Even before the Silent Eclipse began, the world felt wrong.
Not in a way most people could name. The air was colder. Shadows stretched a little too far. Children woke crying and couldn't explain why. Ravens flew in spirals above Lunwilde Valley, then scattered violently as if chased by an unseen predator.
Only one man truly knew what this feeling meant.
Eryndor Valegrant, once heir to the prestigious Chronosong Bloodline—now a quiet hunter in exile—jerked awake in the dead of dusk, heart pounding as if gripped by an invisible fist.
Time, which usually hummed around him like a faint second heartbeat, suddenly felt strained… stretched… about to snap.
He sat upright, hand pressed to his chest.
"No…" he whispered. "It's too early. The signs—this level shouldn't happen until—"
A sharp cry cut him off.
Selia.
His wife.
He sprang to his feet, stumbling into the next room. Selia lay on their small bed, clutching her swollen belly, her face pale with terror.
"Eryn… something's wrong…" she gasped. "The baby—he's coming, but it's—gods—it's not normal…"
Her breath hitched, her body wracked with pain.
He took her hand. "Selia, breathe. Stay with me."
But his voice trembled.
He could feel it. This was no ordinary childbirth.
Fate itself was twisting in his home.
And the world outside was already beginning to break.
————-
It started with the wind.
A soft breeze slipped under the window shutters… then froze. Not slowed. Not stilled.
Frozen.
Eryndor's breath caught in his throat.
He knew what this meant.
"No… no, no—Selia, it's starting."
She looked up at him, trembling. "What's starting?"
He opened his mouth—
—but the sun outside vanished.
Instantly.
Not darkness like night.
Not clouds.
Erasure.
A perfect disc of nothing swallowed the sky's center, bleeding shadow outward like ink spreading through water. Then the moon slid into view, though it should've been on the opposite side of the world. The sky dimmed until every color drained away.
A black sun.
A silver moon.
No stars.
The Silent Eclipse had begun.
Selia sobbed as the room shook, the air pressure crashing. "Eryn—it hurts—it—"
He held her tighter, heart shredding.
"It's the Eclipse… and it's centered here. On you. On him. On our son."
The floorboards trembled violently. Dishes toppled. Lamps cracked. Outside, villagers screamed—but their voices cut off abruptly, swallowed by a silence so complete it felt like the world forgot sound existed.
Magic extinguished.
Fire died.
Wind halted.
Water stopped flowing.
Light dimmed.
Shadows grew teeth.
Selia screamed—
but even her scream made no sound.
Time itself locked.
And Eryndor felt his bloodline ignite in panic.
⸻
While Lunwilde suffered the eye of the storm, the rest of Aetheris trembled under the Eclipse's shockwaves.
⸻
Stormwake Fortress (Lightning)
Lord Altheron Vorsten stood on his tower when every thundercloud he commanded vanished. Lightning that had danced in his palm for five decades flickered—
—and died.
"What devil steals the storm's breath?" he boomed
But the wind swallowed his words.
Static fled from the air.
His soldiers' lightning spears dimmed to dead iron.
He felt the storms recoil like frightened children.
And he felt a pull—
to the east.
Toward Lunwilde.
⸻
Emberforged Citadel (Fire)
Lady Pyra Pyrelocke reached toward her sacred flame—
It turned black.
The blaze she'd nurtured since childhood inverted color, then collapsed into ash without heat or smoke.
"No…" she whispered.
Her heartbeat raced—
but fire refused to answer.
She knelt before the cold pit. "Fire does not abandon us. Something else… devours it."
Then the volcanic mountain itself went still.
Even magma froze.
⸻
Stoneheart Sanctuary (Earth)
Titan Eldros pressed a palm to the soil.
It was dead.
Earth always sang to him, whispering mana from deep within its ancient layers. Now the land below him felt hollow—like a corpse.
He roared in fear.
⸻
Dawnweaver Temple (Light)
High Priestess Lumeria lifted her luminous staff.
The crystal within flickered weakly, radiance draining from it like blood leaking from a wound.
Children cried as their halos flickered and went out.
"Light does not fade…" she whispered. "Only shadow blocks it. This… this is neither."
⸻
Umbral Warrens (Shadow)
Lord Shadus stood among writhing shadows; unlike the others, his power did not wane.
It surged.
The Eclipse strengthened the Umbralborn.
Shadows elongated like serpents, coiling around him lovingly.
He smiled.
"The Void stirs.
The world remembers fear."
⸻
Chronosong Spire (Time)
Oracle Sybelle collapsed as time froze.
Literally froze.
She saw seconds crystallize in the air like suspended droplets. Clocks halted mid-tick. The hourglass stopped mid-fall, grains hanging in midair.
She grabbed her head and screamed.
"This presence… is not just outside our timeline—
IT ERASES the timeline!"
A single vision pierced the chaos:
A baby.
Silver eyes.
A father holding him.
A village collapsing.
Then the vision shattered.
⸻
Verdant Sovereignty (Nature)
Queen Thalia felt the Worldroot cry.
Roots curled inward. Leaves shriveled. Flowers closed. Even animals fled in silent terror.
Nature itself recoiled from something newborn.
⸻
Skyphage Aerie (Wind)
Windchief Arleon tried to summon a breeze.
Nothing.
He leapt from the spire—
—and fell.
Air did not move.
His guards saved him at the last moment.
"The sky refuses to breathe," he gasped.
⸻
Riverborn Palace (Water)
King Nerion watched the ocean outside his palace freeze mid-wave.
The water was motionless.
Solid, not ice—
water that forgot movement.
He dropped to his knees.
———-
Starborn Citadel (Celestial)
High Sovereign Lysandros Celestar stepped onto the balcony.
Every star in the sky winked out.
A celestial silence fell.
All constellations erased.
Then—
A new star ignited.
Blood-red.
Pulsing like a heartbeat.
Lysandros whispered, horrified
"A newborn anomaly…
born of the Void."
⸻
Back in Lunwilde, the eclipse deepened.
The entire valley lay trapped inside a sphere of suffocating stillness. Snowflakes hung in the air, suspended mid-fall. Chickens were frozen mid-cluck. A villager sprinting for shelter stuck mid-step like a statue.
Time locked completely.
Only one person could move:
Eryndor.
His Chronosong bloodline screamed—
igniting like molten gold.
Golden sigils spiraled across his arms, bursting free after years of self-imposed suppression.
He gritted his teeth.
Selia's scream—still trapped in silence—twisted his heart in half.
He slammed his palm to the floor.
"TIME RELEASE—LIMIT BREAK!"
The seal shattered.
A bubble of flowing time burst around him and Selia, snapping sound back.
Selia inhaled sharply, sobbing. "Eryn—! The pain—something's wrong—"
He held her close, voice cracking.
"It's not you, Selia. It's not the child.
It's the world."
He had read ancient forbidden Chronosong texts. He had seen prophecies etched into time that whispered of an impossible birth:
"When the world forgets its seconds, the harbinger shall awaken."
He had never believed it.
Now, holding his screaming wife as the air pulsed with void energy, he believed everything.
Selia squeezed his hand, fear clawing across her face.
"Eryn… is our baby—going to survive this?"
He kissed her forehead.
"He must."
Even as the world died around them.
⸻
Selia screamed again, and this time it wasn't pain—it was terror.
Black veins spidered across the walls. Shadows twisted into spirals. The lantern flame inverted colors, burning cold blue.
The midwife collapsed in the doorway, paralyzed from fear.
Outside the home, reality warped:
The sky cracked.
A fissure of pure void split across the heavens like a wound.
A low hum vibrated, shaking every atom of the valley.
Eryndor held Selia as she pushed, tears falling down her cheeks.
"Eryn—it hurts—something's—tearing—"
"I'm here. I'm here, Selia. Push!"
Another scream—
and the world cracked again.
This time the ground splintered, expanding in a circle outward from their home. Houses rattled. Snow lifted off the earth. The silent villagers—frozen mid-motion—trembled in unison, caught in a paradox.
Then—
A pulse.
A wave.
A shock of void energy exploded from Selia's body as the baby emerged.
The moment his tiny body touched the air—
everything exploded.
Reality distorted.
Walls warped in and out like breathing lungs.
Time fractured into glass shards.
The world shook as if struck by a titan.
The sky fissure widened, revealing an endless blackness behind the eclipse.
Selia collapsed into Eryndor's arms, barely conscious.
He stared down at the newborn—
silent, cold, small.
Then the baby opened his eyes.
Silver.
Not the silver of moonlight.
Not the silver of metal.
The silver of a void with depthless horizons.
Eryndor staggered back.
The shadows in the room curled around the infant like worshippers.
The lantern shattered.
The crib dissolved into dust.
Selia whispered weakly, "Eryn… is he…?"
Eryndor trembled.
"He's… ours.
He's our son."
But even he wasn't sure.
Because the air around the newborn oscillated with a pulse not of life, but of… something else.
And then—
The baby inhaled, his first breath—
And the world broke.