The night sky bled crimson.
A thousand banners smoldered in silence, torn by fire and storm. Spears snapped like brittle twigs, shattered swords glistened under the red glare of the heavens, and the earth itself was cracked as if scorched by the anger of gods. The battlefield that had once echoed with the roars of soldiers was now nothing but ruin.
Amidst that ruin, a lone youth staggered.
His robes were tattered, his skin scorched, and blood seeped down his arms in long black streaks. Each breath came ragged, but the fire in his eyes had not gone out. He gripped his broken weapon with trembling hands, its blade half-melted, its edge glowing faintly with embers.
He was no emperor's heir, no chosen champion. But across a dozen trials, through defiance and hunger, the world had granted him a title.
The Ashborn Prodigy.
A boy who dared to dream beyond bloodline shackles. A boy who sought not merely to polish the power he inherited, but to evolve it. To create something beyond the limits set by fate.
And for that arrogance, he was here, alone, facing a truth that could not be bent.
Before him stood another youth, yet one born different. His very presence distorted the world. He carried himself not as a boy but as the scion of dragons, and the flame wreathing his body was no ordinary light. It burned white, molten and absolute, a fire said to trace back to the mythical ancestors who once ruled the skies.
Every breath the prince exhaled trembled with heat that warped the air. His steps left cracks in the ground as though the world itself bent beneath his bloodline.
The Ashborn Prodigy spat blood, yet raised his chin, refusing to kneel.
"You overreached," the prince said, his tone flat, his gaze cold. "Your ambition was never strength. It was delusion."
The Ashborn's lips twisted, broken yet stubborn. "Delusion? No. It was freedom. If fate calls me a frog trapped at the bottom of a well, then I will claw through the stone. I will see the sky, even if the sky burns me alive."
The prince's eyes flickered with faint pity. Then he raised his hand. His flames surged, not red, not gold, but white-hot brilliance. The battlefield brightened as though another sun had risen.
"Then die reaching for it."
The heavens roared.
The clash was not a battle, but the drowning of a spark beneath a sun. The Ashborn Prodigy's flames, fierce yet incomplete, were swallowed whole by the absolute fire of dragons. His broken weapon melted entirely, dripping away into molten slag. His body convulsed as heat shattered his defenses, searing flesh and boiling blood.
Yet he did not fall.
He forced his legs to move, forced his ruined arms to rise. His flames flared once more, cracked and feeble, but still alive.
Not enough. Not yet.
He stumbled forward, his charred hands striking against that blinding wall of flame. His bones cracked like dry wood. His vision blurred, the world tilting into red and black.
Still, he smiled.
If I am not enough today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then another tomorrow. Even if it takes a hundred tomorrows, I will reach it.
The prince's white flame surged again. A tidal wave of destruction swept the battlefield.
This time, there was no resistance. The Ashborn Prodigy's body was engulfed, his skin burning, his very essence unraveling. His final breath escaped as ash. His body broke apart, scattering into embers.
And yet, even as his existence dissolved, his will refused to vanish.
Not enough… but one day…
Darkness swallowed him.
But in that darkness, something stirred.
It was not the warmth of fire, nor the cold embrace of death. It was deeper, older, stranger. A silence vast enough to drown the stars. A pressure that did not touch his body, but his essence itself.
The Ashborn Prodigy's fading consciousness trembled.
What… is this?
No voice answered.
Only a pull.
It was not mercy. It was not cruelty. It was inevitability.
His essence, half-erased, was drawn into the presence. His fire twisted, distorted, reshaped. His ambition, his defiance, his hunger—all that made him him—was pressed against something unfathomable, fusing into it.
For a heartbeat, he felt it: an abyss that could devour even gods, and yet within it, infinite possibility.
He should have been erased. Yet he was not.
If the world denies me, then I will return. Hero, monster, whatever it takes, I will return.
The abyss sealed.
And far away, under a dawn sky untouched by fire, the cry of a newborn pierced the silence.
Within the radiant halls of the Sun Palace, cradle of the Solaris bloodline, a child was born.
The fifth son of Archduke Solaris.
The boy would be named Raelan Solaris.
And though the world would see only the birth of a prince, the truth was different.
The Ashborn Prodigy had returned.