Prologue
Long before cities learned to burn, the world kept its balance through the Primal Dragon. It was not bound to one element. It held them all—Fire, Water, Earth, and Air—in check so sea did not drown sky and flame did not eat stone.
The Fire King wanted more than his share.
In a night when even the stars looked away, blades touched the Primal's heart. Its death cry split the heavens, and the world answered. Seas rose. Storms fell. The ground tore open. Fire ran free. In the wreckage, a stranger power took root in the royal bloodline—lightning, precise and merciless, a scar where balance had been.
War became a habit, then a language. Borders shifted, thrones changed hands, and peace survived only as a story told to children who would grow up to forget it.
Scholars argued about relics: six fragments said to be cast off when the Primal fell. Gather them, the oldest texts claimed, and someone might stand where the dragon once stood—if they survived the cost. Priests whispered a harsher truth: balance does not return to those who steal it.
So the nations hunted. The Fire crown sharpened its lightning. The others cowered, bargained, or bled. And somewhere under ash and rumor, a prophecy refused to die:
When the last of the Primal's blood awakens, the world will tremble. One will rise bearing all elements—creation and ruin in one breath. The war will end: either the world is restored, or it burns to ash.
A thousand years filed the words down to legend. But legends are only truths that took too long to arrive.
The balance is broken. The final contest gathers like weather over black stone and molten streets. Rulers mistake fear for order. People suffer in the space between.
And far from any throne, in a city that smells of smoke and iron, the blood that should not exist begins to stir.
The legend is waking.