THE RIFTBORN SUMMONER
Chapter 1: Thrown Into the Rift
He didn't scream when they threw him.
Not when the Emperor's chains cracked against his skin.
Not when the crowd spat his name like venom.
Not even when the High Tribunal declared, "Kael Ardyn, you are hereby exiled to the Rift."
He stayed silent.
Because screaming was for the ones who still believed someone would save them.
The world above ended with a stone ledge — and then nothing.
No floor. No sky. No echo. Just a darkness that devoured light.
Kael was shoved forward, wrists bound, ankles raw, his black robe half-burnt and soaked in dried blood.
He barely registered the sound of iron scraping against rock.
Then: the fall.
They said the Rift had no bottom.
They lied.
It had a hunger.
Kael plummeted through the black, time unmeasured.
The wind was wrong. It didn't rush past him — it slithered.
He felt it crawl into his ears, whispering things in no tongue he knew.
His vision flickered.
His veins burned.
And then — impact.
He slammed into something not quite solid, not quite air.
It caught him like a dying breath and threw him sideways, hurling him into jagged, obsidian stone.
Silence.
And then...
A sound.
Like a heartbeat.
But not his.
Location: Unknown Depths of the Rift
When he opened his eyes, the world was purple-black and glowing from below.
The "ground" breathed — made of shifting stone, bones, and broken weapons from gods who died screaming.
He coughed.
His fingers were bloodied, one wrist bent.
A single thought passed through his cracked lips:
"Still alive?"
He shouldn't have been.
But the Rift didn't let its prey die so easily.
It wanted them to suffer — to evolve.
In the distance, something moved.
A figure. Tall. Cloaked in shadows, dragging something behind it — chains? Limbs?
Kael staggered to his feet, half-dizzy.
The figure stopped.
Its voice was not a voice — more like ancient breath through fire.
"You smell... broken."
Kael clenched his fists. He had nothing. No sword. No mana left. No hope.
Just hatred.
"What are you?" he rasped.
The figure came closer. A thousand red eyes opened in its robe, blinking. Watching.
"I am your first test."
[THE RIFT ACCEPTS YOU]
[CONTRACT INITIATION: 1%]
Words — glowing, rune-like — appeared in the air. Kael backed away, but they followed him like blood on snow.
He stumbled over bones. His chest burned. Then came the voice again — this time inside his skull:
"Summon... or be consumed."
A rune blazed beneath him, pale blue. It pulsed in time with his heart.
"I have no mana," he whispered.
The Rift laughed.
[SUMMON WITH PAIN. OFFER BLOOD. OFFER NAME.]
The ground shook.
The robed figure raised a skeletal hand, and black tendrils lunged forward.
Kael didn't dodge.
He grabbed one.
It pierced through his palm, and he roared — not in fear, but rage.
"I am Kael Ardyn," he shouted, as blood spilled onto the rune.
"You took my life. My family. My name. TAKE EVERYTHING, BUT YOU WON'T BREAK ME."
The light flared. The abyss shuddered.
[CONTRACT SEALED]
[FIRST MYTH AWAKENED: NAME UNKNOWN]
[YOU ARE NOW RIFTBORN]
From the circle, something crawled out.
It wasn't a beast.
Not a dragon.
Not a demon.
It was a boy.
His skin was pale ash.
Eyes hollow black.
Wings torn.
But power radiated from him like fire bottled inside dying stars.
He looked at Kael and tilted his head.
"You bleed like a god... and yet you smell like dirt."
Kael panted, kneeling.
"Are you... my summon?"
The boy didn't smile.
He grinned, revealing fangs.
"No. I am your mirror."
The shadowy figure lunged again.
This time — not at Kael, but the boy.
The summoned being moved too fast to see.
In one second, the enemy stood tall.
In the next, his head was rolling on the stone.
Blood — black, burning — splashed Kael's face.
He didn't flinch.
"You called me," the boy said.
"I killed for you. You live because I allow it.
So ask yourself... Kael Ardyn — what will you do now?"
Kael looked around at the abyss.
He could die here. Or he could climb out.
No. Burn his way out.
"I'm going to tear open the sky," Kael said.
"And summon something even the gods forgot existed."
Behind him, the abyss pulsed.
The Rift had accepted him.
The world above had betrayed him.
And Kael Ardyn — now Riftborn — had only just begun.
⚔️ To be continued...