⚔️ CHAPTER 1 — A Boy with Borrowed Dreams
Kael Ardyn was seventeen when he first held a real sword.
It was heavier than he imagined.
Not in weight—but in meaning.
The steel trembled in his hands as sunlight spilled across the training yard of Valenhold Academy. Knights in white armor moved like saints beneath the banners of the Luminous Crown.
"This blade," the instructor said, pacing slowly, "exists to protect the innocent."
Kael believed him.
He always believed.
Orphaned by a border war he barely remembered, Kael had grown up hearing stories of heroes who died smiling, of knights who stood against darkness and were rewarded with glory.
He wanted to be like them.
He didn't notice the way veterans avoided his eyes.
He didn't hear the bitterness behind their prayers.
And he certainly didn't know that every hero in those stories had been betrayed before they died.
When Kael swung the sword for the first time, the edge sang softly through the air.
Somewhere far away, something ancient stirred.
And fate smiled—because it had finally found someone easy to break.