The sky cracked open like glass.
It began with a low hum — not thunder, not machines, but something older. A vibration that rolled through the bones of every living thing. Birds stopped mid-flight. Rivers stilled. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
In the city of Nuvora, panic spread like wildfire. People ran, screamed, prayed. But none of it mattered. The sky was bleeding.
Flames rained down, not red but violet — unnatural, cold, and slow. Buildings melted into ash. Streets curled like paper. And in the center of it all, a baby cried.
Not from fear. From something deeper. Something ancient.
His name was Kael.
Elira Veyron clutched her infant son to her chest as the world collapsed around them. Her body was bruised, her breath shallow, but her eyes burned with defiance. She had survived the first wave of destruction, but she knew the second would be worse.
She ran through the chaos, dodging falling debris and collapsing towers. Her destination wasn't safety — there was none left. It was a promise.
She reached the edge of the city, where the ruins met the forest. There, hidden beneath the roots of an ancient tree, was a portal — a shimmer in the air, like heat over stone. It had been placed there generations ago, by a sect that believed in prophecy.
Elira knelt, cradling Kael. She kissed his forehead, tears mixing with soot.
"You are more than this world, Kael," she whispered. "You are its answer."
She placed a pendant around his neck — a spiral within a triangle, glowing faintly. It pulsed once, as if recognizing him.
Then the shadows took her.
---
Far away, in a realm untouched by time, a cloaked figure watched the child through a mirror of smoke. The figure had no face, only a voice — deep, resonant, and layered with centuries.
"The World Bender has been born," it said. "Let the training begin."
The mirror rippled. The child vanished from the burning city, pulled into the folds of reality itself.
---
Kael awoke in a cave carved into the side of a mountain. He was no longer in Nuvora. No longer in any place known to man.
The air was thick with energy. Symbols glowed on the walls. Time moved differently here.
The cloaked figure stood before him.
"You are Riftborn," it said. "You will learn to bend the world."
Kael didn't understand. He was just a baby. But the pendant pulsed, and the cave responded — stones floated, light bent, and the air sang.
Thus began his training.
---
Years passed.
Kael grew in isolation, guided only by the cloaked figure and the whispers of the cave. He learned to walk across air, to catch lightning in his palm, to meditate inside a chamber that screamed with forgotten voices.
He learned that the world was not solid. It was suggestion. And he could bend it.
But he also learned pain. Loneliness. The ache of not knowing who he was, or why he had been chosen.
Every night, he stared at the stars, searching for answers.
The cloaked figure never gave Kael a name. It called him "Child," "Riftborn," or simply "You." It spoke in riddles:
"The world is a mirror. Break it, and you see truth."
"Power is not taken. It is remembered."
"The sky burns for those who forget their place."
Kael didn't understand at first. But with each trial, each meditation, the words began to make sense.
He learned to bend light into blades. To slow time with breath. To fold space with thought.
But he also learned restraint. The figure punished recklessness. A single misstep could collapse a mountain.
---
On his twelfth birthday, Kael asked about the pendant.
"It pulses when I dream," he said. "It shows me things."
The figure nodded. "It is a key. But not to a door."
Kael frowned. "Then what?"
"To yourself."
That night, Kael dreamed of Nuvora. Not the city as it was, but as it had been — green, vibrant, alive. He saw his mother's face. Heard her voice.
"You are more than this world…"
He awoke with tears on his cheeks and the pendant glowing like a star.
---
On his fifteenth birthday, the cloaked figure spoke again.
"It is time."
Kael was sent back to Nuvora — now rebuilt, gleaming with neon towers and synthetic skies. He was enrolled in a school, given a name, a file, a fabricated history.
But the pendant still pulsed. The whispers still came.
And deep inside, Kael knew: the world was waiting.
Waiting for him to bend it.