Chapter 0: End of Elenoir, NOT Its People
The Archon, Aether's Will.
13:01
The ancient stones of Eidelholm, once resonant and in tune with the soft hymns of the population of the Elven Kingdom of Elenoir, in the continent named Dicathen by the Asuras, now groaned under the weight of Alacryan steel and the oppressive weight of decay mana.
But into this silence, a new sound was carved: the swift and sharp whisper of rebellion.
At this precise moment, the stillness shattered. Under the lead of Princess Tessia Eralith, a scion of the very forest that birthed this kingdom dozens of centuries ago, a team of Dicathian rebels became a blade aimed at the heart of this illegitimate occupation.
Alongside her were the stalwart elf Albold Chaffer, his face a mask of grim determination; the human royal siblings Curtis and Kathyln Glayder, their Sapin heritage set aside for the greater cause of Dicathen; the dwarves Skarn and Hornfels Earthborn and Eleanor Leywin—sister to Arthur Leywin, better known as the archenemy of The Aetherman: the diabolical King Grey—a teenage girl whose very name was becoming a whisper of hope amongst the Dicathians.
Their arrival was an execution—a precise, violent incision into the city turned Alacryan stronghold. The attack began with the chilling finality of a door closing on a tomb, a tomb they intended to pry open and empty.
13:11
Ten minutes.
A mere heartbeat in the long, sorrowful history of Elenoir, but an eternity for the souls trapped in the darkness.
The containment cells were not the usual prisons one would see across the Old World; they were pens, places where elves, innocent elves, were kept like livestock, their dignity stripped away under the cold authority of the newly promoted Highblood Milview and the sinister gaze of Retainer Bilal of Truacia.
The air was thick with despair, a palpable miasma that choked all hope in the eyes and souls of the captives.
Then, light. The door to their prison exploded inward, and in the frame stood Tessia Eralith. To the captured elves, she was not just their princess thought executed alongside the King and Queen Eralith.
To them she was a vision from a past they thought lost to the Alacryan menace, her figure haloed by the dim light of the corridor, her eyes burning with an anger that mirrored their own stifled rage.
As the locks yielded to Albold's strength and Kathyln's magic, the silence was broken not by cheers, but by ragged, disbelieving sobs of relief and utter joy.
The rescue was a silent, swift river of movement, a current of emaciated bodies guided toward a promised salvation.
13:15
The freedom of the elves had a price however—the cruelty of the Mad God of Misfortune, known by most as Fate was always ironic in its horror—and it was to be paid in blood and conflict.
As the last of the captives were ushered away by Curtis, Kathyln, and Eleanor, a new tension gripped the stronghold. Retainer Bilal, a vortex of acidic magic, arrived to find his prize being stolen. The confrontation was immediate and brutal.
Tessia and Albold stood as one, a wall against the storm. Spells clashed in the confined space, painting the grey stones with violent hues of purple and green.
This was not a duel of honor; it was a desperate holding action, a battle fought to buy seconds for the fleeing, a sacrifice measured in every parried blow and every shred of mana expended.
13:21
Eleanor Leywin, her heart hammering against her ribs, guided the final group of elves through the shimmering portal, the name of her brother pounding in her mind.
The air on the other side of the portal was different—dry, ancient and, more importantly, safe. It was the underground system known as the Sanctuary, an hidden Djinn city that now cradled the flickering flame of Dicathen's resistance, led by the weathered Commander Virion Eralith and the formidable Lance Bairon Wykes.
Risking one last look back into the crumbling heart of Eidelholm, Eleanor's breath caught. Through the dust and dissipating mana, she saw them: Tessia and Albold, standing victorious over the fallen form of Retainer Bilal.
A fragile, fierce joy bloomed in her chest. They had done it. Against all odds, they had won. They... they could make it!
Oh, the God of Misfortune was laughing. Its laugh, audible only to the aether trapped by the dragons, echoed through the air.
13:22
Triumph in Dicathen was always a fleeting visitor. As Tessia and Albold began their retreat, a new presence descended upon Eidelholm.
Eleanor felt it before she understood it—a mana signature vast, so profoundly vile and cold, that it seemed to freeze the very air in her lungs.
It was a pressure that promised absolute dominion, an ancient, familiar hatred given form. This was not the blunt force of a Retainer or even a Lance; this was the calculated, world-ending threat of a Scythe and the cataclysmic tide of change that was a reincarnated soul.
13:23
And then he was there. Scythe Nico Sever, known to the masses of Alacrya as Nico Vritra, stood amidst the ruins of the captured elven city.
His arrival was an affront to the memory of the place. His whole existence was an insult to this world and its people who suffered so much because of him. His purpose was singular and horrifying: to capture Tessia Eralith.
Not for ransom, not for political leverage, not for any twisted, but understandable motive in the grand scheme of lesser things. He wanted her as a vessel.
A living crucible in which to reincarnate the soul of the Legacy, the human girl known as Cecilia. The air itself seemed to curdle around him, heavy with the scent of death and twisted rebirth.
13:24
What happened next would be seared into Eleanor Leywin's memory forever, a moment of such profound betrayal that it threatened to unravel her very understanding of the world.
As Nico reached for Tessia, the princess… changed. Her posture straightened, her familiar emerald eyes glazed over with an alien coldness. The words that fell from her lips were in Tessia's voice, but the will behind them was not her own.
She declared the ancient, sacred forests of Elenoir a new Domain of Alacrya, a subject of the High Sovereign Agrona Vritra:
"M-my people," she said, although the voice was Tessia Eralith's the tone and way she carried herself—now at the side of Nico Sever—was completely different from the elven princess. "I know you are frightened and everything, but I want you to know that, that I will... always protect you."
The Tessia they knew was gone, submerged beneath the waking consciousness of the Legacy. It was truly a pathetic view.
"I stand before you today to announce that I—Tessia Eralith—last member of the Royal Family of Elenoir, have ceded the rulership of the Kingdom to High Sovereign Agrona Vritra."
She said, her voice unsure like she was reading a script she has never seen before.
Eleanor, the last rebel still in the doomed city, could only watch in infinite, paralyzing shock as the few elves that didn't manage to flee shouted in protest.
13:25
If Nico's arrival was a calculated strike, what followed was an act of indiscriminate annihilation from the ultimate criminals themselves.
From the heavens descended two figures whose very existence spoke of eons of power. Windsom of the criminal Indrath Clan and Aldir of the Thyestes Clan—Asuras, beings of myth and nightmare.
They did not come to save Dicathen. They did not come to parley. They did not come in an act of divine mercy, or pity.
They were no gods—they were demons.
Their mission, cold and absolute, was the destruction of the Legacy. The fact that this meant the obliteration of an entire kingdom and every soul within it was, to them, a negligible collateral cost.
The folly of Kezess Indrath had arrived on swift, merciless wings.
13:27
Aldir of the Thyestes Clan began to channel his power as the third eye on his forehead shone. The technique had a name that echoed through the worst fears of the Asuras: World Eater.
The very fabric of mana around Eleanor began to tremble as so did everything in the Kingdom of Elenoir. The majestic, thousand-year-old trees, the cities that had survived wars with Sapin and invasions from the Beast Glades, the lives of 11,612,512 men, women, and children—all of it was now fuel.
The mana of the entire kingdom began to coalesce, drawn into a chain reaction that promised a cataclysm beyond comprehension.
The Kingdom of Elenoir would not fall to an army; it would be un-made by the very gods its people thought that would protect them.
Not even the memory of the Kingdom of Elenoir would survive this all-encompassing act of destruction...
...but its people will.
13:28
As the first motes of light began their deadly dance, as the World Eater prepared to open its maw, a miracle occurred.
The air split with a profound, aetheric silence. A figure appeared, teleported not by mana, but by the will of the redeemed dragon, Wonder Sylvia in her beautiful butterfly form.
And beside her stood Him. He stood clad in gold, a knight against the dying of the light. This was The Aetherman. And as reality itself began to tear apart, He spoke a single command to the cosmos:
"Static Void."
And the cosmos obeyed. Time stopped.
Not metaphorically, not in a blur of speed, not in any way a dragon could ever hope or imagine to do, but absolutely.
The cataclysmic explosion, the horrified faces, the falling dust, the very light particles—all were frozen in an infinite, silent moment.
Within this fractured micro-instant, suspended outside the flow of causality, only one consciousness moved: His.
13:28, 5.39 × 10^-44 seconds
What followed was a feat that would defy all known laws of nature, magic and physics for eternity.
In the space between one heartbeat of the universe and the next, The Aetherman moved. He became a streak of golden light, a solitary note in the symphony of stopped time battling against everything that tried to stop Him.
No matter how much His companion—Sylvia Indrath—screamed at Him to stop Himself. That if He continued He would die. He persevered.
One by one, sometimes two, He gathered the frozen forms of every elf, every Alacryan soldier, every living soul in the vast expanse of Elenoir, a nation that sprawled across much of northern Dicathen.
Eleven and a half million lives, each a statue in a gallery of impending doom, were plucked from their certain end.
He carried them across the desolation, His body and spirit breaking under a strain no being had ever endured. A strain no being should endure.
For Within the Static Void, while five point thirty‑nine times ten to the minus forty‑four seconds passed for the world—what, on Earth, would have been called Planck Time—for Him it was an eternity of solitary, Herculean effort.
Years of subjective time were spent in that silent, hellish landscape, His mind fraying, His body screaming in protest, sustained only by an indomitable will to save them all.
"Come on Aether... can we get one more?"
The Aetherman asked to the suspended reality as blood spilled from every pore, as His ears screamed in an internal orchestra, as His muscles burnt and bones decayed.
All of that wasn't enough.
He worked at a hair's breadth short of the speed of time itself, a solitary superhero performing a miracle no one would ever witness.
Then, the Static Void fell.
Time rushed back into the vacuum, but the silence did not return. It was replaced by the confused, terrified, and awestruck cries of eleven million people who found themselves standing on the borders of their former home, staring into a void.
Where the majestic kingdom of Elenoir had stood moments before, there was now only a vast, smoking crater and desolation, a scar upon the continent as large as thousands of crop fields.
Aeloria Sylthien,
Faerwyn Lirael,
Thalorien Eryndor,
Adan Unnamed,
Michaelis Chaffer,
Caelith Veylara,
Camus Selaridon,
Neremyn Helecan,
Methild Nerineiros,
Ayluin Holamyar,
Uldreyin Yelmyar,
Eleanor Leywin,
Ailluin Ralolee,
Sylvoril Triscan,
Biafyndar Glynphyra
Eluneth Myrialis,
Serindel Olorien,
Vaelory Itharion,
Nymeris Calithiel,
Thalindra Alarion,
Jarnas Auddyr,
Lucan Red,
Mireille Ashvale,
Osric Stonebrook,
Lola Triscan,
Vivienne Fairthorn,
Derek Unnamed,
Roland Blackspire,
Hamilkar Milview,
Lavinia Milview,
Corwin Wynn,
Magnus Ainsworth,
And so, so many more... they were all destined to die by the hands of the Asuras.
However, The Aetherman defied Fate once more, and all those people had appeared out of thin air, saved from a death they had not even had time to process.
The Aetherman, the greatest hero they had never heard of, had saved elvenkind from extinction.
He had saved them from the cold, genocidal fervor of Kezess Indrath.
And in a realm beyond their comprehension—the Aether Realm—for the first time in millions upon millions upon millions of years, the very essence of existence stirred.
This fundamental force, which had known only the cold, manipulative touch of the dragons, felt something new: a selfless act of ultimate sacrifice.
The resentment and hatred for the crimes of the dragon race did not vanish, but they were joined by a new sensation—hope.
He filled the Aether Realm with an undescribable determination.
And the aether itself seemed to chant the name of its hero. That day, The Aetherman became an unmistakable, universal symbol of hope.
13:29
As Dicathians and Alacryans alike looked upon the desolation, their shared trauma a fragile bridge between former enemies, the Aetherman moved again.
His body was broken, His spirit utterly devastated from years spent in suspended time. But His will was a force of nature.
No criminal, no matter how powerful, no matter if god or not, would escape justice.
At that moment, Windsom Indrath and Aldir Thyestes, oblivious to the miracle that had just nullified their atrocity, prepared to leave the smoldering wastes they had created.
Their work, they believed, was done. But as Windsom Indrath summoned his power to return to the sanctity of Epheotus, it failed him. The aether, its latent consciousness awakened and emboldened by the arrival of its superhero, rebelled.
It refused to obey the commands of the Asura, locking them in place.
Across the vast, freshly-made wasteland that was once Eidelholm, the Golden Knight turned His gaze upon them. He did not speak. He did not need to.
Justice, delayed for millennia, was finally on the way.