The night Aerich Kaven was born, the sky above Velridge didn't look like a sky at all. It looked like a giant bruise stretching across the heavens — a swirling cloud of purples, blacks, and molten gold, pulsing like something alive. The doctors said it was an atmospheric anomaly. The news called it a "cosmic pressure wave." But the old folks… they said nothing. They just stood outside their houses, clutching their amulets, staring upward with eyes too wide and too knowing.
And deep beneath the city — in forgotten tunnels older than history — something ancient stirred for the first time in a thousand years.
But Aerich didn't know any of that. Not then.He was just a crying baby with a strange birthmark glowing faintly on his chest: a spiral, cut through by a jagged line. Anyone who saw it felt a shiver crawl up their spine. His mother covered it quickly with a blanket, whispering soft prayers, and hoped the world would let her son grow up normal.
The world had different plans.
Fifteen years later…
Velridge looked like any other city on the surface — traffic, school rush, street food stalls, annoying bike horns. Aerich blended in just fine… mostly. He wasn't special; at least he didn't feel special. He struggled in math, forgot his lunch most days, and preferred staying invisible at school. But there were moments — tiny flashes — where he could swear something in him hummed. Like an invisible chord twanging inside his chest.
He ignored it. Who wouldn't? Life was hard enough without weird internal sound effects.
But the humming got louder every year. And louder. And louder.
Until one night, everything snapped.
The day had been normal. Classes, homework he didn't finish, a mild scolding from a teacher. After dinner, Aerich stayed up late, scrolling on his phone under the blanket, pretending to sleep. The house was quiet, except for the occasional creak of the old wooden frames settling.
Then came the first knock.
Tok.
Just one.Soft.Like a finger tapping glass.
Aerich froze under his blanket.He waited.
Tok.Slightly louder.
He slid the blanket down just enough to peek around the room. His window was shut. Door locked. Curtains drawn. Everything normal except…
There it was again.
Tok.But this time… from inside his room.
His heart flipped. "What the hell—"
The tapping wasn't random. It formed a rhythm. Three slow taps. Pause. Three fast taps. Pause.
His phone suddenly flickered. Screen on, screen off, on again. The glow illuminated the room in pulses of pale blue. Then the light froze on one notification that hadn't been there before.
UNKNOWN DEVICE CONNECTEDAccept? YES / NO
Aerich sat up, breathing hard. "Bro… what device?? I didn't plug anything in—"
Before he could choose, the screen switched again.It wasn't a notification this time.
It was a reflection.
But not of himself.
It was a face — pale, stretched, hollow-eyed — staring directly at him. Not through the camera. Through the screen, like it was a window instead of a phone.
Aerich dropped the phone instantly. It clattered on the floor, face-down, the screen still glowing.
He scrambled backward on his bed, chest pounding so hard it hurt. "Nope. Nope nope nope—"
The light under the phone dimmed. Then brightened. Then dimmed again, in a slow, steady rhythm.
Like breathing.
The room temperature dropped. His breath fogged in the air. The tapping stopped.
For a second, he thought it might all be a dream.
Then something whispered his name.
Aerich…
The voice wasn't from the phone.It wasn't from anywhere.It was inside his head — deep and cold, sliding like ice water down his spine.
"A-are you real?" Aerich whispered, instantly regretting talking to something that was clearly not from the normal world.
The whisper came again, closer this time.
It is time.
Aerich's chest burned—burned, like someone was carving a hot iron onto his skin from the inside. He gasped and clutched his shirt. The spiral birthmark he'd always hidden pulsed violently, glowing through the fabric like a tiny white sun.
His room trembled.His posters lifted off the walls.Loose pens and papers rose slowly into the air, floating as if gravity had just stopped obeying.
Aerich screamed.
And something answered.
Not the whisper.Something deeper.Louder.A roar like a thousand wings tearing open the sky.
A crack ripped through the air at the center of his room — a thin line of light, suspended in mid-air, like the world itself had been sliced open.
A rift.
The glow widened, edges peeling apart like torn fabric, revealing darkness beyond it. But not empty darkness — swirling shapes, shadowy figures, crawling silhouettes he couldn't understand.
A hand — long, skeletal, smoke-like — reached out of the rift and grabbed his ankle.
Aerich kicked wildly, yelling, "Let go! LET GO—!"
But the hand wasn't pulling him.It was testing him.
His birthmark blazed brighter, so bright he had to shut his eyes. A wave of force blasted outward from his chest, knocking everything in the room to the walls.
The shadow-hand recoiled instantly, screeching in a voice that sounded like metal grinding on bone.
The rift shrank abruptly, snapping shut.
Silence.Total silence.
Aerich collapsed on the floor, panting, sweat and tears streaming down his face. His room was a disaster — books everywhere, drawers open, posters shredded.
The door to his room burst open. His mother ran in, panic in her eyes.
"Aerich! What happened? I heard—"
She stopped. Completely froze.
Her eyes landed on his chest, where the birthmark's glow was only now fading. Her face drained of color.
"No…" she whispered. "Not yet. Please. Not yet…"
He blinked at her, confused and scared. "Mom… what? What's happening to me?"
She knelt beside him, trembling."I hoped this day would never come. I prayed it wouldn't."
"What day?"
She swallowed hard.
"The day the Veil opened for you."
Aerich stared at her, chest still hurting. "What is the Veil?"
Her answer came out in a trembling whisper:
"It is the barrier between our world and everything we were never meant to see."
That night, Aerich didn't sleep.
He sat by his window, hugging his knees, watching the silent city lights outside — pretending things were normal. Pretending he wasn't shaking.
But the hum in his chest had changed.It wasn't a faint vibration anymore.
It was awake.
And deep below Velridge, in tunnels forgotten by time, a pair of old, silver eyes opened slowly — eyes that had waited for this moment for centuries.
"The first seal has stirred…" the voice rumbled."…and the Veilborn child has awakened."