It was just a simple prophecy, it all started from a vague information. A prophecy circulating among the temples, a piece of news that seemed too ordinary to be believed. The Goddess herself speaking directly to the clerics? News of fruitful hope and light? Such pronouncements were often dismissed, gaining traction only when they aligned with the agendas of those who governed the land – those who sought to control the narrative, the people, and everything in between. This was just another seemingly insignificant prophecy, not until it began to unfold. Across this vast harsh world, unknown humans began to appear, with their significantly unconventional clothing, distinct beliefs, personalities, tragedies, them materializing from brilliant white lights that transported them to this new realm.
The world of Terraldia, as legend has it, was born from the concept of divine wills: the luminous vision of the Goddess of Light and the somber decree of the God of Darkness. The Goddess, radiant and brimming with hope, filled the world with vibrant life, her creations teeming with simplicity, harmony and beauty. The God of Darkness, whose domain was rest and finality, shaped death itself, creating a cycle of endings that gave meaning to her creations. For eons, a delicate balance prevailed between them. However, the evolution and arrival of ingenious life shattered this tranquility. Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Beastians, Orcs – all succumbed to their primal instincts but much more grand and dangerous than other creatures, driven by greed, hatred, and a relentless pursuit of power. War erupted, spreading like wildfire. Disgusted by their actions that threaten the balance of the Terraldia, the God of Darkness saw these sentient life to be a *flawed creation* of her wife, the God of Darkness unleashed his demons, intelligent creatures from his essence of dark magic that corrupt and decay, with these demons comes with unleashing a wave of monstrous creatures, corrupting faunas to bring about the annihilation of all sentient life. This folklore, though connected to the legend of the *Barren War* of the fabled demigods, was always just a folklore, a bedtime story, a tale of inspiration, a foundation of knowledge, nothing more and nothing less. However, due to that recent news, it may soon have a new chapter. With monstrous creatures multiplying rapidly and laying waste to the land, it was prophesied that the Goddess of Light defied the laws of the universe, reaching across the stars to summon a last resort – the humans of Earth.
This event, the *Emergence*, would come to be both a mythic salvation and a harrowing catastrophe. In an instant, every human of the different world—billions of lives—vanished from their homes and appeared scattered across Terraldia with their knowledge of language adapted to this world andmemories intact, except for one. But the beauty of the Goddess's vision, summoning outworlders to defeat demons and monsters had masked the grim reality of her intervention. The vast majority of these "Outworlders" found themselves plunged into a world infinitely more hostile than their own. Despite the fact that the modern world of Earth was older than the societal progress of Terraldia, this new world is much larger with its lands wider than theie continents and a population that outnumbers these newcomers. Few would survive.
The lucky ones landed in cities or villages where they were met with cautious, if exploitative, hospitality. But most Outworlders awoke in desolate wildernesses, surrounded by deadly monsters or treacherous terrain, deserts, tundras, and harsh landscapes they could not understand. Without weapons or the ability to summon their fabled *cursions*—a said to be powerful distinctive weapon forged from the very essence of their souls as manifestations of their experiences, emotions, and innate potential, but without the proper knowledge, these fragile newcomers were easy prey. Terraldia's monsters, honed by millennia of divine and demonic conflict, slaughtered them by the thousands in their first days. Bodies torn apart in forests, eaten alive by enormous monsters, or killed by the natural cruelty of the environment. It's even difficult to imagine, you're a new summoned human of an unknown place and being hunted immediately by a monster, perhaps a giant spider cave, chasing you in the dimmed light and gnawing you with its fangs as large as your head.
While those who relied on modern medicine—individuals hooked to life-saving machines, carrying conditions treatable only by Earth's technology—succumbed almost immediately. The elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill were left to fend for themselves in a world that had no place for weakness. Some were abandoned by other Outworlders desperate to survive; others were captured by outlaw Terraldians, enslaved, raped, abused, or outright killed for being burdens.
Even those who awakened near civilization found no assured refuge. It is true that they will be revered as "saviors" of this world, and yet as new humans who are lost and not knowledgeable, some Terraldians and other native races—Elves, Dwarves, Beastians, and even the warlike Orcs—viewed the Outworlders as curiosities at best and threats at worst. Exploitation became their common fate. In kingdoms ruled by authoritarian regimes, Outworlders who are too weak were probably stripped of their belongings, taxed into servitude, or pressed into labor. Among the devout, they were declared tools of the divine or cursed interlopers, depending on the faith of the region. The few Outworlders unlucky enough to emerge in lands dominated by the God of Darkness's sects were sacrificed to dark rituals or *hunted for sport*.
Racism and xenophobia flourished in this new world. To the most of native races, the Outworlders—fragile, ignorant, and unconnected to Terraldia's natural magic—were little more than an invasive species. Elves, proud and ethereal, looked down on these chaotic beings who lacked harmony with nature. Dwarves, too rigid on their ways dismissed them. Orcs viewed them as weaklings unworthy of survival. Beastians saw them as worse kinds of greedy humans. Even among Terraldians, if not used as a soldier or not taken to be strong enough for an expensive education, Outworlders were often forced into indentured servitude, or hunted by opportunistic slavers as they are all summoned scattered and alone.
As days turned to weeks, the Outworlders may began to form factions among themselves, but even these were fraught with strife. Difference of morality, cultural divides, and the sheer terror of their situation may drove many to infighting. And those who tried to share Earth's advanced knowledge—medicine, engineering, science—were often dismissed or persecuted by Terraldians who saw their ideas as heresy or impractical, no men in power would foolishly trust these newcomers of this world despite them being instruments of the Goddess of Light. Few had the resources to turn Earth's brilliance into tangible survival.
And then there were the expected cursions—told to be the blessing of the Goddess of Light, the mystical weapons believed to be made from an Outworlder's soul, distinct as themselves with variety of unfathomable abilities, summoned through their own magic. Imagine an outworlder in a modern clothing of a school uniform, summoning their cursion instantly by their will, formed by a luminous light for a second and dropped to his hand, a sword of intricate design and mysteriously flaming, but it's easier said than done. These tools of destiny were the one advantage gifted to the Outworlders by the Goddess of Light, but they did not manifest immediately. Days and weeks might pass before an Outworlder learned to summon their cursion without even knowing they have the ability to do so. By then, most were already dead especially with the lack of refined study to these personal weapons that required much time. The few who survived long enough to grasp their power were still hindered by their ignorance of Terraldia's magic. Without training or guidance, even the strongest cursions were little more than crude weapons in inexperienced hands.
Yet amidst the carnage and despair, a handful of Outworlders endured. Some adapted with the little urgent days, learning the ways of Terraldia with cunning and resilience. Others forged uneasy alliances with sympathetic natives or managed to activate cursions of extraordinary power. It is truly a painful irony that the Outworlders, tasked with helping others against the forces of the God of Darkness, are suffering at the hands of the very people they are trying to save.
The Emergence was not just a dawn of heroes that the Goddess of Light envisioned. It was also crucible of suffering, where millions perished and only the most resourceful, the most ruthless, or the most fortunate clawed their way to survival. It was not just a story of salvation but of tragedy—a tale whispered by campfires and carved into history by blood and loss. In the Emergence of Terraldia, the Outworlders were not saviors. They were prey. And the world watched, waiting to see if any could rise from the ashes.
And now we have here Millow Aurum, an outworlder thrust into what could only be described as the cruelest twist of fate in the Emergence. No warm welcome, no guiding hand, and no recollections of his past personal memories—just the shadowed depths of a silent forest. And he's with a figure standing of unexpected chances and seemingly the worst possible case scenario, it's a man of white skin, white eyes, and black horns and clothing, a man who may instantly kill him and end his misery of this strange and new world. Using the most powerful demonic magic he could ever use, his demon dominion, the Tribunal of the Damned, it's Neroth Aconite, the Demon Lord of the Withered Souls.
And yet Neroth did not, when asked in the game what does Millow think of the dark, his answer intrigued him.
*"It's not a savior or an enemy. It's a mirror, showing us what we're too afraid to face. Without it, and without its light, we are all blind minds and would never be the minds that we are now."*
Millow's answer, deepens the complexity of why Neroth finds him interesting and spares his life. The key lies in the profound duality and insight Millow conveys—something Neroth has never encountered in his endless encounters in years. As a demon, it's his purpose to serve the God of Darkness, to eliminate sentient life, to fight against outworlders as they are the Goddess of Light's forces. With the outworlders around him at the time, he's determined to fulfill his duty, yet he bent his game into a chance of inquiry for a mysterious purpose.
Millow's words rejected simplistic binaries, striking at the heart of an assumption that most beings, mortal or divine, seemed to accept without question. By his answer, "It's not a savior or an enemy. It's a mirror," he dismissed the shallow dichotomy that defined the eternal conflict between light and darkness. In doing so, he proposed an unsettling notion: that darkness was not an inherently malevolent force but a reflective one, exposing truths that light could not illuminate. For an outworlder—a creature summoned by the Goddess of Light to stand against the God of Darkness and its agents—this perspective was revolutionary. Millow's insight disrupted the comfortable narrative Neroth had relied upon: that sentient beings were irredeemably flawed, unworthy of existence.
As Neroth heard this, something unfamiliar stirred within him. He, who was born of the God of Darkness's chaotic essence, had always seen himself as a pure agent of destruction, a harbinger of despair and finality. Yet Millow's words suggested that his existence—like darkness itself—might serve a greater purpose. They implied that darkness was not merely an instrument of annihilation but a force that shaped understanding, carving meaning from the void. This notion was alien to Neroth and profoundly unsettling. For the first time in countless cycles of slaughter, someone had not reacted to him with fear or defiance but with a quiet acknowledgment of his essence. Millow had not denied Neroth's purpose but had, in his own way, validated it.
When Millow described darkness as a "mirror," he inadvertently cast Neroth into its reflection. As a demon, Neroth embodied the ultimate paradox: a sentient being created to destroy other beings of sentience. His existence was a contradiction, and Millow's words forced him to confront that contradiction in a way he never had before. If darkness was a mirror, then what did it reveal about Neroth? Was he merely a tool of destruction, or was there something deeper—a meaning to his existence beyond the annihilation of others? The question lingered, an unspoken doubt cracking the cold certainty that had defined Neroth's purpose. That crack, faint and fragile, was enough to stay his hand.
Millow's unique perspective further set him apart. Most outworlders clung to their memories, beliefs or desires of Earth to make sense of their new reality, some will adapt to Terraldia's dogmas if survived. They approached darkness with the baggage of their experiences, viewing it as a curse, an adversary, a useful ally, or a force to be conquered. Millow, however, seemed untethered by such preconceptions. Perhaps his fractured memory freed him from ideological constraints, allowing him to see darkness not as an absolute but as a necessary counterbalance to light. When he said, "Without it, and without its light, we are all blind minds and would never be the minds that we are now," he touched on an uncomfortable truth that even Neroth had never dared to articulate: that creation and destruction, light and darkness, were intrinsically linked. To deny one was to deny the other.
For centuries, Neroth had executed his mandate with ruthless precision, erasing countless lives in the name of the God of Darkness. His conviction had been unshakable, rooted in the belief that sentience was a cosmic error—selfish, destructive, and irredeemable. But Millow's answer introduced doubt, not through defiance or denial but through quiet understanding. Millow's ability to approach darkness without fear, praise or hatred disrupted Neroth's certainty, suggesting that sentience, flawed as it was, might still hold value, something he wanted to find out for himself but never expected to happen. This idea was deeply unsettling, for it challenged the very foundation of Neroth's existence. In sparing Millow, Neroth was not showing mercy; he was issuing a silent challenge to himself, a test of whether the young outworlder's insight could withstand the harsh realities of a world governed by destruction.
With the demons created ever since the presence of all sentient lives, and the conflict of the light and darkness seemingly endless, the Goddess of Light's sudden move of the Emergence will pique anyone's attention—including a cold and calculating Neroth, who asked the outworlders in his presence instead of killing them immediately. As Neroth's living for countless years of monotonous missions of slaughter, and as new humans of an another world are summoned, it may perhaps be that he wanted to find out their difference from the original beings of this world.And so he asked the question with his origin, a question of their perspective about the darkness, the darkness of what he's life is about, of what this concept means to these outworlders, and if there would finally be a difference to how things work in Terraldia.
In the end, Neroth did not kill Millow because he saw in him a glimpse of something he could not fully comprehend. Millow's words touched on the possibility that sentient life—despite its imperfection—was part of a larger balance, a design Neroth was unable to see but could no longer dismiss with these new humans of their world. In Millow, Neroth saw a mind unclouded by what corrupts the usual races, unafraid to acknowledge the complexity of existence. It was not that Millow's answer was perfect; it was that it was honest, thoughtful, and quietly profound that inevitably caught his attention against his mission of annihilation. For the first time, Neroth saw in another being a reflection of himself—not as a destroyer, but as a force shaped by the interplay of light and darkness. And so, he let Millow live, leaving behind an enigma that lingered like a shadow in his mind—a question he could not yet bring himself to answer.
"What do you think of yourself?"