( Annotation for Readers )
- The sole purpose of this Prologue is so that you can understand the basic groundwork of this world: the laws of Gift, the Rite of Dawn, and the distinction between the nobility and orphaned children. It isn't quite the story of Lith ( MC ), but it most certainly is the world he has to exist in. If you'd like you can just skip or read the Chapter One if you wish, but having read this part will provide you with a key to navigate your way through the rest of the story.
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The Chronicle of Gifts.
"Every adolescent at the age of fifteen is presented in front of the Obelisk. There, as mankind's and gods look down upon them, their future is carved into the very stone."
So has it been for hundreds of years. So shall it be until the end of time.
The world is not rules by crown nor by coins; it is rules by the will of deities manifesting in Gifts. These are joyful moments of power, slivers of the sacred fire built upon a mortal's skin. But the Gods are not generous nor egalitarian.
Hence why the Hierarchy of Gifts was developed:
▫️Divine Gifts: Miracles are called gifts of the divine. To awake an individual puts him above nations. This very path is followed by saints and saintesses who are considered to have been selected by heaven. These are the healers who will remake cities from ash and cleave mountains as warriors and prophets who shape destiny. Gifts of the Divine are as fearful as they are revered, for with such power, salvation and calamity can be born.
▫️High Gifts— cleaving ranks with their lightning blades, forming firestorms to roast their enemies, winds that tear gates from their hinges. These endow great generals, awful warlords, and champions. Their names are inscribed, victors recorded in empires.
▫️ Common Gifts — the little spreads of grace. A spark of fire in a forge, the hands to cultivate more fields, the vision to chase after stars. Some say they are low: they are the substructure of empire. Most soldiers, artisans, and townsfolk awaken these, and through they do not shake the world, they hold it together.
▫️ Failed Gifts — the cursed fragments. Too weak to fight, too strange to serve. A withered flame, a fleeting glow, a touch of warmth that heals but cannot harm. They are mocked, despised, and even abandoned. Few rise with such gifts; most are trampled beneath those more blessed.
And then there are the Giftless. No spark at all. To be Giftless is to be invisible—omitted from songs and records, a name never written. No Luminara ever lights for them; its pages remain blank, as if the very gods turned their blind eyes away.
*The Rite of Dawn
Each year when the fifteenth day of a person's life arrives, that person must kneel before the Obelisk for the Rite of Dawn. From the high and mighty noble to the lowly beggar, all must kneel upon the stone said to mark the place where the first breath of the gods was drawn.
The Obelisk awakens what sleeps in blood. It is also where the Luminara appears: a sculpture of light born of the Obelisks's glow and bound to a child's soul. Its pages do not accept mortal ink; they flare only for eyes attuned to the divine. There the Gift is recorded—fate, strength, burden—written not in handwriting but in light.
The High Preceptor presides in white and gold; priests chant through marble halls while nobles gather in jewelled ranks. For noble houses the rite is theatre—children dressed and announced as if the gods themselves have to hear it. They stand not in fear but anticipation knowing that their bloodline will give them noble or even divine rewards.
For orphans and the poor, the Rite is judgement. Brought in plain robes, many stand trembling, their names unknown, their worth measured only by what awakens disgust. Some cover their hands with gloves; others press scented clothes to their noses, as though birth alone carries stench.
And yet, law is law. By decree of both Crown and Church, all must undergo the Ceremony. Birth may divide them, but the gods choose as they will.
Nevertheless, the nobles' appearance is never gratuitous. They attend in search of talent. There exists the possibility, no matter how slight, of taking, adopting, and even moulding into the product of a noble house a poor child possessed of some special talent. They are tried not only by the Obelisk but also by the eyes of predators waiting to make of them weapons or bequests.
Some of the orphans wish for just such salvation. Others dread it, for adopted life might be a golden prison rather than liberty.
*The Divide of Blood
But beneath the chanting and the pomp, a deeper truth persists: this is a world that adores power.
The divinely gifted rise to sainthood, their footsteps followed as through gods themselves had walked the earth. Their words become scripture, their power law. Men and women alike—saints, champions, martyrs—shape the age with every act.
The High Gift become the blades of nations, generals whose commands echo like thunder. They are respected, feared, and often envied. ( Can crown them with glory )
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The Common Gifted toil in the shadownof greatness, yet without them kingdoms would starve, armies would collapse, and temples would crumble. They are the countless whose names never pass into song, yet whose hands build the world. ( Can give them place and porpuse )
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The Failed Gifted suffer. They're discarded as dead weights, teased by other kids, and abandoned in a world of measurement only of strength. Some retain hope; others buckle under scorn. ( Can curse them to mockery )
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And the Giftless? They vanish. Not to possess a gift is to be erased. ( to be overlooked. )
**
This is the law the gods have written. This is the chain that binds the world.
"And yet... among those waiting silently in the year of their birth was a boy whose destiny no gods could bind. His talent would be rejected, his name forgotten... and he would walk the road no one was brave enough to."
The pathe that defied death.