Chapter 1: The Throne of Ashes
"I'm tired of living like this."
The words echoed in the cold chamber like a curse spoken too late.
Ryz sat slouched on a throne too large for him, carved from black stone and marked with symbols he couldn't understand. Around him, the palace stretched in every direction.empty, silent, and cold. No voices. No movement. Only the faint ticking of something hidden deep beneath the floor.
He had everything a ruler might want. Power beyond reason. A throne built from the remains of beings long forgotten. His name once made stars flicker in fear. But what he truly wanted was much simpler. He wanted to breathe without pain, walk without exhaustion, and feel the sun without it hurting his skin.
Ryz wasn't born in this world. In truth, he wasn't even born with that name.
Once, back on Earth, he had been Elias Ryzner. A boy who lived more in hospitals than at home. Sickly. Fragile. His life was counted in pills and slow heartbeats. Cancer. A weak heart. A body that kept breaking down. Every night, he prayed to someone, anyone, hoping for a miracle. No one answered.
Then one day, he died.
He remembered the hospital bed. The machines going quiet. The white lights. The nurses crying. Then, something brighter. Something endless.
When he opened his eyes, he was floating. Whole. Alive, somehow.
Then came the gods.
Shapes of light. Wings of fire. Creatures made of thoughts and stars. They looked down on him like he was an accident. The greatest among them, a being wrapped in light, spoke first.
"You're not supposed to be here."
But something had already changed in him.
Years of pain. Years of silence. A lifetime of waiting. It all twisted together inside him.
A black mist seeped from his skin. Small at first, like smoke. Then growing.
The gods thought it was a stain. Something left over from his mortal life.
They were wrong.
The mist grew. It moved. It fed on their light. One of the angels fell, his wings turning to ash.
"This isn't from our world," one god shouted.
"Call the World-Binder," said another.
And they did.
Orran, the one who shaped stars, appeared with a staff that could break time. Seraphine, the blade of justice, came too. Her sword could cut through fate itself.
The battle tore through the heavens.
The mist became a storm, eating light, swallowing their names. Orran fought him for seven days. Seraphine tried to strike him down. But the mist adapted. It learned.
And through it all, Ryz kept shouting the same words.
"I just wanted to be normal."
In the end, they couldn't kill him. So they locked him away.
Not destroyed. Not forgotten. Just hidden. Buried in a palace at the edge of everything. A prison with no walls, and no purpose.
That's where he lived. Alone.
Time passed strangely in that place. Days felt like decades. He walked endless halls that echoed with no sound. The black mist within him never slept. It whispered. It showed him visions of what could be, what had been, and what he had lost.
Sometimes he would speak to the walls just to hear something. Other times he sat on the edge of the palace and stared into the dead sky. Stars didn't shine there. Only empty space, swirling with broken light.
He began to talk to the mist. It never answered in words, only feeling. Hunger. Grief. Rage. It was alive in some way. Not a weapon. Not a tool. A part of him.
He had once asked it to let him die.
It refused.
And so, eventually, he stopped trying.
But today, something shifted. The silence wasn't as thick. The throne no longer held him. Something inside him stirred.not the mist, but the man.
He stood up. His black cloak dragged behind him. His eyes, once bright, were now tired and gray. The mist inside him stirred again, sensing movement.
"No," he said. "No more war. No more power."
He raised his hand.
A doorway opened in the air. A crack between worlds.
Someone stepped through.
Vaeren. His only companion.
He was once a god of silence. Now, a quiet servant bound by chains only Ryz could see. His voice was gone, but his thoughts remained.
"Where are we going," Vaeren asked in Ryz's mind.
"Earth," Ryz answered. "I want to see it again."
Vaeren hesitated.
"They won't accept you."
"I won't let them see me. I just want to walk. Just for a while."
"You're not like them anymore."
Ryz didn't answer.
He stepped through the doorway.
And the world changed.
---
Earth, year 2032
The cities had grown taller than mountains. Machines learned faster than people.
In a quiet corner of Berlin, a nurse named Kaela Voss was walking home. Tired. Overworked. Her thoughts full of hospital beds and long shifts.
She didn't know she had a gift. Something deep inside her that felt when the world shifted. Tonight, it woke up.
She stopped.
Something was wrong. A presence had arrived.
She looked around.
A man stood across the street. Tall. Pale. Dressed in black. His eyes looked empty.
She called out to him.
"Are you alright?"
He looked at her.
"I don't know," he said.
She crossed the street and stood beside him.
"You look like hell."
"I've lived there."
She raised an eyebrow. Then smiled.
"Sit down, stranger."
They sat on a bench nearby. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out a small snack.
"You need this more than I do."
He didn't take it. He just stared ahead.
Inside him, the mist stirred again. It hated this quiet. It hated peace.
He clenched his fist. Forced it back.
Not now.
For the first time in ages, he felt something close to calm.
She glanced at him again.
"What's your name?"
He didn't answer right away.
"I don't remember," he said.
"Well, alright then. Let's just sit here for now. You and me. Two ghosts in the city."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
She didn't press for more. She just sat beside him as if this was normal. A stranger who had nothing. A woman who had seen too much. They didn't speak for several minutes.
He watched a passing car. The lights didn't hurt his eyes. The cold air didn't sting. This world had changed, but not enough to reject him completely.
He wondered if he could stay like this.
"Kaela," she said finally. "That's my name, in case you're wondering."
He nodded slowly. "I used to be Elias."
"Used to be?"
"Things change," he replied.
She didn't ask more. Something about him told her not to.
Far above, a thin crack shimmered in the sky, too small for anyone to notice. A ripple. A wound in the fabric of the world.
The gods had felt his escape.