“Mother…
why are they doing this?”
The boy’s trembling voice echoed against the cold stone of the cave, fading somewhere among the dripping stalactites and the darkness.
His name was Raizen.
He was ten years old.
Iron chains bit into his wrists, holding him seated on the damp stone floor.
The smell of mildew and dried blood hung in the air.
On the other side of the cavern, his parents were bound the same way.
Raizen didn’t understand what was happening.
He knew only one thing: something here was deeply, terribly wrong.
His mother slowly raised her head.
Her face bore the marks of exhaustion — cracked lips, hollows carved beneath her eyes.
But when her gaze met her son’s, a fragile warmth returned to it, if only for a moment.
“Raizen…” she murmured, forcing a trembling smile.
“Don’t look.”
The boy shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Please…” Her voice broke.
“Close your eyes.”
Raizen yanked at his chains with all his strength.
The metal bit into his skin, a thin trickle of warm blood running down into his palm.
“Let my father and mother go!
They haven’t done anything!”
No one answered.
His mother looked at him for a long moment, with the eyes of someone who knows she will never see her child again.
“Raizen.
Listen to me.”
“Mother…?”
She drew a shaking breath.
“Whatever happens now…
don’t be afraid.”
“I don’t understand…”
“I know.” A tear traced a path down her dirt-streaked cheek.
“But you’re going to have to be strong.”
The boy’s lips began to tremble.
“Live.”
He froze.
“…What?”
“Live, Raizen.” Her voice was calm, almost gentle — but every word carried the weight of a goodbye.
“Even alone.
Even if this world becomes cruel.
Keep moving forward.”
“No…” He shook his head, refusing to accept it.
“Mother, don’t say that…”
“Promise me.”
“I promise!
Just don’t leave me!”
She closed her eyes for a moment.
Then opened them one last time, memorizing her son’s face.
“My precious son…
I wanted so badly to watch you grow up.
To see the man you’d become.”
A second tear followed the first.
“But if I can’t be there to see it…
then live long enough to find out for yourself.”
Raizen’s eyes went wide.
“I love you,” she breathed, barely audible.
“Never forget that.”
Silence settled over the cave, heavier than before.
Raizen waited for her to move.
She didn’t move.
“Mother…?”
Nothing.
“…Mother?”
The silence stretched on.
Something deep in his chest broke without a sound — not a scream, not a sob, just a hollowness that settled all at once, like air leaving a room.
“Mother,” he repeated, in a whisper barely loud enough to hear.
His eyes slowly lost their light.
His tears dried up too.
His face became a smooth surface, empty of all expression.
A metallic clink shattered the silence.
Raizen turned his head.
The soldiers were advancing, weapons drawn.
One of them, a man with an old scar across his face, stepped forward without so much as a glance at the bodies.
“Let’s finish this,” he said in a tired voice, as though he were simply hurrying home for supper.
Another, younger soldier hesitated for a fraction of a second, his hand tightening on the hilt of his sword.
He looked away from the boy.
Raizen didn’t react.
His mother’s last words kept turning over in his mind.
Live.
His fingers began to tremble.
And then — something moved at his feet.
A shadow was born on the stone.
Not an ordinary shadow: there was no light anywhere that could have cast it, and yet it crawled, moving with a will of its own, as if something alive were writhing inside it.
One soldier stepped back.
“What…
is that?”
“Don’t move!” another shouted, raising his weapon.
Raizen heard none of it.
His gaze was locked on the shadow.
He had never seen anything like it — didn’t know what it was, or where it had come from.
But somewhere deep inside him, something was waking up.
His breathing quickened.
His fists slowly clenched.
Live, his mother’s voice repeated.
A tear fell onto the stone.
Then another.
But Raizen wasn’t really crying anymore — the emptiness inside him was turning into something else.
Fear.
Grief.
Anger.
Despair.
All of it mixed together, fusing, taking on a dark shape.
The shadow at his feet shuddered.
The soldiers went rigid.
A low tremor shook the cave.
A crack split across the floor.
Raizen slowly lifted his head.
His eyes were still empty.
But underneath, something had just opened.
“Kill him!” the scarred man screamed, his voice suddenly shrill with panic.
The soldiers charged.
Raizen didn’t move.
He simply watched them come.
Then:
BOOM.
Darkness exploded out of his body.
A wave of black energy tore through the cave, hurling the soldiers against the walls.
Dust rained down from the ceiling.
The ground cracked beneath his bare feet.
The chains on his wrists began to shake violently.
Crack.
A first fissure appeared in the metal.
Raizen looked down at his arms, where the shadow now crept like living ivy.
“…What’s happening to me?” he murmured.
Crack.
A second fissure.
The chains twisted, groaning as the metal gave way.
CRACK!
The first chain shattered.
Raizen slowly raised his hand, free.
He stared at it for a moment, as though he didn’t recognize it.
The second chain gave way with a crash.
The remaining soldiers had frozen in place.
They were no longer looking at a defenseless ten-year-old boy.
They were looking at something none of them could name.
One of them raised his hand, trying to cast a spell.
“Fla—”
The magic never reached its target.
The shadow swallowed it whole.
“What is this power…?!” the man cried, eyes wide with terror.
Another soldier lunged at Raizen.
The shadow rose from the ground like a wave and threw him back, without Raizen so much as lifting a finger.
He still hadn’t moved.
Black energy swirled gently around his fingers.
He turned his eyes toward the place where his parents lay.
His gaze stayed hollow.
“I don’t understand,” he whispered.
He lowered his head.
“…But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
The shadow exploded a second time, swallowing the entire cave in darkness.
For several seconds, there was nothing at all.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Only the low rumble of energy slowly receding, like a black tide pulling back.
Then the darkness withdrew.
In the ravaged cave, Raizen stood alone amid the broken chains scattered across the floor.
He didn’t spare them a glance.
He turned toward his parents and started walking.
One step.
Then another.
The sound of his small bare feet was the only thing left echoing through the cave.
He stopped when he reached his mother.
Said nothing for a long moment.
His father had been dead for some time already.
His mother no longer breathed either.
Raizen knelt slowly at her side.
His trembling hand reached out and touched her cold cheek.
“…Mother.”
No answer.
He bowed his head, her final words replaying in his mind.
Live.
His fingers slowly closed around the fabric of her dress.
“…I’m sorry,” he said, and for the first time, his voice truly shook.
“I couldn’t protect you.”
He looked at his mother’s face one last time.
The emptiness in his gaze had begun, slowly, to turn into something else.
He rose without a sound.
His eyes never left his mother’s face.
“If this world took you from me…
then I have no need for this world.”
Shadow gathered slowly around his feet.
The air in the cave grew cold.
“I will destroy it.”
A silence.
“…And rebuild it, for you.”
The darkness swallowed him whole.
A few hours later, the capital of Valtera slept beneath a moonless sky.
The great avenues stood empty.
One by one, the lights in the windows went dark, and the narrow alleys sank into shadow.
Raizen walked alone, his footsteps echoing faintly on the wet cobblestones.
He didn’t know where he was going.
He wasn’t even sure, in truth, whether he was still entirely himself — something inside him had changed shape back in that cave, and he wasn’t certain what remained could still be called a child.
But his legs kept moving all the same.
His face still showed nothing.
His eyes remained empty.
Muffled laughter drifted through the walls of houses.
The last shops were closing for the night.
Families were heading home, one after another.
Life went on, indifferent.
Raizen had nowhere to go home to.
Eventually he turned into a narrow alley.
Wooden crates were stacked against the walls; torn sacks littered the ground.
He walked on, without hesitation, toward the far end.
A metallic clink stopped him in his tracks.
At the end of the alley, two figures were picking through a pile of discarded objects.
A girl held a rusted axe in her hands.
Beside her, a boy gripped a chipped sword — and kept his eyes closed.
Raizen watched them.
The girl noticed him first.
She tilted her head.
“Looking for something?”
He didn’t answer.
The boy with the closed eyes slowly turned his face toward him, as if he could somehow see him anyway.
He stayed like that for a moment, silent.
“…He’s like us,” he finally said.
Raizen’s brow furrowed slightly.
“…Like you?”
The girl lowered her axe.
“A cast-off child.”
The words struck something deep inside Raizen.
He lowered his eyes.
It was the first time that night that he had met someone who could understand him without needing an explanation.
The girl gave him a small smile.
“I’m Kaira.”
The boy rested his hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Zaiden.”
Raizen stayed silent a moment longer.
Then, quietly:
“…Raizen.”
The three children looked at one another.
Three strangers.
Three children the world had left behind.
Three fates that, by every rights, should never have crossed.
And yet, that cold night, in Valtera, their paths began to intertwine.
None of them knew yet that this meeting would become one of the most decisive turning points in the history of Etheria.
Raizen Arling had just been reborn.
To be continued…
— Kurotsuki