The city was called Uradon.
It sat between two rivers, surrounded by sand and sun. Its walls were tall and carved with faces of gods. People wore white robes. They walked slowly and bowed often.
Uradon was a place of peace.
But it was also full of secrets.
And within its streets walked a man with a quiet step and tired eyes.
His name was not spoken.
But people called him The Silent Monk.
They didn't know he had lived for thousands of years.
They didn't know that his name was Eon.
He wore a long robe of brown cloth. A hood covered his head. His beard was thick and gray. He carried a wooden staff and wore no shoes. His back was slightly bent. He walked like an old man.
But inside, his strength had not faded.
He had learned to hide it.
This was not a time for power.
This was a time for wisdom.
Uradon was a city of temples and scholars. People came from distant lands to learn math, stars, and medicine. They studied scrolls. They built sun clocks and water machines. The people were proud of their minds.
Eon had watched them grow.
He had helped quietly.
He taught letters to children in the streets.
He healed the sick with herbs.
He cleaned temples when no one asked.
He wrote thoughts on clay tablets and left them near fountains, where scholars would find them later.
The people said he was strange, but kind.
No one knew he had lived through fire, war, and ice.
He simply walked and listened.
And waited.
One night, something changed.
The stars trembled.
Not a quake. Not a storm.
But a pull, deep in the world.
Eon felt it in his bones.
Like something old was waking up.
He followed the feeling.
Through quiet alleys.
Past sleeping homes.
Beyond the temples and into the desert.
There, hidden under a broken hill, he found a dark opening in the ground.
A cave.
But not made by man.
The stones were too smooth.
The air too cold.
He stepped inside.
His torch lit a narrow path. Strange symbols marked the walls. Not the writing of Uradon, but something older. Something not from Earth.
At the end of the path, he found it:
A black cube, floating above a stone pedestal.
It pulsed with blue light.
It spoke with silence.
It called to him.
He reached out, hand shaking.
The moment his fingers touched the cube, fire rushed through him.
Not real fire.
Memory.
He saw stars swirling.
He saw worlds burning.
He saw strange creatures standing in a circle, speaking in voices that sounded like thunder and glass.
They were not human.
They were not gods.
They were the Watchers Beyond — beings that saw all life like a garden to shape or destroy.
One of them turned.
It looked straight at him.
"You have touched the Seed," it said.
Eon gasped.
The cube burned brighter.
"You are not meant to awaken yet," the voice said again. "The loop is not complete."
Then the vision faded.
Eon dropped to his knees.
His body steamed.
The cube returned to silence.
He had seen into a deeper truth.
This artifact — this Seed — was not a weapon.
It was a key.
To something bigger.
To something buried in the layers of the world.
The Rift was growing.
But so was something else.
Something inside him.
Eon sealed the cave with stone and sand. He marked it with warning symbols. He did not destroy the Seed. He could not.
It was part of a larger design.
He would return for it when the time was right.
But not yet.
Back in Uradon, strange things began to happen.
Scholars reported dreams of falling stars.
Children drew creatures with six arms and black wings.
One priest shouted in the streets, claiming he saw fire walking in the desert.
Eon knew the Rift was getting closer.
It was whispering to the weak.
It was looking for a door.
He had to act before it opened.
He returned to the temple. In the library, he found a quiet young woman reading scrolls about stars. Her name was Talia. She was curious. She asked many questions.
"Why does the sun move?" she once asked him.
"Because the world dances around it," he answered softly.
She smiled. "That's not in any scroll."
Eon smiled back. "Then it will be. Soon."
He saw something in her — a spark.
She was not like others.
She listened.
She believed.
That night, he gave her a scroll — one he had written in secret. It spoke of the stars, the truth of the earth, and the need to watch the sky for tears of light.
"Keep this safe," he said.
She looked at him strangely. "Why?"
"Because soon," he said, "the world will forget."
And then, Eon vanished.
Just like that.
No one saw him leave.
Some said he walked into the desert and became a spirit.
Others said he was taken by the gods.
But Talia knew.
She kept his scroll hidden, deep beneath the temple.
And she wrote many more.
She taught her students what she had learned.
She passed down stories.
Of a man with fire in his hands.
Of a voice that calmed storms.
Of a truth deeper than books.
Centuries passed.
Uradon fell.
Its walls crumbled.
Its temples sank into the sand.
But deep underground, one scroll survived.
And near the old river, buried beneath dust and stone, the black cube waited.
Silent.
Still.
Until the day it would be found again.
Eon walked on.
In a new land.
Under new skies.
But the memory of the Seed stayed with him.
So did the voice of the Watchers.
And deep in his heart, a question burned.
Was he made to fight the Rift…
…or was he born because of it?