While the world crumbled into chaos, a soul clung desperately to what it once had been. The skies blazed a vivid red, and in the midst of a ravaged field—where death lurked in every blade of grass—shouts, murmurs, and spears crashing against the earth echoed, perhaps remnants of a time when this place had been prosperous and joyful. But the soul was now stained, shattered by a rage that swelled within it, seeping into every corner of its mind.
The soul pressed forward through the desolation toward an uncertain fate. Was it truly still itself? With every step toward vengeance, it drifted a little further from humanity, one step closer to its own damnation.
"I can't hold on any longer," it murmured. "We will be dragged to the other side."
It raised its gaze and aimed its gleaming bow toward the sky—majestic and radiant as the sun, as scorching as the hatred coursing through its veins. The string tightened, not by the strength of an arm—for it had none—but by the infinite determination that drove it to finish what it had begun. In an instant, the arrow flew. The sound of the shot vanished into nothingness; no one could have heard it, for the lament of the damned, the dissonance of thousands of voices fading second by second, drowned out the perfect release.
The soul collapsed. Its resolve began to waver; it began to wonder what it was doing there. What had once been rage now turned to intrigue and terror. It raised its right hand toward the sky and stared at it for a few moments. It was trembling—as if the hand itself knew the end was near.
At last, the arrow high above exploded like a star in a blinding flash, forming a colossal sphere of light. In an instant, the color of the sky and the grasslands began to shift chaotically, dancing between shades of red, blue, and yellow. When every living being in that place turned their gaze toward the supernova, it changed to an absolute black, absorbing every hue from sky and earth. The sky lost its color, turning completely transparent and revealing millions of stars in the firmament. The grasslands turned a deep gray and began to lose their shape; what had once been a majestic green plain was now becoming darkness and ash.
The men fighting in those cursed lands were also stripped of their essence, rapidly transforming into grayish, savage creatures. Their eyes were black, devoid of life, as though whatever made them human had fled through them to join the supernova the arrow had unleashed above. They could barely stand; their skins crumbled at the slightest touch, and when they did, they made no sound at all.
The soul, witnessing those moments as an eternity, trembled more violently than before. It knew everything had ended. Curled on the ground, it watched as the supernova grew smaller and smaller, slowly extinguishing. Suddenly, everything went dark. The light had died. A piercing whine rang in its ears amid absolute silence, and it was the guilty one. It closed its eyes, awaiting its fate, regretting everything it had done in those fleeting seconds.
It fell.
An infinite spiral of darkness swallowed it whole. The cold it had felt on the devastated plain grew drier still; it felt as though its body were slowly freezing. There was no light, no sound—only an asphyxiating pressure that grew with every second, tearing at its existence, dragging it beyond the limits of thought.
The abyss opened.
It was a horizon where the skies were a corrupted purple, like a vast wall of living flesh studded with blind white eyes that moved as if alive. The soul struck the ground in a dark valley of unrecognizable matter—flesh coiled with rock, petrified nerves pulsing like a colossal organ whose rhythmic contractions shook the very space. Each beat was a hammer against its mind. Though its flesh froze on the outside, inside it burned with a ferocious fire that scorched its entrails with every attempt to breathe. It was suffocating. Here, air did not exist—only density, anguish, and the smell of wet iron and scorched oil.
The soul became aware of the murmurs.
"Karosh... Karosh... Karosh..." The sound echoed from everywhere, repeated in a language the soul could not understand.
And then the first ones came.
Two figures emerged from the fog of flesh. Their skin looked decayed, pale as the moon. They had no faces—only taut skin and black, deformed claws. One dragged behind it the remains of elongated, twisted bodies whose limbs multiplied senselessly and still twitched, as if still fighting for their lives.
And behind them.
A broad shadow three times their size. It did not walk; it glided, and the nauseating fog parted before it, as though the plane itself withdrew to let it pass. Its form was unspeakable, yet its presence was felt in every bone, in every thought, as though every fragment of the soul instinctively knew it stood before the end of life.
"Ael'sharn..." Its voice rose, each word heavy, as if uttering every sound cost it effort. "Barien'orakel... shuv'el... nazir..."
The soul listened. It did not understand. It had neither strength nor will to try. It could only feel. It realized the chains that bound it were not iron, but memories—fragments of its past life, charred by the fire it breathed. Before that creature, it had no will, no history, no thoughts, no freedom. It was only flesh—flesh that would soon join the ground it trod.
But suddenly, a tiny spark far off in the purple distance appeared like an imperfection in the chaos. A light, faint at first, began to grow with fury, like a star bursting into being. Its brilliance multiplied in seconds, and with it, the shadows of that place recoiled. They writhed. They fled. Even He dissolved into the rot like mud in the rain.
Light had been made.
The ground split open like a lake of gold, and beneath the surface, countless souls swam erratically, like insects trapped in living amber.
From the center of that light, a figure emerged. A knight ascended. His golden armor blazed as if forged from pure light, without impurity or stain. He had no face. Instead, within the helm, a starry sky stretched—an infinite universe gazing back, deep black and filled with twinkling stars. His cape floated behind him like a crimson night alive with life, woven from fragments of the firmament, dotted with the stars he had seen just before arriving in that place.
The soul stopped suffocating. Breath did not return, but peace did. Yet the cold remained, sharper now, as though the light revealed just how broken it truly was inside.
The knight walked as though on solid ground, indifferent to the landscape of madness around him. He advanced with grace, serenity, solemnity, and no haste.
The soul could not move. It could not flee, bow, or even think.
It could only watch—watch as that figure came to a stop before it.
And then, slowly, the knight extended his hand. His cosmic fingers, clad in polished gold, rested upon its forehead.
The instant they touched, the star behind the knight exploded in a total flash, as though the universe itself had blinked. The fire, the cold, the suffering—all of it evaporated.
Everything vanished.
When the soul opened its eyes, it was no longer in that place. It felt something solid beneath its body: a much warmer, firmer floor. The sensation of absolute cold had turned into a gentle warmth, and its lungs seemed to fill with air for the first time in centuries. A childish voice broke into its mind.
"Are... you... okay?"
Confused and still trembling uncontrollably, it managed to see a boy with intense reddish hair and golden eyes. In his hand he held a tiny sphere of light floating gently. But this was not the light that had saved it—merely another, softer, closer one.
The boy looked at it with curiosity, unaware of the horror and darkness still lurking in the depths of the soul.
"It looks like you were having nightmares," the boy said. "Do you want me to get you a blanket? You seem freezing."
When it tried to move, the soul felt the weight of its body, as though invisible "chains" still bound it. It felt its heart begin to beat hard, and the terror it had felt in that hell was replaced by a new urgency—a question that echoed in its mind.
"Where... am I?" it whispered with difficulty, as if it had lost its voice.
The boy frowned.
"I have a much better question: Who are you?" he exclaimed, annoyed. "And what are you doing in the crypt? What's wrong with your eyes? And your hands... and your feet..."
"Wh... who are you?" the soul asked.
They stared at each other. The boy, though curious, seemed worried about him.
"Fine, fine, I'll tell you my name, but then you have to tell me yours, okay?"
"..." The soul said nothing. It was still trembling, still thinking about what had just happened, and a terrible headache was beginning to torment it.
"My name is Clemens Cryssar."
The soul fell silent for a few seconds, looking in every direction, trying to find an answer to the boy's question—and to its own. But the harder it tried, the more the headaches dazed it.
"Well?" Clemens asked.
"I can't... remember..." it uttered with extreme difficulty.
"Huh? What do you mean, you can't? You don't remember your own name?"
The pain grew more intense; a ringing had begun in its ears.
"Hey! That's not fair—I told you mine..." The boy's face twisted into an angry expression. "At least you could tell me what you're doing here, don't you think? This is supposed to be the forbidden place."
The soul's gaze seemed lost as it tried to recover from the searing headaches.
"Hmmm... Do you know why you're here?" the boy exclaimed. "You still haven't answered what happened to your eyes. Are you sick with something contagious? You're scaring me."
"S... sick?"
"You're way too weird. Are you sure you're not cold?"
The soul examined itself more closely and realized it was completely naked, still far too weak to stand.
"Every eye I've ever seen is white, but yours are... dark..." The boy fell silent and took an exaggerated breath.
At that moment, the light Clemens carried began to fade.
"Hey! You're like my uncles!" Clemens exclaimed. "You have golden eyes and brown hair. Though... hmm... that's strange..." he murmured. "I've never met anyone like that who wasn't family, of course."
"..."
"I heard a noise down here and came to check. I thought I'd find a monster, but you're just a weird kid. A really, really weird kid."
"A... monster?"
"And since you don't remember your name, I'll have to call you that," he laughed. "Just kidding!"
"..."
"Hmmm, let me think. Your name will be..." The boy murmured, putting on a thoughtful face. "It'll be... hmm... Ah! I've got it! 'Solis Pueri'—Sun Boy—because of your bright eyes... No, that doesn't sound right... What about 'Sollari'? Wait, no..."
The soul let a small smile escape. For some reason, it found Clemens very likable.
"I'll call you... Noxlum!" the boy exclaimed.
"Nox...?"
"Hmmm, I don't know, I'm not sold on it... I'll think of something later," Clemens said. "Don't worry—maybe you're just tired. Once you've fully woken up, you'll remember everything and you can tell me your story. I love stories—especially the true ones! Those are my favorites."
Noxlum had begun to tremble again, though for the first time, it wasn't from fear. Clemens noticed and quickly unfastened his white cape, placing it over Noxlum's back.
"Oh no, I should have brought something to cover you the moment I saw you," Clemens admitted guiltily. "You were completely frozen. I tried to wake you, and you suddenly started shaking."
Noxlum had stopped listening to Clemens. Thinking was hard, and the boy talked too much. Still, he accepted the gift with a faint smile.
"You have really nice hair," Clemens said with some excitement. "It's just like my uncle Lucius's. Actually, all of them have hair like yours—I'm the odd one."
Noxlum raised an eyebrow, visibly confused.
"But you don't have brown hair," Noxlum murmured. He felt a calm in that innocent conversation—a small respite. Without realizing it, the boy's voice distracted him from the emptiness in his chest.
"Right?" Clemens said with a nervous laugh. "Father says he'll tell us when we're older. My uncle says my mother had fiery hair that burned brighter than both suns together."
"What's that ball of light you're carrying?"
"Huh? This? You don't know what it is?" Clemens asked incredulously. Suddenly the light vanished, plunging them into pure darkness. In an instant, his hand glowed again. "It's a lantern. It helps you see in the dark."
"Oh..." Noxlum was utterly confused.
"My uncle Marcus gave it to me for my birthday. Isn't it cool?"
"You talk a lot about your uncles," Noxlum commented, a hint of curiosity in his voice.
"Yeah! They look a lot like you—only they have normal eyes." Clemens laughed with a touch of sarcasm. "Just a joke! Don't get mad."
"They're... 'Cryssar'..." Noxlum interrupted; his eyes lit with a flicker of recognition. "That I remember..."
At that moment, Noxlum noticed that behind the smiling boy stood an enormous shadow watching him. He recognized it—it was Him.
"shuv'el... nazir..." He heard it utter. Terror flooded his body in a second, and his skin prickled as never before.
"Hey, are you okay?" Clemens asked at Noxlum's sudden silence.
Before Noxlum could answer, a clamor of metallic footsteps cut through the air. Both turned toward the sound, alarmed. The steps echoed like rolling thunder in the growing darkness. Clemens, heart in his throat, realized the noise came from boots racing down the stairs.
Clemens stood; his small silhouette was outlined against the faint glow of his lantern. The footsteps above thundered with an ominous echo.
"Listen," Clemens said. His voice lost all trace of childishness and took on an urgent, low tone. "Those are the praetorians. If they find you here, in this place... they won't ask questions. My father... has very strict rules."
"What? No..." Noxlum tried to say, paralyzed by fear, unable to tear his gaze from the enormous shadow behind Clemens.
Noxlum tried to stand, but broken chains and weakness stopped him. The trembling returned to his hands.
"No," Clemens said, crouching. With surprising strength, he helped Noxlum to his feet. "Like this. Stay still. Stay here."
He pointed to a dark niche in the wall, behind a toppled sarcophagus—a barely visible crack in the stone.
"There's a hollow there. It's where I hide when my brother Origen looks for me." Clemens helped him drag himself toward it. The space was narrow, cold, but hidden from direct view of the entrance. "I'll leave you my cape. You like the dark, right? Your eyes almost glow in it."
Overwhelmed, Noxlum could only nod. The headache pounded in his forehead, but the urgency in Clemens's voice kept him alert—almost more than his own shadow.
"Tomorrow," Clemens whispered, kneeling in front of the niche, "I'm leaving on a trip with my uncle Lucius. Westward. I'll be gone... weeks, maybe. I don't think I can take you."
The revelation hit Noxlum like a stone slab. He would be left alone, in this hollow, in the darkness.
"But I'll protect you," Clemens stated firmly, locking his golden eyes onto Noxlum's. "This is a secret. When I come back, I'll get you out of here. I'll find you a safe place. Okay?"
Noxlum couldn't answer. An avalanche of thoughts clouded his mind.
"I have to go," Clemens said. A quick, bright smile lit up his face.
The footsteps were louder now, already on the upper stairs of the crypt.
"Sleep if you can. If you press this little circle, you can turn the lantern on and off—understand?" Those were Clemens's last words before switching off his lantern and nervously tossing it to Noxlum, plunging the room into absolute darkness. "Don't turn it on until they're gone. I'll distract them."
The light vanished. Noxlum heard Clemens's quick footsteps fading away, then the boy's deliberately shrill and annoying voice rising:
"Origen! I found you! I thought there was a ghost!"
"Princeps?" an adult voice exclaimed. "What are you doing here? What are you doing here at this hour?"
"I was just playing with Origen..."
"In the middle of the dark?"
The voices mingled, grumbled, and finally faded as they climbed the stairs. Silence returned to the crypt—a silence now a thousand times heavier.
Noxlum, curled in the stone niche and wrapped in the white cape that smelled of dust and a distant garden, stared into the darkness. In the gloom, his golden eyes gave off a faint glow, like the last embers of a dying star.
The door echoed with a deafening metallic clash. Noxlum could only hear his own heartbeat and the high-pitched ringing returning to his ears.
And in the silence, a new, more immediate and terrifying truth took hold: he was completely alone.
Pain and nausea flooded his body once more.
In the absolute darkness, where his golden eyes could barely make out shapes, he thought he saw them moving—sliding closer with every beat of his chest.
His blood ran cold. He remembered the lantern. His numb, crusted fingers, which he could barely move, desperately searched the floor for the cold metal cylinder. He found it. He clumsily pressed "the little circle," with no result. A sob of frustration burned in his throat.
At last he found the button and pressed it.
A beam of white light burst forth, illuminating the gloom.
There was no shadow in the corner. As he swept the beam, the shadows vanished, as though writhing like wounded creatures.
He felt no relief.
The lantern did not feel like a shield; it felt like a provocateur. On. Off. On. Off. Each flash worsened his migraine, but the fear of the darkness between flashes was worse.
In one of those bursts of light, the beam swept across the entrance to his niche.
And there it was.
A face. Pale, lit from below by the trembling light. A man, still as stone, watching him.
At the sight, Noxlum let out a stifled scream. The lantern slipped from his hand, fell violently to the floor, and rolled until it pointed at nothing.
The man did not flinch. He tilted his head. His hair was brown, long, and swept back, while a large dark cloth covered half his face. His single visible eye seemed golden—like a flash of sunlight trapped in crystal.
He appeared to study the terrified boy: the white cape, the strange collar, the golden eyes filled with tears of panic.
His thin, hard lips finally moved. The voice was rough, heavy with disbelief:
"What the hell are you doing here?" he exclaimed. "This place is forbidden... Move, I'm taking you to the praetorians."
(Author's Note)
Thank you for reading the prologue! Any feedback or criticism is welcome—I'd love to read it to improve the quality.