In the beginning, there was freedom.Or so the stories whisper half-forgotten dreams of an age when the heavens were open and the earth still breathed.
A thousand years ago, the world of Eirath was said to stretch without end: mountains of crystal that sang with spirit light, seas of silver mist that concealed drifting cities, skies where dragons carved paths of flame through the dawn. In that ancient world, one's rise was earned through will, effort, and soul alone. The heavens rewarded those who reached for them.
But that world is gone.Now, ascension is no longer earned. It is assigned.
In the Empire of Vareth, every child is born beneath an unseen weight a sigil burned not on flesh, but on the soul itself. They call it the Root Seal. It binds, measures, and defines. From the moment a child can stand, their spirit is charted, their potential recorded. Their lives march toward a single moment The Ceremony of Ascension.
Before the Council of Fate, beneath banners of gold and incense-thick air, each soul is judged. The Council "grants" them their next step their rank, their destiny, their limit.Those who pass ascend.Those who fail... simply vanish from the climb.
The world celebrates this cycle.Cities erupt in parades; families kneel and weep with pride. The people call it divine order the sacred will of the Heavens.Yet beneath marble sanctuaries and towers of light, another truth hums in the dark.
Far below the capital's radiant heart lies the Spiritual Engine a vast, living construct of metal, glass, and pulsing rune-light. It does not rest. It breathes. It hungers. Day and night, it draws in energy from every cultivator across the Empire.Every ceremony feeds it.Every breakthrough fuels it.Every death oils its gears.
The cultivators believe they ascend through personal strength.In truth, they are components grown, harvested, and fed to the machine.Those who question the order, who dare to cultivate outside the sanctioned path, vanish without trace. Their names are erased, their families silenced, their graves forbidden.
Yet in the cracks of forgotten ruins, within mountains the Council no longer maps, whispers persist."The true path cannot be granted. It must be taken."
No one remembers who first built the System whether it was the work of mortals, gods, or something that enslaved them both. The Spiritual Engine has run for so long that even the stars have forgotten its first spark.
But now, something has gone wrong.The Engine stutters. The Heavens flicker.A deviation has appeared.
A boy has fallen from the sky untouched by the Root Seal, unmarked by Fate, a soul with no thread in the tapestry of Eirath.He is not bound.He is not counted.And in his existence, the gears begin to scream.
For his coming will not merely break the chain.It will unravel the very meaning of cultivation itself.