Before the world bled Aether, it sang with stars.
Cities shimmered like constellations draped across the land—glass towers humming with clean energy, highways alive with whispering light, airships sliding between clouds like fish through water. Humanity stood at the cusp of touching other worlds, of mastering gravity, of conquering time itself.
But some stars are not meant to be reached.
They called it the Riftfall.
The sky split open without warning—no signal, no storm. Just light. Cracks formed across the heavens like broken glass, glowing with impossible color. Through them came wind that howled like screaming metal, rain that scalded the skin, and silence that made the heart skip.
And then came the things that did not belong.
They had no names at first—only shapes that defied description. Wings made of shadow, flesh like molten stone, mouths that stretched too wide. Creatures poured from the fractures in space, dragging chaos in their wake. Entire cities vanished beneath crawling fog. Oceans turned to steam. The sun itself flickered, unsure of its place.
Within weeks, everything that defined the old world was ash.
Yet not all was lost.
Amid the ruins, survivors found something stranger still—power. The very energy that killed the earth began to change those who breathed it in. Their bodies hardened. Their eyes glowed. Their thoughts bent light. They could punch through steel, tear apart beasts, speak to flame, command air.
The first Awakened were born.
Some trained their bodies into weapons—Knights, they were called, armored in muscle and Aether. Others shaped the power through words and focus, rewriting the rules of reality. Mages. Both became humanity's thin line of defense.
From their strength rose the Citadels—fortresses of stone, steel, and captured Aether cores. Civilization, though battered, endured behind their walls. Outside, the world grew stranger. Wilder.
And the sky remained fractured.
When the rifts stabilized, they did not close. They opened wider.
And they invited others in.
Three great invasions followed.
First came the Aurelions—beings of pure radiance, beautiful and cold, who descended in thrones of glass and called themselves gods.
Next came the Drethar—reptilian titans with flame-forged weapons and roars that cracked mountains. They devoured land like locusts, speaking only of conquest.
Last came the V'korr—machines with no soul, no emotion, only logic. They spread like viruses, converting matter into steel, memory into code.
Three empires, each more ancient than earth's dust, warred over Blue Star's broken soil.
And humanity?
It did not fall.
It adapted.
But legends—those strange whispers that persist in firelight and dream—speak of more than survival.
They speak of a sun that will rise not from the sky, but from within.
A child born not just of flesh, but of flame.
A heartbeat that echoes with something older than stars.
A bond forged before time began.
When the sky burns crimson once more, the legend says, the last hope of Blue Star will awaken—not as a hero, but as something forgotten by history.
A new sun.
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In the city of Solaria, the morning light spilled over rooftops made of crystal-veined stone.
And in a modest apartment near the outer plaza, a boy with golden eyes blinked into his reflection, unaware that the sky above him had begun to flicker red.