The scorching sun of Dhaka beat down mercilessly on the tin roofs of the crowded neighborhood of Basabo.
The air was thick with the smell of dust, exhaust fumes, and the relentless humidity that seemed to cling to everything like a second skin.
Inside a cramped, dimly lit room on the second floor of a dilapidated building, twenty-two-year-old Adil Chowdhury sat slumped in his creaky wooden chair.
The whirring of an old, dusty ceiling fan above him provided little relief, only succeeded in circulating the warm, stagnant air.
Adil stared blankly at his laptop screen.
The device, much like his life, was struggling to keep up.
A spinning circle on the screen mocked him as a webpage failed to load.
"Another rejection," he muttered, his voice raspy from lack of sleep.
"Twenty-two years old, a degree in hand, and the only thing I've achieved is mastering the art of being a disappointment."
His life was a cycle of monotony.
Helping his father at their small, struggling grocery store in the morning, and spending his nights in front of this flickering screen, trying to find a way out of the suffocating grip of middle-class poverty.
His parents, hardworking and kind, had given him everything they could, but Adil knew there was a secret they were keeping—a secret about where he truly came from.
He had been found as an infant near the ruins of an ancient temple, wrapped in silk that felt far too expensive for their world.
As he reached for a glass of water, his hand brushed against something cold and hard on his cluttered desk.
He frowned. There, tucked behind a pile of old notebooks, was a wooden box he hadn't noticed before.
It was small, made of a dark, almost black wood that seemed to absorb the little light in the room.
In the center of the lid, an intricate seal was carved—a blazing eagle with its wings spread wide, surrounded by symbols that looked like ancient runes.
"Where did this come from?" Adil whispered, a strange sense of dread and excitement swirling in his gut.
The seal looked identical to the one that appeared in the vivid, recurring dreams he'd had since childhood—dreams of gold-leafed palaces, soldiers in silver armor, and a throne that sat empty, waiting for its rightful master.
As his fingers touched the wood, a sudden chill raced up his arm, making the hair on his neck stand up.
The air in the room seemed to vibrate.
Without thinking, Adil lifted the lid.
He expected to find a trinket or perhaps an old letter, but the box was empty.
Or so it seemed for a fleeting second.
Then, the world exploded in blue.
A blinding, sapphire light erupted from the void of the box.
It wasn't just light; it was pure, raw energy. It hit Adil like a physical blow, searing through his retinas and surging into his mind.
He tried to scream, but the sound was trapped in his throat.
His body seized, every nerve ending firing at once as if thousands of volts of electricity were being pumped directly into his soul.
"Initialization sequence started..." a cold, mechanical voice echoed directly inside his cranium. "Scanning DNA... Bloodline detected: Royal Blood of Eldoria. Purity: 99.9%."
Adil collapsed onto the floor, gasping for air.
His vision was swimming, but as he looked up, he saw something that made his heart nearly stop.
Floating in the air before him was a translucent, glowing blue screen, shimmering with data.
[ System Successfully Initialized ]
[ Host: Adil Chowdhury ]
[ True Identity: Prince Riyad, 17th Heir of the Eldoria Empire ]
[ Status: Level 0 (Human - Mortal) ]
[ Current State: Dormant Powers Detected ]
"What... what is this?" Adil wheezed, his hands shaking as he tried to touch the screen.
His fingers passed right through the hologram, but the text remained clear.
"System? Prince? Eldoria? This has to be a hallucination. The heat finally got to me."
"This is no hallucination, Host," the voice resonated again, calmer now.
"The System of the Forgotten Prince has been dormant within your blood for two decades.
It has awakened because the time of the Prophecy is near. You are the last of the Eldorian line."
Adil sat up, leaning his back against the cold wall. The holographic screen flickered and updated.
[ First Quest Triggered: The Path of the Exile ]
[ Objective: Find the hidden Royal Seal of Eldoria within the next 10 days. ]
[ Location Hint: Seek the shadow of the past where the oldest echoes dwell. ]
[ Reward: Level 1 Rank-up, 100 System Points, and Unlocking of the 'Dimensional Inventory' ]
[ Failure Penalty: System Deletion and Permanent Memory Wipe of True Identity ]
The weight of the words hit Adil like a ton of bricks.
Ten days. If he failed, he would go back to being a 'nobody' forever, his true heritage erased. He looked at the wooden box on the desk.
The carved eagle was now glowing with a faint, pulsing blue light, synchronized with his own heartbeat.
He reached out and touched a small metal pin lying on the floor. Instantly, a new window popped up.
[ Temporary Ability Unlocked: Basic Dimensional Storage ]
[ Would you like to store 'Ancient Pin' in the Inventory? ]
Adil thought the word 'Yes'. In a flash of blue light, the pin vanished from his palm.
He gasped, his eyes wide. When he willed it to return, it reappeared instantly.
This was real. This was a power that defied every law of physics he knew.
"If this is true," Adil said, his voice gaining a sudden, newfound strength, "then my life wasn't just a series of accidents.
My parents... they knew. They were protecting me."
He looked out the window at the chaotic streets of Dhaka.
The rickshaws, the shouting vendors, the endless smog—everything felt different now.
He wasn't just another face in the crowd of millions.
He was a Prince in exile, and he had been given the ultimate tool to take back what was stolen.
"Host," the System prompted, "your journey begins at the edge of the forgotten.
The first echo of Eldoria is closer than you think."
Adil stood up, brushing the dust off his faded jeans.
The weakness he had felt just moments ago was gone, replaced by a cold, burning ambition.
He didn't know where Eldoria was, or who had destroyed it, but he knew one thing for certain: with the System by his side, he would find out.
"Ten days," Adil whispered, a sharp, dangerous glint appearing in his eyes.
"I don't need ten days. I'm starting now."
As he stepped out of his room, the blue screen vanished, but the icons at the edge of his vision remained, a constant reminder that he was no longer alone.
The game of empires had begun, and the Forgotten Prince was finally ready to make his move.