The world did not end.
It forgot how to breathe.
There was a time before the silence. A time when the Cycle turned, and the elements moved not in conflict, but in rhythm.
Ten forces. Ten paths. Ten names carried through wind, root, flame, and stone.
They were not gods.
They were called Masters.
Each held the heart of an element—and the weight of its memory.
They did not command. They endured.
They were the first to listen.
With them, the land flourished. The storms knew their place. The roots grew without corruption.
The system answered—not perfectly, but clearly. It remembered more than it revealed.
And then… one of them stopped.
Not in war. Not in defiance. In stillness.
The others felt it. The turning faltered.
And the balance—so long taken for granted—began to break.
Some say one Master tried to take more than their path allowed.
Others say they sought to fix the Cycle—and became the crack instead.
None speak their name now. Perhaps it was buried on purpose.
Whatever the truth, the harmony collapsed.
The elements twisted.
Fire burned without warmth.
Water drowned what it could not cleanse.
Nature grew where it should not, then died screaming.
Metal forgot its shape.
And Ice… froze to preserve what could no longer move forward.
The war that followed was not for land or crowns.
It was for memory.
For truth.
For what remained.
The Masters turned on each other. Their sanctuaries fell.
Their names were forgotten.
Or buried so deep only the land remembers.
In the stillness that followed, something rose.
Not a survivor. Not a Master.
A watcher.
It does not speak. It does not move.
But it is always there—where systems fail, where echoes warp, where quests vanish before they finish.
It was born in the absence.
It feeds on forgetting. It thrives in the cracks.
The world tells stories now.
It says there were ten.
Ten elements. Ten truths. Ten legacies carved into glyph and stone.
But sometimes… the numbers don't match.
A sequence flickers.
An Echo weeps.
A sanctuary shows eleven doors—but only ten keys.
The Cycle does not explain. It no longer speaks clearly.
But beneath the moss, beneath the frost, beneath the hollow hills and broken bloodlines—
something still listens.
It remembers the one that fell first.
It remembers the silence.
And it remembers the day the other ten followed.
A thread trembles.
Not because it is ready.
Because it was never truly severed.