Raphael Kaigon had a life most would describe as ordinary, but he never did. He worked as a night guard at a downtown museum, the sort of job that afforded him hours of silence to read books of ancient philosophy and draw in the margins of his notebook. He was not a boisterous man, low-key, and easy to miss in crowds - but working beneath the surface, his mind coursed like a stream, slow and deep. He asked questions no one else in his circle seemed to ask anymore: *What's the point of life? What happens after death? Why hasn't my time come yet* Most people around him said he overthought and was very pessimistic about life.
He never stopped. On a fall night, a few minutes after 3 a.m., Raphael took his customary recess on the museum roof. The city slumbered, its breathing soft under a shroud of amber light. He heard the sirens too late. A delivery truck, being driven by a night-waking courier, had lost traction on the road and crashed into the rear loading dock of the building. The building vibrated, but it was the domino effect - a broken gas line, a spark of static electricity - that caused the fire to break out. Raphael attempted to re-enter in order to activate the alarms. He didn't make it to the stairs. Smoke entered his lungs quicker than he could scream.
There was no pain, no noise, just silence, and then blackness, and then something else. He found himself lying flat on dew-kissed cool grass under a purplish-colored sky. Not the city lights, but twin suns looked down at him - one moonlit-colored, one gold. The air was full of ozone and violets, strange and sharply alive. Raphael hauled himself to wreckage, no sound of the life that had been lost. He was dressed differently - a plain white robe, embroidered with a symbol that meant nothing to him.
A hovering globe of pale blue light pulsed beside him, in time with his breathing, as though it floated waiting for him to say something. There was an unshakeable calm around him, in the face of the incredibility of it. *This is not Earth* He realized this and yet he was not afraid. Something inside him resonated with a profound inner voice that reminded him the questions he'd always asked hadn't been left unanswered - but had brought him to the threshold of something better. As he rose to his feet and gazed out across the distant range of mountains that hovered like islands in the sky, the sphere approached him and spoke in a soft and ancient voice: "Raphael Kaigon… you shall be reborn. Not because of who you were in your past life, but because of who you could become in this life." As Raphael passed under the archway, the light wrapped around him - not bright, exactly, but strange, as though he was wading through glass. And he was somewhere else. Not wilderness. Not ruins. A city.
It was like the one he knew, but twisted. The skyline broke up with gleaming towers, like downtown at home, but their surfaces rippled as water, windows shifting shape when he stared too long. Neon lights flashed in unrecognizable dialects, and fast cars zoomed by with a silent rumble along streets paved with an unfamiliar black metal. Dead bodies strolled on the sidewalks - human in shape, but some with glowing wires beneath the flesh, others with eyes that bore an unearthly glow. It was civilization, to be sure - but with an unrealism, only a few degrees removed from what he knew.
And hovering alongside him still the orb, whose light now dimmed in this techno-city radiance. "Ilareth isn't magic or myth. It's the world you knew but without all the boundaries taken away. Here, mind is important, Memory is important. Cities are not made of steel, but of will." Raphael gazed out at the landscape, seeing the subdued hums that zoomed overhead on city streets, the scent of rain and metal suspended in the air, the texture of pavement which vibrated softly beneath the feet like a heartbeat.
"Here you start," the orb went on. "There, you will see what the foundation of this world is." But be warned, Raphael Kaigon: not all who arrived here used their Edict to do righteous things. Some like to cause chaos, mayhem, and spread evil throughout Ilareth. Such as the secretive Ink group. Raphael then asked, "What are Edicts, and what is this secretive group you speak of." The orb responded with a change of tone, "Edicts are the scripture and power of this world, they come from the Inkfall, which created the universe and created Edicts as we know it. There exist 999 Edicts exactly, no more no less. Edicts are perfect laws that define how reality functions. All 999 Edicts used to be in a book called The Scripture of the World, but the Inkfall shattered the book and all the Edicts were separated into 999 pages spread throughout the universe.
Now as for this secretive group, they are wicked entities who reject Edicts and believe they are viruses. They opt to train the mind, body, and soul instead. They are the evil force of this world, and you should avoid them at all costs." Raphael responded "Thank you for blessing me with this information in a world where I am foreign, I will stay away from this group of people, and I will try and find an Edict."
As Raphael pondered to himself thinking of how he might obtain an Edict, the orb glowed up in front of his eyes, and entered his chest. He was confused at first, but just a couple seconds later, a blue screen popped up in front of his eyes. *System Message: Hello it's the orb, I have taken form as your personal system, and I will help you throughout your journey in Ilareth.* Raphael had an expression of shock on his face, he asked "Must I still refer to you as the orb." *System Message: No you can call me by name, Wuji* Raphael responded, "Ok Wuji it is, I hope to have a great adventure alongside you Wuji."