if the skies ever broke again.

 Among those children were two boys, close as brothers though born of the same bloodline: Ken Hiroki and Kabe Hiroki.

 And far away, in Evalia, their loved ones - Esyara Suwada, Ken's quiet strength, and  Hanazel Miyara, Kabe's steadfast companion - watched over their children: Hamori, Nai, and Hanabi, the "next seeds" of Tilbara's fragile peace.

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