Chapter 0: Awakening in the Dark: Rise in a Broken
Darkness wrapped around everything.
Nothing could be heard except faint whispers — echoes of voices that didn’t seem to belong to this world.
Then, a flicker.
A dim light shimmered, followed by another... and another, until the world exploded into a blinding white blaze.
Jacob opened his eyes slowly.
His body felt heavy, his head pulsed with a pain that seemed to echo time itself.
He didn’t know where he was — or how he had come to be here.
Cold air brushed against his face, and the wind howled through the cracks of ancient stone.
He tried to stand, but his knees buckled.
He found himself kneeling on fractured stone, surrounded by the remains of a city torn between ages — old walls intertwined with metallic structures, as if the future had been dragged into the ruins of the past.
Above him, the sky was wrong — violet clouds swirling unnaturally fast, like time itself was breaking apart.
He whispered, his voice trembling:
“What is this place…?”
As his hand brushed against the cold wall beside him, flashes struck his mind — screams, blades glinting, blood flying, a battle he couldn’t remember but somehow felt within his bones.
He staggered backward, gasping for air, eyes wide with disbelief.
Then — footsteps.
Soft, deliberate, echoing through the silence like a heartbeat in the void.
He looked up.
On one of the rooftops stood a man dressed in dark robes, his face half-hidden, his gaze sharp and predatory.
The man spoke — his tone calm, but heavy with something ancient:
“So... you’ve awakened at last.”
Jacob’s hand instinctively moved toward the blade at his belt.
“Who are you? Where am I?”
The man didn’t answer.
He leapt from the rooftop with impossible grace, landing a few steps away.
Taller than Jacob, his presence bent the air around him — as if even silence feared him.
“Where you are,” he said finally, “isn’t a question you ask. It’s a truth you survive.”
Jacob’s voice hardened.
“What do you want from me?”
The man’s eyes glimmered faintly.
“To know whether you’re still human… or just another shadow of this world.”
Before Jacob could respond, the man lunged forward, his weapon cutting through the air like frozen lightning.
Jacob raised his dagger just in time — steel clashed against steel, sparks bursting in the dim light.
“Why are you attacking me?!” Jacob shouted, retreating.
The man smiled faintly, his tone cold as steel:
“Because weakness here means death… and death means I was too late to claim you.”
Their blades met again and again — fast, precise, deliberate.
The man wasn’t fighting to kill. He was testing him.
Testing what, Jacob didn’t know — his strength, his will, or his past.
Then, amid the chaos — a voice.
Calm. Deep. Commanding.
“Enough.”
Both men froze.
From the shadows of a narrow alley, another figure emerged — his face half-hidden beneath a dark cloak, eyes glowing with quiet awareness.
The attacker hesitated, lowering his blade.
“Not yet…” he murmured, then turned to Jacob with an almost foreboding calm.
“But I will find out who you are… soon.”
He vanished into the shadows, leaving only silence behind.
The cloaked figure stepped closer. His voice was low, steady, almost knowing.
“You don’t belong here… do you?”
Jacob didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore — not even himself.
Before he could speak, the ground trembled beneath them, walls cracking, dust rising.
“What’s happening?!” Jacob cried, fighting to stay upright.
The cloaked man didn’t move.
He simply whispered — words that felt like prophecy.
> “It has begun…”
And then the world fell into darkness once more.
> “In a world unbound by time… only the survivors will write history.”
