WebNovels

Chapter 1 - PROLOGUE: WHAT REMAINS OF LIGHT

The night wind slipped through the narrow veins of Valerium City, carrying whispers that did not belong to the air.

For most, it was only the sigh of darkness.

For Elara — it was the voice of a wounded world.

Her steps echoed softly against the wet cobblestones. The hem of her ash-grey cloak brushed through puddles that shimmered with reflections of the Aurora Fluxalis above — streaks of violet and emerald weaving across the sky.

In Primera, such light would have sung — a hymn of harmony and creation.

But here, in Tres Layer, it was silent.A mute remembrance of a world that had forgotten its own melody.

Among the murmurs of the wind, Elara heard it.

Not the sound of breath or footfall — but a resonance of something once alive.

An Echo.

She followed its tremor into a narrow alley, where the light no longer dared to linger.There, crouched in the corner, was a child — no older than eight — eyes wide, fixed upon empty air. But Elara knew. Before the boy loomed something unseen: a fractured soul, severed from its flesh.

"Go away…" the boy whispered, voice trembling. "I said go away!"

Elara stepped closer.

The air thickened around her — as if the world itself held its breath.

From the darkness, a shivering mass took shape — a shadow pulsing with grief, its form half woman, half nightmare. An Echo Entity, born of pain too deep to heal.

Small, yes — but saturated with sorrow potent enough to kill.

"Easy now," Elara said gently, her tone slicing through the chaos like a bell through fog. "I can help you."

She raised her hand. The scar that coiled along her arm — the faint blue fissure of an Echo-Scar — began to glow.A relic of what she once was.A reminder of what she had lost.

She drew a slow breath, then whispered the old Elyndran invocation, a language forgotten by humankind.

"Resonance Purification… Lumina ve Aethra."

Light blossomed from her palm — not the scorching blaze of fire, but a gentle radiance that embraced rather than consumed.

Resonance flowed outward, tracing invisible lines through the air, unweaving the knots of anguish.

Elara did not force the Echo away. She listened.

Agony flooded her body like molten glass. The ruined muscles along her back — where wings of light had once unfurled — spasmed with old pain.

Still, she endured.

"It's all right," she whispered. "You are not alone."

The Echo shuddered, its silent scream breaking. Slowly, its darkness softened into the faint silhouette of a woman — eyes tender, smile trembling. A mother's farewell.

Then, like dew before dawn, it dissolved — scattering into golden motes that drifted into the night.

The air grew still again.

The boy's breath hitched. "She's… gone?"

Elara knelt, steadying herself with one hand. "No," she murmured. "She's finally at peace."

He nodded — a fragile motion — and ran, leaving only silence behind.

Elara slumped against the wall, chest heaving. Her hand sought the pocket of her cloak, finding a small shard of Flux Crystal.She clasped it tight. Raw energy surged into her veins — liquid fire beneath her skin.Pain was her price. It had always been.

Yet beneath the ache, she felt something else.

A trace — faint but deliberate.

This Echo had not been born naturally.Its grief had been twisted, sculpted into weaponized despair.

Someone had done this.

The Weavers of the Forgotten Pulse.

The name surfaced like poison in her mind. A sect that spun pain into power, sowing trauma to harvest energy from suffering.

If they had reached Valerium… then the city's heart was already infected.

Elara pushed herself upright, gripping her staff for balance.

The air trembled once more — but this time, not with corruption.

A different vibration touched her senses.

Gentle. Clear. Untainted.

A Resonance — pure and unspoiled, the first note of a long-forgotten song.

Her gaze turned east, toward the city's luminous heart.

It was not the pulse of an adult soul.It was young. Untrained.Untouched by the world — yet vast enough to shake its very foundations.

Elara's breath caught.

"So," she whispered to the wind, "someone still listens to the world."

A weary smile cracked her pale lips — fragile, yet real.

She drew her hood up once more, her figure melting into shadow.

Above her, the Aurora Fluxalis shimmered anew, as though bearing witness to a decision that could not be undone.

The world had broken her wings.

But even broken wings can still reflect the light.

And that night, in the heart of Valerium City, a small flicker of light marked the beginning of something that would one day change the fate of Tres Layer forever.

More Chapters