Prologue
The world does not reward those who endure.
It merely allows them to continue.
Cities rise not from hope, but from necessity stone stacked upon stone to keep danger outside the walls. Light fills the streets after dusk, drawn from sources few dare to question, while shadows remain where no one looks too closely.
Power exists everywhere.
It fuels streets, forges weapons, and sustains kingdoms.
But power is never given freely and never without consequence.
Most lives pass unnoticed.
They begin, persist, and end without leaving a mark on history.
This story does not begin with a prophecy,
nor with a chosen hero.
It begins with a decision made in silence:
to move forward when standing still is no longer an option.
Beyond the roads and the city lights, the world waits
indifferent, patient, and unforgiving.
Survival is not a triumph.
It is merely the first step.
End Of Prologue
Before the Road Opens
The fire had already died when the child woke up.
Cold crept through the cracks of the stone shelter, settling into bones that were too small to remember warmth as something permanent. Outside, the forest was quiet not peaceful, but watchful. Silence here was never empty. It meant something was listening.
He sat up slowly, breath controlled, hands already moving before thought caught up. A habit learned early: check surroundings first, ask questions later.
Nothing had changed.The embers were grey. The knife lay where it always did, within reach. No footprints near the entrance. No scent of blood, smoke, or unfamiliar mana in the air.
Safe for now.
He rose, gathering what little he owned. There was no name spoken aloud, no destination whispered into the morning. Roads did not care for names, and the world had never asked where he was going.
Outside, dawn struggled through the trees, pale and uncertain. The land beyond the shelter stretched wide and indifferent, scarred by old paths and newer wounds. Somewhere far from here, cities burned light through the night, fed by forces torn from creatures that once roamed free.
That world existed.
But it was not meant for him.
Not yet.
He stepped onto the road without ceremony.
The ground was cold beneath his boots, but solid. That was enough. Each step forward was measured, not hopeful. Hope was fragile. Awareness was not.
Behind him, the shelter would collapse eventually. Everything did.
Ahead lay distance, hunger, and things that hunted both man and monster alike.
The child did not quicken his pace.
Survival did not require haste only resolve.
And the road, once taken, rarely allowed turning back.
ARC 1 — Before Power, There Was Survival
CHAPTER 1 - THE CHILD WHO SHOULD NOT EXIST
The village was a wound that refused to heal.
It lay on disputed soil between the Elf and Dwarf domains, a stretch of land neither kingdom cared to claim. Rotten wood and grey mud formed its borders, sheltering those abandoned by crowns, races, and gods alike. There was no reason for such a place to endure beneath the shadows of two empires, yet misery often survived where prosperity never could.
At the edge of the settlement, silence broke not with a cry, but with the sound of a final breath.
Inside a damp wooden shack, a woman lay dying on a floor slick with blood. Her chest rose once more, then stilled. Beside her, the newborn did not wail. The infant remained motionless, lungs drawing slow, measured breaths that carried the scent of iron and decay.
Trod stood in the doorway, his hands rough from years of scarred mine work and warfare. As a veteran Dwarf, he was no stranger to death. He had seen bodies torn apart by steel and sorcery alike. Yet the stillness of this infant unsettled him more than any battlefield ever had.
There was no first cry.
No desperate struggle for warmth or milk.
The child simply lay there, alive in a way that felt wrong.
Trod stepped inside as the stench of death filled his lungs. He glanced at the mother, her eyes fixed in a vacant stare, then turned toward the infant who would be named Zio. He muttered a curse at a world cruel enough to claim a woman's life while sparing something so defenseless.
When he lifted the child, the expected warmth was absent. Zio opened his eyes.
They were not unfocused.
Not confused.
The gaze that met Trod's was calm, aware, and empty of the fragile panic that should belong to something newly born.
Before Trod could make sense of it, the air in the room grew heavy.
Not cold.
Not hot.
Heavy, as if the space itself had thickened. The wooden frame of the shack groaned under a pressure it was never meant to bear. Trod's instincts screamed for him to move, to fight or flee, yet his knees struck the floor instead.
He knelt, not from fear, but because the world demanded it.
A man stood in the dark corner of the room.
He had not entered through the door. He appeared as if reality itself had parted to allow him through. A faint light clung to his form, yet his presence suffocated more than darkness ever could.
The man's gaze rested on the child.
"So," he murmured, "it still breathes."
Zio stared back. He did not cry. He did not stir. The air around him felt disturbingly stable, as if the child existed outside the pressure crushing everything else.
"The world tried to erase you," the man said quietly. "And failed."
He stepped forward. The wooden floor splintered beneath his foot.
Trod tried to reach for the axe at his belt, but his arm refused to move. Stone would have been more forgiving.
"You will raise him," the man said. "With discipline. With force."
Trod swallowed. "And if I refuse?"
The man finally looked at him.
"No one asked."
Silence filled the room, thick and absolute.
The man turned his attention back to the child. "There is something inside him that does not belong. If it is not tempered before the age of ten, it will not be the boy who breaks. It will be the world around him."
For the first time, Trod felt his resolve tremble. "You know what he is."
"I know more than I should," the man replied.
The faint light around him dimmed. "Raise him. I will be watching."
Then the pressure vanished. The presence was gone, leaving no trace that it had ever existed.
Trod collapsed forward, gasping for air, clutching the infant against his chest. Zio showed no reaction. No fear. No relief.
That night, beneath a roof held together by rot and resignation, Trod sat alone with the child in his arms.
"I don't know if you're a curse," he muttered, "or a punishment."
He tightened his grip. "But if the world wants you dead, I'll make you hard enough to refuse it."
Zio remained silent.
He breathed.
He lived.
And in a place that had no right to endure, something far more dangerous than a monster had begun to grow.
End of Chapter 1