In the beginning, the world had no magic. People shaped their fate with muscle, will, and ingenuity—slowly carving out civilizations from raw earth. Skyscrapers rose, cities sprawled, and technology advanced—until one day, a rift opened between worlds, unleashing nightmarish monsters whose only purpose was to destroy and drink the blood of the living.
Civilization crumbled. Cities fell. Hope withered.
But as the world neared collapse, the Awakening occurred.
Ordinary men and women discovered they could channel raw energy—mana—to perform feats far beyond human limits. They became hunters.
Swordsmen who could split steel, Archers whose arrows cut through air like lightning, Mages who bent mana to their will, Elementalist, who could rule over spirits and elements and others whose bodies became their weapons—tanks of raw muscle and brute strength. We never settled on a cool name for them. "Body Builders" doesn't quite cut it. That was until the 2nd generation hunters decided to call them "Behemoths". So well it's still an ongoing argument.
With time, we pushed the monsters back. We rebuilt—this time with magic at our side. Society evolved. Civilization was better than ever.
But peace was fragile. Some Awakeners turned rogue, using their gifts to terrorize the people they once swore to protect— Non-Awakeners. To curb this, every Awakener was forced to wear a Sealing Bracelet, which suppresses their powers unless paired with another Awakener's mana. In practice, that meant no Awakener could go solo—you needed an Elementalist or Mage to "unlock" your seal for any meaningful use of power.
And the government then made up an excuse "MARRIAGE!"
To ensure every Awakener had a partner, they enacted the Concord Marriage Act:
«If an Awakener remains unmarried by age 25, the state will assign them a spouse to guarantee mutual unlocking of powers and to keep watch over each other.»
This policy disguised surveillance as matchmaking. Families rushed to find partners for their children before the government stepped in. It became an unnecessary race where love became strategy and romance became a regulation.
To avoid that fate, my parents married me off early—to Kael, the son of their best friends and our next-door neighbors. He also happens to be my older brother Dante's best friend, though both of them have been abroad for the last five years. Now I'm supposed to make a marriage work with someone I haven't seen in years—someone I grew up fighting with… and for