This mark belongs to Uki Lot, first of the Sorcerers.
Born before the Akuma Siege, bearer of the Flame of Origin.
The Mandala is no mere symbol.
It is memory, will, and soul woven into form.”
Alarich’s breath caught in his throat.
Uki Lot—the first human of sorcery.
A name wrapped in legend, thought to be myth.
The era before the Great Burn, when Akuma forces laid siege to the kingdoms and erased most of recorded magic with hellfire.
His fingers trembled slightly as he brushed the page.
He now understood why his tattoo reacted to magic—why it shimmered during his dazes, why it burned when he touched ancient texts.
It wasn’t just some family sigil.
It was the Mandala of Uki.
“Your soul remembers,” the page continued.
“Only the marked may awaken what was lost. And only through suffering shall truth be reclaimed.”
Alarich sat back, overwhelmed.
It was a call—passed from Uki, through generations, to him.
A mark lost in time, protected during the Great Burn, and now awakened again.
He whispered to himself:
Alarich: “So… I carry the legacy of the first sorcerer.”
Behind him, the wind creaked through the old archive window, and the lantern flickered.
Somewhere, far beyond the city walls, the fog stirred again.
The age of Marile was no longer coming.
It had already begun.
Alarich walked home in silence, the cobbled streets of Arugula quiet beneath his boots.
The air was cold but still, and the city’s smokestacks hissed gently in the distance like tired beasts asleep.
He paused as he reached the wroughtiron gate of his home, his eyes drawn upward.
There it was.
The Red Moon.
Suspended high in the sky like an open wound in the heavens, it pulsed dimly—soft but heavy.
It wasn’t always red.
Not like this.
He had read about it in the Chronicles of the Rift, hidden deep in Aethernos’s lost archive.
“When the Akuma falls, the world will bleed. And from that blood, a new truth shall rise.” — Uki’s Last Fragment
Alarich stood there for a long while, cigarette halflit in his fingers, forgotten.
The smoke curled around him like a whisper.
His mind buzzed.
Was this the end of one era—or the beginning of another?
Inside the house, Hilda’s laughter echoed faintly, probably from the parlor.
A soft warmth.
A reminder that life still thrived.
But the red moon stared down like an eye that refused to blink.
Alarich (softly):
“The Demonlord is gone… and yet something’s still watching.”
His hand grazed the mandala tattoo under his coat.
It pulsed.
Not with pain.