The sky shattered.
No one saw it coming. There was no warning, no divine omen. One moment, the world was whole, and the next, a great tear split the heavens, jagged and wide. The Rift. An abyss that reached through time and space, its dark maw threatening to consume all that lay beneath.
Cities fell first—those mighty monuments of human ambition crumbling to dust. Concrete, stone, and glass disintegrated as if they had never been, swept away by the winds of destruction. People fled, but they were hunted. The beasts came—monstrous, otherworldly creatures born from the depths of the Rift itself. Feral, bloodthirsty, mindless. They tore through humanity with no hesitation, their hunger insatiable.
And then, there were the elemental beasts. Rare and powerful, each one a force of nature incarnate. The ground trembled beneath their feet, the sky burned with their fury. Some were born of fire, others of ice, still more from the very storm itself. They carried power beyond human comprehension, and they brought devastation wherever they walked.
In the midst of this chaos, an orphan named Soreil awoke to a power he never knew existed within him.
It happened in the ruins of a storm-ravaged village, where Soreil found himself standing against a dying storm beast, its enormous form cracked and flickering with unstable energy. Driven by instinct and fear, Soreil lashed out, and in that moment, his body surged with a power he had never experienced. Lightning coursed through his veins, his skin crackling with energy, and the storm beast fell, its life extinguished in a flash of blinding light.
The power that surged through him did not belong to mere mortals.
The heart-crystals embedded within the elemental beasts were humanity's new gift—and curse. These crystals, when harvested, granted the wielder the same abilities as the beasts they had slain. But Soreil's power was different. It was pure, untamed, a lightning born not from a crystal but from his very soul. It was the first step of something greater. Something that would shape the future.
But the world was falling apart. Glaire, a city Soreil had once called home, was no more. In its place, chaos and ruin reigned. The forces of the Awakened began to rise, organized, armed, and determined to fight back. Soreil, now wielding his newfound abilities, joined them, stepping onto the path that would shape his destiny.
He crafted his first sword, a weapon infused with the very lightning that flowed through him. And with it, he joined the battle to reclaim Glaire from the beasts that had claimed it.
This was only the beginning. The storm had only just begun to rage, and Soreil was at the heart of it.
The Rift was just the beginning.