Chapter 1 — The Boy Without a Root
"Even roots must crawl before they drink from Heaven."
The rain did not fall in Orphelios.
It bled.
The heavens wept in silence, casting long rivulets of dusk down the shattered pillars of the Virethorn ancestral altar. The clouds did not roar. They mourned. A slow, quiet kind of mourning, as if the sky itself had grown tired of watching mortals chase stars they would never touch.
Today marked the Root Awakening Ceremony, where children came of age by revealing the seed of fate buried within their souls. It was tradition older than language, older than kings. In Orphelios, to be born was not to live—to cultivate was.
They had gathered at dawn. Now, beneath the bleeding dusk, the final name was called.
"Lucien Virethorn," the elder intoned, voice heavy with the fatigue of disappointment.
A boy stepped forward.
Seventeen winters. Pale as ash. Hair black as ink, dripping wet. He moved with silence, not grace—like something long overlooked and too used to it. His eyes bore no light. Not defiance. Not hope. Only a cold steadiness, the kind forged in years of being less than everyone else.
He knelt before the Orb of Resonance, the sacred sphere carved from fallen star-glass. It shimmered faintly in the elder's withered hands, humming with celestial qi. When placed upon the chest, it would stir the Fate Root, causing it to bloom into visibility, revealing its nature and rank.
Lucien closed his eyes.
The orb touched his chest.
Nothing happened.
No pulse. No wind. No celestial reaction. The silence stretched like a blade held against the throat of his name. Then came the whisper—soft, brutal.
"No root," said the elder. "He is fate-dead."
It was not spoken with cruelty. Worse—it was spoken with finality. As if truth had merely been confirmed.
Around him, whispers slithered through the crowd like vipers in tall grass. Laughter followed, bitter and sharp. Elan Virethorn, Lucien's cousin and one of the first to awaken a radiant Crest-stage Golden Root, stepped forward with disdain etched into every inch of his perfect features.
"He shames our blood. Even Heaven wants nothing to do with him."
Lucien did not respond. He did not look up. He had no words left to offer them. Words were for those who could afford dignity.
He stood, bowed low—an echo of tradition performed by someone already being forgotten—and walked away from the altar without being told. He needed no exile.
He had lived one since birth.
No one followed him. No one cared. The path behind him remained dry despite the rain. He left no footprints in their memory.
That night, as the ceremony's lanterns dimmed and celebration turned to wine and forgetfulness, Lucien walked beyond the family grounds, past the outer gardens where qi-blooming orchids curled away from his presence. Past the ancestral watchfires that offered no warmth. Past the shrines that demanded a fate he did not have.
He found himself at the edge of the forgotten.
There, buried beneath moss and silence, lay the ruins of Vorth Anuun—a collapsed sanctuary where it was once said that the first cultivators meditated beneath falling stars. Now it was little more than broken stone and memories the world had outgrown.
Lucien sat beneath a gnarled tree with no leaves and touched the hollow ache in his chest.
They called it a root.
A Fate Root.
Every soul in Orphelios was born with one. An ethereal seed buried within the spirit by Heaven's hand. At awakening, it would reveal itself—shaped by one's bloodline, karma, and celestial favor.
Iron Roots marked the ordinary. Gold Roots sang with potential. Divine Roots, so rare they were considered living miracles, bound the cultivator to the stars themselves.
Through these roots, one began their path. The Path of Star-Binding. Cultivation here was not a ladder, but a blooming. A soul moved through stages—Seedling, Bloom, Thorn, Crest—each reflecting how much of Heaven's light they could contain. Those who reached the mythical Starwoven realm could bend starlight to their will, and some claimed they became constellations themselves.
But not Lucien.
He had no light. No seed. No path. He was not even cursed—he was forgotten.
And yet...
As the wind moved softly through the dead leaves, Lucien whispered to the sky.
"If I was born rootless, then I shall learn to grow from rot."
The ache in his chest deepened. Not pain. Not qi. Something else. Something cold and dry began to stir just beneath his skin.
He looked down.
A thin, black tendril was pushing its way slowly from the place where the orb had rested. It was not flesh. Not vein. It was something more brittle—like the charred root of a tree too ancient to burn completely. It curled once… and pulsed.
Lucien stared. His breath caught.
It was real.
Not granted by Heaven. Not birthed by fate.
His.
And in that moment, a strange calm settled over him. A stillness that had nothing to do with peace. A clarity born from finally seeing the lie of the world—of stars, of roots, of bloodlines and divine rankings.
He had not been forgotten.
He had been uninvited.
His root did not grow toward Heaven's favor. It grew beneath it. Beneath the soil of stories long buried. Where old things slept.
There were whispers, he remembered, in the texts too faded to be preserved. Rumors of a forbidden path. One that did not draw qi from stars, but from the fate of others.
A parasitic root. A Hollow Root.
A path not of blooming—but of devouring.
Lucien pressed his fingers to the black tendril and smiled. It twitched, alive.
"You buried me," he said quietly, to no one in particular. "But you forgot one truth."
He rose, shadow falling behind him like a second spine.
"Roots grow deepest in the dark."