In 1969, the aftershocks of the Singularity were still being felt. The south-eastern part of the city appeared to have been torn away by a divine force. On top of the charred ruins stood the only relatively intact building left: the dilapidated slum known as 'Pigeon Coop'.
Aaryan stood on the edge of the rooftop; the streets below were shrouded in a deathly silence due to a complete power outage. Without the neon lights to conceal it, the true face of the Mayan district was suffocatingly ugly: countless rusty pipes, tangled wires and mountains of electronic waste. He looked down at the lightning-struck wooden hammer in his hand. A faint, almost imperceptible golden light flowed through the charred wood grain — a lingering effect of the power he had expended fighting against 'Father's' puppets at the centre of the Singularity.
'Cyrus still hasn't woken up?' Aaryan didn't turn around; his senses had become exceptionally sharp after the events of the previous night.
'He's sleeping like a log among those junk control boards,' said Pau, his voice tinged with the weakness of someone who'd just survived a close call. "Hey, Aaryan, you'd better come check on Balthazar. That big guy's been staring at you ever since he woke up, like he wants to take you apart to see if the circuit boards inside are made of gold.'
Aaryan turned around and saw Balthazar sitting cross-legged in the centre of the rooftop, next to a huge ventilation duct. His skin, which was once covered in dark red crystals due to his demonic transformation, now had an eerie bluish-grey hue — a temporary result of excessive overexertion depleting his demonic energy. But what alarmed Aaryan most were Balthazar's eyes. His pupils were no longer the ferocious crimson of the arena but a deep, dark blue, like a bottomless abyss.
This was a sign that reason was returning, which was also the most dangerous state.
"You concealed your bloodline." Balthazar slowly rose to his feet, his joints clicking like heavy hydraulic components meshing together. Casually picking up the two-hundred-pound Disintegrating Greatsword beside him, he allowed its tip to scrape across the concrete floor with a piercing screech.
'We've both concealed something,' Aaryan replied calmly. He clenched his left hand loosely, and the lightning-struck wooden mallet, sensing its master's hostility, emitted a faint crackling sound.
'No, this is different.' Balthazar walked to the centre of the rooftop and an invisible, rusty pressure instantly enveloped the surroundings. 'At the moment the singularity collapsed, I sensed your spiritual pressure. It wasn't the pale light of the hypocrites of the Holy Blood Council nor the chaotic shadow of our Demon Clan, but an ancient, pure, imperial authority powerful enough to make all beasts kneel.'
He stopped, holding the greatsword horizontally in front of his chest. His eyes burned with a fanatical fervour known as 'the pursuit of truth'.
'The Holy Blood Council says you are the sacrifice to open the singularity; the Silvermoon says you are the remnant left behind by a madman. But I only believe in my sword.' Balthazar's lips curled into a cruel yet excited smile. 'If you are truly the long-lost heir to the royal family, then you can certainly withstand this strike. If you are just a fraud, then you can die here rather than in the Council's laboratory.'
The wind on the rooftop suddenly stopped, the moisture in the air instantly evaporating due to opposing ethereal forces.
"Trying to test my limits?" Aaryan took a half-stance, his mallet pointing diagonally towards the ground. The ends of his hair floated slightly in the overflowing lightning. "Then be prepared to be erased by the 'Remnant'."
The acid rain falling between the two of them from the rooftop was instantly torn apart by an invisible force and turned into rings of white mist.
Balthazar broke the silence first. He didn't make any grand gestures; he simply took a step forward. His heavy combat boots hit the cracked concrete with a thunderous roar that seemed to shake the entire top floor of the pigeon coop.
'Catch!'
he growled, his Disintegrating Greatsword transforming into a black lightning bolt and slicing diagonally downwards through the rust-coloured rain. Even before it touched Aaryan, the intense heat from the high-speed friction had blown the stray hairs from his forehead.
Aaryan's pupils contracted. He could sense the 'demonic' energy contained in Balthazar's attack — an extremely unstable and highly corrosive form of ether. If he were struck head-on, his bones would shatter and his soul would be torn apart by this violent energy.
He didn't retreat. At Pau's gasp, he shifted his body slightly, the lightning-struck wooden mallet slashing upwards.
Clang!
The heavy metallic clang echoed through the slums, drowning out the distant roar of the factory.
The scene was utterly bizarre: the towering Balthazar was pressing down with his greatsword, while the slender Aaryan was steadily holding the heavy blade capable of splitting mountains and cleaving rocks with only one hand gripping the short wooden mallet.
'Such strength.' Balthazar's arm muscles bulged and the bluish-grey veins on his skin pulsated like small snakes. He continued to exert force. "But strength alone won't last three minutes in the 'Obsidian Well'!"
The blade of the greatsword began to tremble, a dark red pulse spreading downwards along its length — this was the Demon Clan's instinctive technique, 'Disintegration Shock'. The concrete ground cracked beneath their feet, sending pebbles flying like bullets and striking the rusty iron fence beside them with a clattering sound.
Aaryan felt a violent vibration travelling through the mallet to the base of his hand; an energy that seemed intent on dismantling his muscle structure and leaving him defenceless.
'I didn't intend to rely solely on brute force,' he murmured in response.
His internal energy began to circulate rapidly. Unlike Balthazar's violent, outward-flowing energy, Aaryan's energy contracted inward, like an undercurrent beneath a deep pool. In that instant, images of sword techniques from Final Fantasy flashed through his mind, blending with the 'Thunderous Body Refinement' technique from the fantasy system.
He no longer suppressed the fluctuations emanating from the pendant on his chest.
A brilliant golden light flowed through his arm and into the lightning-struck mallet. The natural patterns formed by the lightning strike on the mallet's previously charred surface suddenly burst forth with blinding brilliance. Countless tiny golden arcs of electricity, like nimble tentacles, coiled instantly around Balthazar's greatsword.
'This lightning... something's wrong!' Balthazar's expression changed drastically.
This lightning lacked the acrid smell of ordinary etheric discharge; instead, it carried an inviolable, sacred quality. Upon contact with the dark red energy on the greatsword, the golden arcs produced a dense hissing sound, like boiling water poured onto snow. The previously indestructible energy was abruptly severed by these golden threads.
Seizing the momentary break in his opponent's energy, Aaryan twisted his wrist, sending the mallet gliding along the blade and leaving a trail of sparks as it aimed directly for Balthazar's chest.
Balthazar reacted with lightning speed. He suddenly released his left hand, forming a palm with his five fingers, and a dense ball of dark red blood light gathered in his palm, enabling him to withstand the blow.
Boom!
Golden lightning and dark red blood energy collided in mid-air, causing a small-scale explosion of energy. The powerful shockwave sent Pau, who was observing from a distance, flying to the ground. Even Cyrus, the sleeping mechanic, was jolted out of his control panel, grumbling as he wiped the acid rain from his face.
As the smoke cleared, Balthazar took five staggered steps back, leaving deep footprints on the rooftop with each step; his left palm was charred black. A wisp of golden lightning energy seeped into his meridians, numbing his left side and causing an uncontrollable paralysis.
Aaryan remained standing, breathing slightly rapidly. The flickering sparks from the lightning-struck hammer slowly seeped into the wood grain.
"That move just now…" Balthazar shook his numb left hand; the fanaticism in his eyes had been replaced by deep awe. 'That was "Imperial Awe". The knights trained by the old fools on the Holy Blood Council could never wield such pure Ancient God lightning."
He raised his head and looked directly into Aaryan's eyes. 'Aaryan, did you know that the energy you just used was "Primal Aether", a technique that has been lost to this continent for three hundred years?'
Aaryan remained silent, looking down at his palm. For a moment, he had indeed felt a strange yearning, but not for defeating his opponent. It was a yearning for judgement, a higher will looking down upon all living beings, sending a chill down his spine.
'All I know is that if you don't stop, this building will collapse.' Aaryan avoided the topic of bloodline, turning to look into the distance.
At the end of the street, several cold, blue-white searchlights pierced the acid rain and swept towards the slum. Those were the patrol boats of the Holy Blood Council's enforcers.
The violent aetheric fluctuations from earlier had clearly triggered the city's energy monitoring network.
'Tsk! Those stray dogs came just because they could smell it.' Balthazar sheathed his greatsword and his eyes regained their coldness. Looking at Aaryan, his tone was less probing and more sincere. "The battle isn't over yet, but we can't stay here any longer. Come with me. I know a place where the Council's reach can't extend.'
Pau scrambled to his feet, dusting himself off, and shouted, 'Am I still going to lead the way? Were you trying to demolish our place?'
'Shut up, Pau.' Aaryan walked over to Cyrus, who was still bewildered, and lifted him up. 'We're moving. Balthazar, lead the way.'
The rust-coloured dawn broke completely. In this city ruled by a false god, the real storm had only just begun.
The azure-gold divine light that had been unleashed during the battle gradually dissipated. Aaryan knelt on one knee on the cracked reinforced concrete, panting heavily. The golden arcs of electricity in his right hand had not completely died down yet, slithering uneasily along the edge of his left arm covered in obsidian scales like nimble snakes. The tug-of-war between 'holy power' and 'magic power' within the same body made every vein feel as though it were being burned.
Across from him, Balthazar wiped away the mixture of saliva and dark red blood that had spilled from the corner of his mouth. He casually planted the greatsword, crackling with dark red electricity, in the ruins and scrutinised Aaryan with an almost greedy gaze, offering no further attack.
'This is the power of royalty... Even blood diluted for a thousand years can bloom into a killing flower in a garbage dump.' 'You think this is just a simple challenge?' Balthazar slowly walked to the edge of the rooftop and pointed to the distant clock tower, which was faintly visible in the acid rain. This was the core of the Maya District — the singularity where the ley lines converged. 'In the underlying logic of this city, time is never linear.' Balthazar's voice suddenly deepened, carrying a sense of vicissitude that seemed out of place in this era. 'I once saw a video in those erased files. It was a rainy night in 1969 and someone had the same look in their eyes as you. He tried to hold a mixed-race girl's hand in the firelight, but in the end, he only grasped a handful of ashes." Aaryan's heart clenched sharply as Dahlia's face flashed through his mind. A fatalistic sense of crisis made him clutch the pendant at his chest instinctively. He could hear the clock tower chiming silently, as if beckoning him back to that blood-red beginning.
Just then, several figures in grey cloaks vanished silently from the dark streets below the slums. The miniature recorders in their hands flashed an icy blue light.
'Target: "Fully Awakened State". Data collection complete.'
'Lord Malakor's orders: Maintain the pressure; make him feel alone and ostracized by his people. Only when he realises he has been abandoned by the world will the 'Seed of Harmony' bear the fruit we need.'
Balthazar seemed to sense a watchful gaze from the shadows. He let out a cold snort, turned to Aaryan and gave him a cruel smile. 'Little one, remember this feeling of being watched. In the Maya District, discrimination isn't based on prejudice, but on your continued value. The day you lose your value, you'll find that the very civilians you protected will be the first to send you to the guillotine.'
In the sky, the 'Golden Flame Malayan Tiger' belonging to the Holy Blood Council roared deeply. Golden clouds churned above the city.
Aaryan stood up and looked at his mutated left hand. He knew that this was no longer merely a test of his identity. With the awakening of his royal blood, the racial balance that had been kept in check had been shattered completely. In the shadows, the great villain Lord Malakor's 'Black Mandala Project' had begun, and Aaryan was the most important pawn that had been pushed to the centre of the chessboard.
'Balthazar, tell me the truth about 1969.' Aaryan's voice was hoarse yet carried an undeniable weight. 'The truth?' Balthazar leapt off the rooftop, disappearing into the thick steam haze. 'The truth came when that bronze bell tolled. Go and find the blind sage Cyrus. He will tell you how history repeats itself.'
Just as Aaryan was trying to get Balthazar to reveal the truth about 1969, an ominous, bright purple light suddenly tore the sky apart.
'Boom!' A high-frequency, vibrating ether laser instantly pierced the rooftop beneath their feet. The already crumbling slum buildings were sliced open like butter by a giant blade, and the shrill sound of breaking steel bars instantly drowned out the sound of rain.
'Damn it! It's the Blood Council's 'Purgers'!" Balthazar's face turned deathly pale. He grabbed Aaryan by the collar and dragged him into the shadows.
From the billowing smoke, dozens of 'Silverwing Drones' arranged in a triangle descended from the thick clouds. Without warning, they dropped incendiary bombs filled with liquefied ether onto the dense slum shacks below. Screams, cries and the sounds of collapsing buildings mingled together in an instant. Aaryan witnessed a half-breed boy clutching a wind-up toy being vaporised into a blue afterimage by a laser beam before he could escape the doorway.
These commoners, usually considered "parasites" by humans and "expendable resources" by royalty, had no chance to resist the Blood Council's precise attacks. 'Why? They're just civilians!' Aaryan roared, his amethyst-gold divine light spiralling out of control in rage and unleashing terrifying pulses from his obsidian-scaled left arm.
'Because of you, little one,' Balthazar murmured from behind a broken wall. His dark red eyes were filled with mockery and sorrow. 'Lord Malakor doesn't need runaway royalty. If he can't control you, he'll destroy the land you inhabit. These people are just 'bait' to lure you out.' In the streets, the surviving civilians began to flee in all directions. Having been brainwashed and incited by those in power for a long time, they did not believe that the lasers in the sky represented the tyranny of the higher-ups; instead, they directed their hatred towards their demonic neighbours.
'It's these demons who brought this disaster!' A burly man, having lost his home, brandished a wrench and hit a demonic woman, who was also fleeing for her life, hard over the head with it. 'If it weren't for you monsters, why would the Council punish us?'
This deep-seated discrimination, catalysed by the firelight, escalated into frenzied infighting. Aaryan watched the scene unfold with a sense of unprecedented absurdity. He wanted to save people, but his mutated left hand represented the most primal and violent power of the royal family, making him the target of everyone's attacks the moment he stepped out of the shadows.
'Get away, monster!'
'Stay away from us!' Stones and curses were hurled at the awakening royal.
As Aaryan struggled with the extreme pain of an identity crisis, a huge shadow enveloped the entire slum. Cillian, one of the Holy Blood Council executives, slowly descended upon the ruins. He was covered in dark gold power armour and had four pairs of mechanical wings on his back, which emitted a dazzling, cold light.
"Aaryan, remnant of royalty." Cillian's cold, judgmental voice echoed through the ruins via loudspeaker. "Your very existence is a stain on the Maya District. Since you refuse to enter the laboratory obediently and die in this mud that you try to protect, you will die here." As Cillian raised his hand, hundreds of drones simultaneously locked onto Aaryan.
Balthazar gripped his greatsword, but his slightly trembling hand revealed that even he — the reigning champion of the underground arena — could not withstand the power of a state machine. He felt utterly hopeless.
"Aaryan, either fully awaken your demonic nature or turn to ashes with this trash." Balthazar whispered in his ear. "Choose one. This is the choice your father faced in 1969."
Faced with the lock-on of hundreds of drones and interrogation by Executor Cillian, Aaryan's body trembled violently under the strain. The slum-dwellers who had initially fled from him let out their final screams amidst the blinding roar of lasers charging up.
'Since you see me as a monster,' Aaryan slowly lowered his head, letting his left hand, covered in obsidian scales, hang at his side, 'then I'll give you a true monster.' The instant the drone swarm opened fire, one half of the 'Twin Clockwork Heart' in Aaryan's chest stopped abruptly. The impure etheric energy that had pierced his veins was instantly purified into crystalline purple-gold as if in the presence of royalty.
'Domain: Throne of Embers, Construct.' There was no deafening explosion, only a chilling silence. Hundreds of lasers, upon contacting a three-metre radius around Aaryan, seemed to accidentally strike an invisible magnetic levitation track, tracing an arc before shooting back into the sky.
'Boom!' The swarm of silver-winged drones that had arrogantly circled the clouds was instantly transformed into a series of shrill fireworks by his own firepower. Cillian's face, hidden beneath the dark gold mask, finally paled. The mechanical wings behind him flapped wildly in an attempt to stabilise the instantly distorted gravitational field.
'Haha! This is what I wanted!' Balthazar laughed maniacally, ignoring the aftershocks, and danced amidst the apocalyptic scene. 'Look, Lord Malakor! This is the spark you tried to extinguish! It's about to burn down your entire hypocritical paradise!' Balthazar's so-called 'challenge' wasn't about killing Aaryan at all, but rather about using extreme threats to force Aaryan to achieve a secondary resonance with the 'Core of the Demon Clan's Remains'. From the beginning, he had seen through the Holy Blood Council's surveillance, using his greatsword and life as bait to make Aaryan realise the true nature of this city.
Above the ruins, Aaryan slowly rose into the air. His eyes turned a deep, pure purple-gold and the echoes of 1969 in his mind grew ever clearer: the roars of his enslaved, dismembered and battery-powered ancestors. His consciousness was no longer confined to the slums; it flowed along the etheric veins and pierced the intricate gears within the distant clock tower directly.
"Cillian," he said, extending his left hand. His obsidian scales gleamed coldly in the sunlight. "Tell Malakor that I am no longer a pawn on your chessboard. From this day forward, I am the source of your nightmares."
The Executor Cillian's prized power armour emitted a sickeningly twisting sound as if an invisible hand were crushing it, its clenched fist clenching tighter still. The once arrogant Executor screamed in agony and fled in disarray towards the inner city, leaving a trail of shattered dark gold parts behind him.
When the dust settled, the slums had been reduced to scorched earth.
Aaryan fell from the sky, the royal energy within him receding like the tide and being replaced by extreme weakness. He looked at Balthazar, who was still smiling, but with a hint of relief.
"The contract is complete, little one." Balthazar wiped away the blood; his eyes were filled with complex emotions. 'Now, we must go and welcome the last member of our group of four. Before the bronze bell tolls, we must rescue Cyrus, the blind man, from the gallows of the Holy Blood Council."
As Aaryan withdrew his consciousness from the vast, almost divine torrent of purple-gold energy, he was almost overwhelmed by intense exhaustion and lost his footing. A corner of the slum had been reduced to a glassy ruin.
Although the Holy Blood Council's Purifier squadron was destroyed in this battle, the price was high — the already fragile shelter was completely wiped out.
However, upon weighing the gains and losses of this 'probe', Aaryan was pleasantly surprised to discover that the etheric circuits within his body had undergone a qualitative change. The 'mortal barrier' that had previously hindered his progress had expanded after absorbing the shockwaves from Balthazar's disintegration and the Council's laser energy.
"See?" Balthazar stood up and picked up a shimmering blue chip from the ruins — the 'core access' dropped by Executor Cillian during his escape — 'This is your reward for risking your life to awaken. With it, we can access the deepest database of the Clock Tower.'
Balthazar walked up to Aaryan. This time, he didn't raise his greatsword, but instead extended his rough, scarred hand.
'I admit, I used to think of you as just another pampered royal bastard.' His voice was hoarse, but tinged with respect. 'But the moment you shielded the commoners who saw you as a monster from the laser, I knew you weren't like the madman Malakor.'
Aaryan looked at him — the opponent who had once filled him with despair in the arena — who was now his only support in these ruins. Their two blood-stained hands clasped tightly together and their opposing etheric forces — the royal's holy order and the demonic power of disintegration — reached a delicate, temporary balance. Aaryan completed his 'First Royal Awakening', widening his etheric circuit by 30% and unlocking the prototype of the skill 'Domain: Throne of Embers".
Balthazar confirmed Aaryan's leadership potential and obtained the "Ash Access Card", the crucial item needed to enter the inner city.
Some of the surviving slum-dwellers, who were hybrids, saw through the Council's true nature and began secretly aligning themselves with Aaryan.
'Stop being sentimental; we're not out of danger yet.' Pau, who had been hiding in the distance, finally emerged. He looked frightened, but was still clutching the old radio transmitter he had salvaged from the slums.
A piercing crackle of static came from the transmitter, followed by a deep, almost deathly voice: 'If you want to live, bring that chip to the Ruined Gear Monastery.' Old blind Cyrus has already tuned the clock to the 1969 frequency. The Council's army will arrive in 15 minutes.'
Aaryan looked back at the city centre, looming like a tombstone in the red rain. He knew that this was not just an escape from pursuit, but a journey across time to trace the origins of the past.