In the beginning, the world was called Eleria.
It was not born of myth or prayer, but of convergence.
Steel towers pierced the clouds, their frames laced with glowing mana circuits that pulsed like veins. High above the streets, floating railways traced elegant arcs through the sky, each carriage propelled by humming reactors where sorcery and science no longer argued—they cooperated.
Holographic spell-screens flickered between buildings, broadcasting imperial decrees, bounty notices, stock prices of mana corporations, and live feeds of distant wars. Enchanted firearms rested beside rune-etched blades in shop windows. Drones shaped like arcane sigils patrolled the air, scanning for threats both magical and mundane.
This was not a world that chose between magic and technology.
It mastered both.
Yet for all its advancement, Eleria had never outgrown one ancient truth:
Strength decided everything.
Power in Eleria was measured, ranked, quantified.
Those without it survived quietly.
Those with it ruled loudly.
Humans controlled the central continents, their megacities layered atop the bones of ancient civilizations. Elves ruled preserved forests enhanced by bio-arcane engineering, where nature and spellcraft grew together. Beastmen roamed fortified plains behind mobile cities that could uproot themselves and march to war.
Demons governed industrial hellscapes where cursed mana powered factories that never slept. Merefolk ruled beneath the oceans, inside radiant domes of crystal and light. Vampires claimed neon-lit night cities, where artificial suns dimmed at their command and blood was traded like currency.
And beyond them all—
There were Dragons and Dwarves.
Dragons did not rule the land.
They held authority.
Each was a calamity given will, an ancient existence bound by contracts older than history itself. They appeared rarely, but when one moved, nations recalculated borders and empires reconsidered wars.
Dwarves, meanwhile, ruled the depths. Entire underground city-states burned with the glow of mana-forges beneath mountain ranges. They built the reactors, the alloys, the spirit-binding arrays that kept Eleria running. Empires did not fight wars without Dwarven approval.
Above races, above corporations, above armies—
Stood the Aristocracy.
Noble houses did not merely own land.
They owned infrastructure. Intelligence networks. Private militaries. Mana grids. Assassination rights.
And at the very pinnacle of human power stood the Imperial Family.
The crown prince of the Human Empire was named Leonardo Aurelion Valerius.
He was born beneath favourable stars, his bloodline refined over generations of ritual optimisation. His talent was overwhelming. His charisma is effortless. Fate itself seemed to smooth the path before his feet.
Teachers called him a Prodigy.
Generals called him Hope.
The people called him the Future.
History would one day remember him as the saviour of an age.
Because this world already had a protagonist.
In another world, one without mana, nobles, or destiny, lived a man who loved stories.
He was not special.
An office employee. One among millions. His life was measured in deadlines rather than battles, commutes rather than campaigns. Survival meant keeping his job. Victory meant reaching the end of the week.
But there was one thing that gave colour to his grey routine.
A novel.
Chronicles of Eleria.
He read it obsessively.
He knew the arcs. The betrayals. The wars that would come. He knew which heroes would rise and which would be erased by history despite their efforts.
In that world of spell-powered cities and noble bloodlines, he found something his own life lacked.
Meaning.
It was almost ironic that his life ended on an ordinary night.
A crosswalk. Flickering streetlights. The sound of tyres, then it followed
Pain.
Darkness.
And then-
A cry shattered the silence.
Not of fear.
But of birth.
Warmth replaced the cold. Sound flooded in. The man's consciousness fractured and reassembled, drowned beneath sensations he had never known.
When awareness returned, mana hummed through the air like restrained lightning.
Spell-lamps illuminated walls of blackstone alloy and mana-reactive steel. Transparent panels hovered near the ceiling, displaying arcane diagnostics in shifting runes. Suppression fields layered the room so densely that even an Archmage would feel blind here.
Voices surrounded him, controlled, calm, dangerous, joyous
But he still had no idea where he was… or what he was.
He tried to move.
Nothing happened.
His body felt heavy, distant, as if it did not belong to him at all. He tried again, forcing strength into limbs that refused to respond. Panic flickered, but even that felt muted, trapped behind something small and fragile.
He wanted to speak.
To ask where he was.
To scream.
To breathe.
But no voice came.
Not even a sound.
Then he saw it.
No-
He saw them.
Blurry shapes at first, towering silhouettes wrapped in light and shadow. Their outlines were indistinct, yet their presence pressed down on him with terrifying clarity. Each one carried weight, authority, danger, and restraint honed over years of survival.
They were looking at him.
Watching.
Judging.
In that moment, a realisation settled over him with unsettling calm.
This body was not broken.
It was simply… new.
Small. Weak. Unfinished.
And that was when it truly hit him.
He hadn't just survived.
He had been reborn.
A sound finally reached him.
Soft.
Warm.
A woman's voice.
"So quiet…" she murmured. "He hasn't cried even once."
The words didn't register immediately. Language brushed against his awareness like something half-remembered, familiar yet distant. Meaning followed a heartbeat later.
She's talking about me.
Another voice answered—lower, steadier.
"Fear is a waste of energy," the man said. "If he's silent, it means he doesn't feel threatened."
The presence behind that voice was… heavy. Not loud. Not aggressive. Just absolute. The kind of calm that came from knowing nothing in the room could challenge him.
A hand brushed his cheek.
Gentle.
Careful.
"He's warm," the woman said softly. "And his mana is… unusually stable."
Mana.
The word slid into place far too easily.
That shouldn't have happened.
His thoughts stalled.
Mana…?
The blurry shapes sharpened slightly. Colours gained definition. Black stone walls veined with faintly glowing circuits. Light that wasn't fire or sun, but something cleaner—arcane, controlled. Faces leaned into his field of vision, unfamiliar yet unmistakably human.
No.
Not all of them.
Some had eyes that reflected light too sharply. Others carried an air that bent the space around them without trying. These weren't ordinary people.
They were dangerous.
And they were his…?
A realisation formed slowly, carefully, like stepping onto thin ice.
He wasn't lying on a bed.
He was being held.
Cradled.
Protected.
The woman's heartbeat was steady beneath him. Her grip was firm but instinctively aware of how fragile he was. This wasn't someone afraid of hurting him.
This was someone who knew exactly how much force she could apply.
"My son," she whispered.
The word echoed.
Son.
Something inside him cracked, he felt a massive headache like the one which make you question your sanity and then came,
Memories, another life, another world, offices, screens, novels read far too late into the night, flickered at the edge of his consciousness. A story. A world of magic and technology. Aristocrats. Bloodlines.
Eleria.
The name surfaced unbidden.
And with it—
Chronicles of Eleria.
His breath caught—silent, instinctive.
This wasn't panic.
This was horror sharpened by understanding.
He knew this world.
He knew how it would burn.
He knew who would shine.
And he knew who would be erased from history like they never mattered at all.
The man's voice spoke again, closer now.
"He's watching us."
A pause.
"…Those eyes," he added quietly. "They're too aware."
The woman, his mother, didn't pull away.
Instead, she smiled.
"Then he'll survive," she said. "This family doesn't raise weaklings."
A third voice laughed softly. Amused. Old. Sharp around the edges.
"Poor child," it said. "Born into a nest of monsters."
Monsters.
The word didn't frighten him.
It reassured him.
Because monsters survived.
Heroes died beautifully.
And somewhere deep inside his newborn body, beneath the weakness, beneath the silence, beneath the helplessness, a single, cold thought settled into place.
History only remembers the top three.
The rest are forgotten.
If this world were determined to follow that rule-
Then he wouldn't aim for the light.
He would become the shadow that stood just beside it.
Unrecorded.
Uncelebrated.
Unavoidable.
Wrapped in unfamiliar warmth, surrounded by dangerous people who called him family, the newborn closed his eyes.
And for the first time since his rebirth-
Kael Raven began to plan.