Chapter 1 — The Day the Sky Refused to Answer
In the world of Erdveil, people did not pray to gods.
They prayed to the Sky.
Not because the Sky was merciful—but because it was watching.
From the moment a child was born, they were taught three truths:
The Sky remembers everything.
The Earth forgives nothing.
Humanity exists only in the space between.
Every city in Erdveil was built low, never tall. Towers were considered blasphemy—attempts to look the Sky in the eye. Long ago, those who did so vanished in fire and wind, leaving behind only melted stone and stories parents told to scare their children into obedience.
The people learned quickly.
And so, life continued beneath the open heavens—quiet, restrained, fearful.
The city of Kareth woke to the sound of bells.
Not the celebratory kind.
These bells were slow. Heavy. Each strike carried enough silence afterward to let fear sink into the bones.
Dong…
Dong…
Dong…
Ryuuji Valis stood still in the middle of the street, bread in one hand, coins in the other.
Three bells.
That meant only one thing.
A Sky Omen.
People froze where they stood. Merchants dropped baskets. Mothers pulled children close without speaking. Soldiers lowered their spears—not toward an enemy, but toward the ground, as tradition demanded. To raise steel during a Sky Omen was believed to invite punishment.
Ryuuji swallowed.
The air felt wrong.
Not stormy. Not cold.
Hollow.
Like the world itself was holding its breath.
"Three bells…" someone whispered. "It's been decades."
Ryuuji slowly looked upward.
The Sky above Kareth was clear—too clear. No clouds. No birds. No wind.
Just an endless, pale blue expanse that felt less like nature and more like an eye.
Watching.
Judging.
Ryuuji hated it.
He always had.
Kareth followed the Way of Stillness, one of Erdveil's oldest belief systems. According to it, humanity survived only because it did not change. Progress angered the Sky. Curiosity invited calamity. Innovation was rebellion.
That belief shaped everything.
Weapons were limited. Books were censored. Maps ended where the old borders lay, even though everyone knew the world extended far beyond them. Asking what lay past the Ash Plains was enough to get someone reported to the Wardens.
Ryuuji knew this better than anyone.
His father had died for asking the wrong question.
Why does the Sky punish some cities and spare others?
That single sentence had been enough.
"Ryuuji."
A rough voice snapped him back to the present.
Captain Rohlan, a Warden clad in dull gray armor, stood nearby. His helmet was off—a sign of unease. Wardens only removed their helmets when they feared being judged by the Sky as individuals, not symbols.
"Go home," Rohlan said quietly. "This doesn't concern you."
Ryuuji almost laughed.
Nothing ever concerned people like him—until it was too late.
"I live near the eastern wall," Ryuuji replied.
"That's where the bells are pointing."
Rohlan's jaw tightened.
"…Then pray your roof holds."
That wasn't reassurance.
That was a warning.
The bells stopped.
Silence fell so deep that even breathing sounded loud.
Then—
The Sky cracked.
Not like thunder.
Not like lightning.
It cracked like glass.
A thin, dark line split the heavens above the eastern wall, stretching wider with a sound that made people clutch their ears and scream. The blue faded around it, replaced by something blacker than night, swirling slowly—as if the Sky itself were peeling open.
Someone screamed, "The Sky is breaking!"
"No," an old priest whispered, tears streaming down his face. "The Sky is opening…"
From the 裂 (rift), something fell.
Not meteors.
Not fire.
Ash.
Black ash drifted downward, slow and deliberate, like snow that had learned hatred. Wherever it touched stone, the surface aged decades in seconds. Wood rotted. Metal rusted. Flesh—
Ryuuji didn't look away when the ash touched a man's arm and turned it gray, brittle, dead.
The man didn't even scream.
He simply crumbled.
Panic exploded.
People ran. Screamed. Trampled one another. The Wardens broke formation for the first time in recorded history, shouting conflicting orders as the ash thickened.
Ryuuji ran toward the eastern wall.
Not away.
Toward.
Because beneath the terror, beneath the years of fear and obedience, something burned in his chest.
A question.
Why?
The eastern wall of Kareth was ancient—older than the city itself. No one remembered who built it, only that rebuilding or altering it was forbidden. The stone was darker than the rest of the city, etched with symbols no modern scholar could read.
And now—
The wall was weeping ash.
Cracks spread across its surface, pulsing faintly, like veins. At the center, a section collapsed inward, revealing a passage that had never existed before.
Or had always existed—and was only now allowed to be seen.
Ryuuji stood at the edge, chest heaving.
Behind him, chaos.
Ahead of him, darkness.
Then a voice spoke.
Not aloud.
Inside his head.
"You are not still."
Ryuuji staggered, clutching his head.
"I—who's there?"
"You look at the Sky and ask why it looks back."
The air inside the passage shimmered.
"That is forbidden."
"That is necessary."
Ryuuji's knees hit the ground.
Memories flooded him—his father arguing with priests, old forbidden books hidden beneath floorboards, dreams of a world not shackled by fear.
"What is this place?" he whispered.
The voice paused.
Then answered.
"This is where Erdveil buried its answers."
The ash stopped falling.
The Sky slowly sealed itself, the crack vanishing as if it had never been there.
But the wall remained broken.
And Ryuuji Valis—Ryu, son of a condemned questioner, stood at the threshold of a truth the world had tried to erase.
Behind him lay a world that survived by not knowing.
Ahead of him lay something far worse.
Or far better.
He stepped forward.
End of Chapter 1