The morning sun spilled across the Inazuma estate, lighting up the terraces, training grounds, and rooftops where Rai Inazuma was already moving like a storm made flesh. Black hair tipped with white streaks danced in the wind as he leapt across narrow ledges, laughed loudly, and waved a practice blade at anyone daring enough to challenge him.
"Rai! Get down from there before you fall!" an instructor shouted, voice cracking with panic.
Rai grinned, balancing effortlessly on the edge. "Why? I'm perfectly fine!" He vaulted across a gap to the next rooftop, rolling midair. Sparks of lightning flickered across his fingers — jagged, uncontrolled, beautiful. A surge of power, raw and dangerous, yet wholly useless because he could not master it.
From below, Retsu, his older brother, watched with quiet disapproval. Calm. Measured. Perfect. Rai's reckless energy clashed violently against his brother's precision, a storm against a rock.
"One day, that recklessness will kill you," Retsu said, voice steady, almost bored.
"Then I'll go out spectacularly!" Rai called back, already running to the next rooftop. Lightning sparked along his skin again, wild and untamed. He tried to contain it, but control was elusive, and every surge left him drained.
Rai was known as the Thunder Child, and for good reason. His bloodline flowed with lightning, an inheritance of speed, reflex, and raw energy unmatched in the Twelve Nations. Yet potential alone was not enough. Rai's father, the legendary Raijin of Inazuma, had maintained fifty years of peace across the elemental nations — Karu (fire), Suin (water), Fuyu (ice), Roku (earth), Kaze (wind), Hikari (light), Yami (dark), Sei (spirit), Tatsu (beast), Getsu (moon), and Hin (sun) — and his skill and authority were unmatched. Rai, by contrast, could barely control a spark.
Inside the estate, envoys whispered respectfully of the Raijin, the man whose strategy and power had prevented war for decades. Rai noticed the glances, the nods, but he didn't care. For now, he only cared about leaping, laughing, and feeling alive.
By mid-morning, he had raced through the entire estate, sparred with everyone, and tested his abilities as best he could. The lightning danced across his fingers and arms, occasionally shooting off in sparks that startled trainees and scorched stone. Weakness clung to him like a shadow, a reminder that potential without control was meaningless.
Even so, he felt the thrill — the raw instinct of lightning in motion, reacting faster than thought, moving as if the air itself obeyed him. He didn't yet understand that this instinct was the seed of something far greater, something that would one day define him.
Retsu observed quietly, correcting every misstep Rai made. Every fall, every uncontrolled spark, was a lesson in contrast: one brother, precise and measured; the other, wild, untamed, and chaotic. The contrast would define Rai's journey.
As Rai paused atop the highest rooftop, gazing out over the twelve nations' borders, he could almost feel their tension, the fragile balance of peace maintained by his father's hand. Each nation was defined by its power, its specialty: fire, water, ice, wind, shadow, light, spirit, beasts, moon, and sun. Each had its own ambitions, its own rivalries. And all of them respected — feared — Inazuma.
But even the Raijin's legacy could not shield Rai from the coming storm. One day, the boy who laughed at rooftops, who could barely control his sparks, would face betrayal, loss, and a land of cursed power where only the strong survived.
For now, Rai laughed, chased the wind, and reveled in the lightning in his veins, unaware that the world was quietly preparing to test him — and that he was far weaker than he imagined.