The river carried the night in silence.
Only the broken cloth remained on its bank, soaked through, whispering the story of a boy who had fallen and vanished. The house above it was still, its windows hollow eyes staring into the dark.
Inside, two figures stood in the cellar, their faces lit by the flickering glow of a single candle.
The father's fists trembled around the scrap of bloodstained cloth. "He's gone." His voice cracked between disbelief and fury. "The child… he drowned."
The mother's lips curled into a grimace, but her eyes were bright with something sharp and dangerous. "No. He did not drown. He escaped. The Darkness would not take him so easily."
For a moment, silence pressed thick between them. Then the mother's expression hardened, her whisper trembling with a reverence that bordered on fear.
"If he has survived… then he is no longer ours. He is something else."
The candle sputtered, throwing shadows across the walls — long, twisting, almost serpentine.
From the darkness above, unseen, something stirred. A presence ancient and terrible, wrapped in silence, watching. Its gaze lingered not on the house, but far beyond… following the path of the boy who was no longer a boy.
Ace Dragon walked into the night, carrying the weight of knowledge, the voice of a dragon, and the beginning of a destiny that would one day pit him against the eternal darkness.
The shadow smiled in the unseen void.
The cycle had begun.