Chapter 1: Shisaki
Exactly six long years had passed since that ominous Shisaki Catastrophe, which tore the skies apart, saturated the capital’s marble streets with ash, and rewrote the course of history in blood. While time healed some wounds, it merely buried others deeper, into the darkest corners of the soul. For the Kingdom of Silverpeak, that day continued to be remembered as a legend, a nightmare echoing within the fog and mist. Far away from the capital’s gothic towers, illuminated by heavy, enchanted gas lamps where the rain never ceased, time flowed to an entirely different rhythm in the heart of a deep and desolate forest.
This was a wooden country house, completely isolated from the outside world and surrounded by centuries-old pine and oak trees. The moss on its steep roof and the thick ivy wrapping its stone chimney were a testament to just how far this place was from the kingdom's heavy, soot-stained, and gloomy eyes. In this silent place of exile, where no sound could be heard but the rustling of leaves, lived the last hope of the family that had stood at the epicenter of that terrible destruction: Ren.
Having just turned six, he was a restless, uncontainable child, hungry to explore the world with that amber gleam in his eyes.
It was a windy noon in the home’s garden, where sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting golden patches on the soil. Gerard de Charnay, the invincible knight whose name the kingdom once whispered in trembling tones, was now weeding the garden, dressed in a collarless, heavy linen shirt and suspender pants. The space below his left shoulder was completely empty; that void swinging beneath the fabric was a silent badge of the loyalty he held for his masters and the price he paid against the curse of an Ancient Veyl on that bloody night six years ago.
Gerard wielded his remaining right arm with unimaginable grace and mastery. Thanks to years of battle experience, muscle memory, and the fluid discipline of Kageryū, hoeing the soil, carrying heavy oak logs, or swinging a sword with a single arm was no hindrance to him. As he rested his left knee on the damp earth and aerated the soil around fresh basil seedlings with his right hand, his mind drifted once again to the infirmary beneath the capital's hazy sky. Lady Eleanor… Ren’s mother. Following the catastrophe, she had fallen into a deep, unbreakable coma, and Gerard would occasionally slip into the shadows of the capital's streets to visit her, whispering to her in that freezing room that her son was growing up.
Meanwhile, inside the house, tiny, rapid footsteps echoed across the wooden floorboards.
Ren, as usual, was turning the house upside down, exploring every nook and cranny. His mind was full of questions about what the closed-off world outside was like, and he sought answers to these questions not in the mighty pines outside, but in the dim, dusty rooms within the house. His steps led him to the massive oak bookcase reaching up to the ceiling, standing in the coolest, quietest corner of the house.
The bookcase was filled with heavy tomes meticulously preserved by Gerard, ranging from leather-bound histories of the kingdom to ancient philosophical scrolls. Ren advanced, dragging his tiny fingers along the spines of the books on the lower shelves his height allowed him to reach. His insatiable curiosity, which gnawed at him as he grew, drew him to a detail he had never noticed before. Tucked into the shadows in the deepest corner of one of the bottom shelves, there lay a book different from the rest, emitting a strange aura that seemed to make the air itself vibrate.
Ren dropped to his knees, carefully gripping the book with both hands, and pulled it from the shelf. The book was quite heavy for a six-year-old child. Its corners were clad in blackened metal that resembled pure gold, and it was bound in thick, rigid leather where brown and gray tones intermingled. On the cover was a faintly glowing mark that even time could not erase, holding a rhythmic, warm vibration as if the book possessed a beating heart of its own.
Ren swallowed in excitement, set the book on his lap, and sat on the wooden floor. When he parted the heavy cover, the scent of dried parchment, sooty ink, and a very faint, familiar scent of ash that burned the back of his throat reached him. The pages were filled with strange, angular, interconnecting runic letters and mystical shapes that looked nothing like the common tongue of the kingdom. Squinting, he tried to find the simple letters Gerard taught him by gaslight in the evenings within these shapes.
"I... can't... read it," he whispered to himself, scratching his messy black hair in confusion.
He closed the book firmly but with instinctive reverence. He leaped to his feet with that fire of discovery burning in his eyes. Tucking the book tightly under his right arm, he thundered across the wooden floorboards with his tiny steps and bolted out the open door toward the windy garden.
"Gerard! Gerard!"
Gerard abruptly halted his right hand, which had been digging in the dirt. The moment he heard Ren's frantic, rapid footsteps, his spine straightened with the combat reflexes forged by years, his body instantly adopting an alert stance against an unseen threat. Standing up swiftly and turning around, he saw the little boy running toward him under the sun.
"What happened, Ren? Why are you running like that, did something happen?" he called out, maintaining that authoritative yet deeply affectionate fatherly tone.
Ren stopped in front of Gerard, panting. Without catching his breath, he gripped the heavy book from under his arm with both hands and held it out to the former knight. "Gerard, will you read this book to me? Please! It looks so beautiful, it's like it's glowing inside!"
As Gerard’s scar-covered right hand reached out to take the book, his eyes locked onto those familiar patterns and gold plating on the leather. The moment he looked at the book in the child's hands, his heart hung like a heavy anvil in his chest. His breath hitched for a second; his blood ran ice-cold in his veins.
Carved onto the book, in that ancient Runebreath alphabet long forgotten even by the nobles of the kingdom and used only in the most secret archives and ancient Invoking or ignition texts, were these words: "The First Sparks of the Spiritual Flame."
Gerard swallowed hard. This was no ordinary fairy tale book or kingdom history encyclopedia. This was an ancient training manual that Lord Roland, anticipating the terrifying potential his son would bear while Ren was still in his mother's womb, had personally commissioned for his education. Inside, it was filled with mystical illustrations and dangerous secrets drawn to awaken the energy deep within the soul. Gerard thought he had hidden this book in the furthest, dustiest corner of the shadows in the bookcase, where Ren would never find it. It was far, far too early for the boy to shoulder this heavy legacy; he had hoped to let him live as an ordinary child for at least a few more years, keeping him away from those dark truths and the cruelty of the universe.
But fate never waits for permission from those who carry Shisaki blood in their veins and a massive Chaos Core in their chest.
"Of course, little master," Gerard said. He had exerted a great spiritual effort to keep his voice from trembling, letting the words out in as soft and neutral a tone as possible. He grasped the book firmly with one hand.
He walked toward the old wooden bench resting in the shade of an old plane tree at the edge of the garden and sat down solemnly. Ren, without waiting a single moment, ran over and excitedly squeezed into the empty space on the bench beside him, drawing his knees to his chest and practically nailing his eyes to the book's cover.
Gerard slowly opened the book's heavy, leather cover with his right hand. As the pages parted, that ancient, spiritual scent once again filled the air. There was no text on the first page; only a stylized human anatomy drawing surrounded by complex, intertwining geometric patterns, with a core in the center emitting a bright, warm light.
Right below the drawing, there was a single sentence written in dark ink, drawn from a master calligrapher's quill.
Gerard gently traced his calloused index finger over the page and began to read: "Every great fire begins with a single spark."
Ren's eyes had widened like saucers. He stared at the drawing on the page as if caught in a spell. His boundless, childlike imagination had gained an entirely new and hazy dimension with the weight of this ancient sentence.
"Inside us," Gerard continued, lowering his voice and adopting the tone of a wise master telling a tale. "Inside all of us, much deeper than our flesh, bones, and blood, there is a mystical might, a source of power that slumbers from the moment we are born. This... is called the Spiritual Flame."
Ren slowly tore his gaze from the book and fixed it on Gerard's tired, wind-hardened face. His voice held a profound seriousness, the pure innocence of a child trying to make sense of the world and his own existence. "Do I have that flame inside me too, Gerard? Am I burning as well?"
A massive, impossibly tight knot of sorrow formed in Gerard's throat. When he closed his eyes, he saw that pitch-black night from six years ago. He remembered the exact moment Ren came into the world, the explosion of light with all its reality. "Yes, little master," Gerard whispered. The wind rustled the oak leaves in the garden, accompanying his sorrowful whisper. "You have it too. And very strongly so. Lord Roland... your father, knew of this power, this boundless potential within you long in advance, and he wondered about it. He had this book prepared solely for you, to illuminate the dark path you will walk in the future."
His father... Roland Shisaki. The great man whom the kingdom hated, declared a traitor responsible for the catastrophe, but who rested with eternal, adoring respect in Gerard's heart. When Ren heard his father's name, a complex, mournful expression appeared on his face. Even if he couldn't fully grasp the weight of that name, he knew very well from the silence around him and the heavy feeling settling in Gerard's eyes that this name was no ordinary thing. He extended his small, delicate finger and gently placed it over the glowing mystical core drawing in the book.
"Alright," Ren said. His voice was entirely stripped of its earlier childish excitement, replaced by a new, unshakable determination that seemed to herald the ruthless warrior he would become years later. "How do I awaken it?"
Gerard sank into a deep, abyssal silence. He looked at the book, then at Ren's pure yet equally persistent eyes, burning ablaze in amber. Lord Roland's face appeared like a ghost before his eyes. Roland had ordered him to protect his son. But what did protecting mean? Was it hiding him in a glass jar, leaving him ignorant and weak, or arming him against that foggy, misty, and merciless kingdom outside, against the approaching darkness of the Veyl? Perhaps the most reliable and only way to protect him was to confront him with the truth and forge him like a relentless sword.
If Ren did not learn to control his terrifying power, his own strength could consume him from the inside like a parasite.
The former knight took a deep, sharp breath that expanded his chest, and slowly turned that thick page, which he couldn't turn with his left hand, using his right thumb.
"Awakening the Spiritual Flame is not a physical action like drawing a sword from its scabbard, little master," he explained in a highly calm, instructive voice imparting ancient knowledge. "First, you must learn to feel it, to face it. Just like you can feel your heartbeat when you run... But this is an essence lying at the very center of your soul, much deeper than your blood and flesh."
Ren sat up straighter, nodding eagerly in agreement. "How do I do that? What should I think about?"
Holding the book's cover slightly ajar with one hand, Gerard turned to the boy. "Close your eyes," he guided him. "Forget the sounds of the world, the wind, the leaves. Focus only on the very center of your chest, slightly below your heart. Try to feel a very slight tingling there, a small but warm vibration. Just like a mystical creature that has been hibernating for a long time and is beginning to awaken to the sound of your voice. When you feel it, imagine that energy, and try to slowly spread it throughout your entire body along with your blood flow."
Ren closed his eyes tightly without any hesitation. On his face was the expression of profound concentration of a scholar trying to solve a problem he had never seen before. Time in the garden seemed to have frozen. Aside from a few distant bird calls and the gentle rustling of leaves, a profound silence reigned. Gerard, holding his breath, watched every subtle muscle movement on the boy's face.
At first, there was no reaction on Ren's face, absolute nothingness. Then his brows furrowed slightly, his forehead wrinkled... and mere seconds later—
Ren's eyes suddenly flew wide open. Inside his irises shone an indescribable excitement, astonishment, and a reflection of pure golden yellow.
"I felt something!" he whispered, as if frightened by his own voice. He raised his small palms in the air and stared at them in amazement, as if enchanted, as though his hands belonged to him for the very first time. "It's warm... very warm, and... there's something constantly vibrating inside me. Just like you said, Gerard! It's waking up!"
Gerard's heart beat rapidly in that moment, filled with both incredible pride and a spine-chilling, ice-cold dread. He swallowed with difficulty. For a normal, talented adult, even a trained guard, feeling that first spark would require months of dark meditations. But Ren... this six-year-old child had reached the most basic level of energy and touched it in just a few seconds, on his very first try. This was merely a single drop in the ocean of that terrifying potential lying in his blood.
"There it is," Gerard said, his voice trembling involuntarily. "That is your first spark."
Ren made a tight fist with his fingers and then quickly opened them; it was as if he was trying to trap that new, burning warmth circulating under his skin between his palms. Then he turned his head and looked at Gerard. That childish innocence in his eyes had given way to a pure, unrefined determination.
"So, what now?" Ren asked impatiently. "What will I do with it? How will I use it?"
Gerard lowered his gaze back to that glowing core drawing in the book. The answer he would give could turn this boy into either the greatest savior illuminating the foggy streets of the kingdom in the future, or the darkest catastrophe blackening the sky. The words hanging in the air were the sealing of a fate.
"Now, to ensure you can not only feel that energy but also control it with your own will, I will give you a few small tests," Gerard said, standing up and closing the book's cover. "First... Imagine that you are spreading that warmth, that energy inside you equally to every point of your body, from the strands of your hair to your toes. And while that energy envelopes you, walk around the garden."
Hearing this instruction, Ren giggled lightly. His eyes sparkled with joy. Looking at Gerard in surprise, he said, "Is that it? That's too easy, let's do it!" and leaped up from the wooden bench he was sitting on like a spring.
Gerard stroked his chin with his single hand and smiled. "Be careful, little master, it might not be as easy as it looks from the outside or as you imagine in your mind," he said, standing up with heavy steps himself and clearing an empty space for Ren.
Ren stood on the grass in the middle of the garden. He closed his eyes tightly once more and tried to find and fan that slumbering warmth, that spark inside him again. He felt it, it was there. However, when he tried to spread it through his body like water... Nothing happened. The Spiritual Flame sat in his chest like a stubborn, heavy stone.
Ren persisted. He forced himself. He gritted his teeth, clenching his fists until his knuckles turned white. He was squeezing himself so much that it was blindingly obvious from the trembling of his closed eyelids and the drops of sweat gathering on his forehead just how much physical pressure he was applying.
Gerard instantly noticed this improper strain on the child's body, that dangerous knot in the flow of the Spiritual Flame. With the air of a master instructor, he called out, "Little master, you're clenching yourself too much! The Spiritual Flame is not something to be subdued by brute force. If you continue to force it like this, you will burn your own inner channels. Calm down... Take a deep breath and let the energy flow naturally like a river. Do not push it, guide it."
Hearing Gerard's reassuring and cautionary voice, Ren startled and released the tension in his body that felt like a cramp. His muscles relaxed. That stubborn energy knot untied, and the warmth began to glide down his arms toward his legs, this time in much softer, enchanted waves. He had finally managed to spread the energy through his body. Enveloped in this inner power, he began to walk through the garden with slow, trembling, but determined steps.
But Gerard's masterful eyes immediately spotted the danger that an ordinary person would not see. The Spiritual Flame fluctuations around Ren were erratic; one moment it flared blindingly bright, the next it dimmed, creating dangerous and unstable vibrations in the air.
"Ren," Gerard warned, raising his voice slightly. "Your energy is too turbulent. It must be as tranquil as water. Imagine it a bit more controlled and balanced!"
But Ren's mind had already been swept up in the vortex of his own thoughts, of that dark potential. From within, with an ambition that was pure yet equally dangerous, he whispered to himself: "If I can control it better... If I can harness this flame, I can be as strong as my Father. I can make him proud!"
This intense desire, this sudden outburst of emotion and hunger for power, had triggered the Chaos Core. For a body still at a child's age, this meant a fire he could not carry. While Ren drew all his focus inward to stabilize the energy, he forgot the most fundamental rule of life. The Spiritual Flame demanded oxygen; he had stopped breathing.
The colors around him suddenly began to fade. The bright greens of the garden turned grey, the world lost its colors as if it were in the foggy, misty streets of London. His vision blurred, a heavy darkness began to descend from the edges.
Gerard realized in horror that the child's chest was not moving and his lips were beginning to turn purple.
"Ren! Breathe!" Gerard roared, lunging toward the boy with his one arm. "BREATHE!"
When Ren jolted at this shout, he had only just realized that the air in his lungs was completely depleted. Involuntarily, he opened his mouth to take a massive, desperate breath. "Ha... Wh... what's happening? Everything is going dark..." was all he could mumble.
The moment he took that deep breath, that immense Spiritual Flame he was holding together with great difficulty shattered like a glass jar and vanished within seconds. All the strength drained from his body, his eyes rolled back, and his consciousness rapidly sank into a bottomless darkness. As his small, frail body fell onto the grass like a lifeless ragdoll, Gerard managed to reach out his right arm at the last second and catch him in the air.
Ren had completely severed his connection to the outside world, plunging into that cold and endless darkness. This was no dream; this was that silent, desolate, eternal void that would one day form the center of his soul and power.
Right in the middle of that pitch-black nothingness, an echoing, strange, undulating, and ancient voice was heard—coming from nowhere in particular, belonging neither to a man nor a woman, as if torn from the fabric of the universe and beyond the stars:
"You... cannot bear this power!"
The words struck his mind like a rusty, heavy sledgehammer.
Ren suddenly opened his eyes, taking a massive gasp as if he were drowning. His chest was heaving rapidly. As his pupils rapidly scanned his surroundings, he realized he wasn't in the garden, but in his own room, lying on his soft bed. The wooden ceiling, the late afternoon sun filtering through the window... When he slowly turned his head to the side, toward the end of his bed, he saw Gerard's tired, anxiety-filled face.
Despite the leaden weight in his body, Ren tried to sit up by pushing off his elbows. His voice came out exhausted, weak, and cracked. "What... what happened to me? I don't remember anything. The last time, in the garden... you were teaching me how to control the Spiritual Flame."
Gerard's shoulders slumped; that rigid knightly posture he had masked for years had given way to an immense pang of conscience. He sat on the edge of the bed with a distracted and melancholic expression.
"I suppose... you delved a little too deeply into that power, into controlling the energy, little master," Gerard said, bowing his head slightly in guilt. "While focusing, you forgot the most essential thing for your body: to breathe. I apologize for failing to foresee such a dangerous detail, that a child like you could experience this. It was my fault."
Seeing Gerard so deeply saddened, Ren pushed aside that dark dream and that strange, terrifying voice within him. Reacting with a maturity far beyond his years, he smiled faintly without letting the incident bring him down.
"Thank you, Gerard," Ren said. Trying to hide the exhaustion on his face and forcing himself, he sat in an upright position in the bed to appear strong. "Thanks to you, I now know how I can control that warmth inside me, the Spiritual Flame—or at least, how to awaken it!"
When Gerard heard the child's brave, unwavering words that looked so very much like his father's, he felt the heavy burden of guilt on his shoulders lighten. The life energy and ambition within the boy were strong enough to compensate for any mistake. A sincere and warm smile, one that hadn't settled there in a long time, spread across his scar-filled face.
"If that is the case..." Gerard said, gently ruffling the boy's black hair with his right hand. "If you wish, we will resume our training tomorrow from where we left off. But this time... we will be much more careful, and we will never allow such a thing to happen again. Do we have a deal?"
Hearing this, Ren's eyes met the rays of the setting sun, sparkling with an indescribable, immense joy. Tomorrow was the first true step on the path leading to that dark and ruthless power, and in taking that step, only Gerard was by his side.
