The world shattered in silence.
Ancient trees trembled beneath a jagged tear in reality—the Rift—pulsing with unholy obsidian-purple light. Raw power surged from its depths, threatening to unravel Astralis itself.
It began with a silence not born of absence, but a silence that swallowed sound whole. Stars blinked slower. The wind held its breath.
Within the Rift, unseen forces warred—currents of energy clashing and parting in an endless dance of creation and destruction. Whispers rippled through the void—some pleading for delay, others demanding action.
"Too soon," hissed a voice cold as starlight.
"It must be now," insisted another, molten with fire.
"The vessel is incomplete," warned a third, soft as twilight shadows.
"Half is enough to begin," came the final judgment. Power surged, drowning all dissent.
In that moment, Vesperian was born.
Not of flesh and blood, but pure energy coalesced from the Rift's chaotic heart. The power condensed, contracted, taking form where before there had been only formless potential. Fragments of every race known to Astralis swirled within him—dwarven resilience, elven grace, human cunning, and Sylvan mystery.
His features reflected this impossible heritage: high cheekbones hinted at elven ancestry, a strong jawline suggested human lineage, and slightly pointed ears carried the mark of Sylvan blood. But nothing marked his origin more clearly than his eyes—crimson-violet irises that served as both mirror and veil, reflecting the varied energies within while concealing the depths of his fractured soul.
Far above the continent of Aurendor, an ancient crystal at the peak of the Oracle Spire shimmered for the first time in centuries. Deep below the sea, a chained beast stirred, its slumber disturbed by a ripple in the ley-lines. In the Astralis Arcanum, Headmaster Kaelir's fingers froze mid-incantation, eyes narrowing as the runes on his sleeve flared with static.
"An unmarked pulse," he muttered, voice barely audible even to himself. "As if something… returned that never was."
Yet even as Vesperian formed, something tore away—a mirror image, a twin soul, a brother. For the briefest moment, two beings existed where there should have been one. And between them, a silver thread—delicate as starlight, resilient as fate—stretched and pulsed with a name neither yet knew: Lyra.
Then came the sundering. The other half—darker, wilder, with eyes of violet laced with crimson—was ripped away, scattered across countless dimensions, leaving behind only echoes and emptiness.
"One born, one bound," intoned a voice from the depths of the Rift. "You are not whole."
The words branded themselves into his nascent consciousness, a truth more fundamental than any other. He was incomplete. A half-being, a fractured soul.
The violent sundering echoed across realities, causing tremors throughout Astralis and beyond. Earth groaned, trees writhed, and air itself screamed in agony as the Rift spewed forth bolts of raw energy that scorched the forest floor.
The immediate aftermath was desolation. The forest floor transformed into a wasteland of scorched earth, trees twisted into grotesque parodies of their former selves. The air hummed with residual energy so thick it felt like breathing liquid fire.
A deep ache throbbed within him—less a pain of flesh than a hollow gnawing in the core of his being. It radiated outward, a constant reminder of what had been lost. With it came awareness, a slow awakening to his own existence.
What am I?
The question formed without sound, thoughts coalescing before language. He looked down at hands that were not quite solid, energy still settling into form. His skin shimmered with an almost ethereal light, reflecting the varied energies within. He flexed his fingers, watching as they left trails of faint luminescence in the air.
His first conscious breath brought a cascade of sensations—air tinged with ozone and ash, the distant metallic tang of magic, the faint sweetness of decaying forest life. Sound returned in waves—the hissing of cooling earth, the whisper of leaves, and beneath it all, a low hum of power that seemed to resonate with something deep within his core.
No answer came but the distant echo of his own fractured consciousness.
The fragments within him warred for dominance—dwarven instincts urging him to seek shelter beneath stone, elven senses overwhelmed by the tapestry of energies surrounding him, human curiosity pushing him to explore, and Sylvan whispers urging communion with what remained of the forest.
Let us guide you, whispered the dwarven fragment, steady as bedrock.
Free yourself from these constraints, urged the elven essence, fluid as moonlight.
Survive at any cost, insisted the human aspect, pragmatic and fierce.
Listen to the patterns beneath chaos, counseled the Sylvan fragment, ancient and patient.
All these voices, yet none was wholly his. Only the pull—the relentless tug toward something missing—felt genuinely his own.
His first conscious act was not intentional. Recoiling from the searing heat beneath him, he reached toward a withered sapling—blackened and bent. Something flowed from his fingertips—not the chaotic violet of the Rift but something transformed, gentler. The sapling straightened imperceptibly, then with gathering confidence. A single green leaf unfurled from dead wood, trembling in the ash-laden air.
He drew back, fingers curling inward. His crimson-violet irises flared, violet light bleeding outward as Rift energy surged through him. The sight of life springing from his touch both fascinated and terrified him. Creation from destruction. Life from death. The duality within made manifest.
But even as the leaf unfurled, a shadow passed over his eyes. The sapling's roots withered beneath the soil, life force redirected to its single leaf. What he had given with one hand, he had taken with another—a balance maintained, neither creation nor destruction but transformation.
Within the Grand Library of Astralis, Headmaster Kaelir moved with uncharacteristic haste. Tomes floated from shelves, surrounded by the familiar blue-gold aura of controlled arcane energy. Yet the symbols forming on his detection ward burned with violet-crimson—a hue no proper incantation should produce.
"Rift-born energies. Layered pulses. No incantation. No gate." His fingers traced symbols in the air that glowed briefly before fading. "Something has crossed the boundary."
He paused, head tilting as if listening to a distant sound.
"Two presences?" Uncertainty crept into his voice. "One here, one… scattered?"
He wasn't sure. But something had arrived. And something else had nearly followed.
Outside, in a different realm entirely, a blind prophet whispered through bloodied lips:
"Two shadows torn from one flame… and one has crossed."
Power coursed through Vesperian, raw and untamed. He felt the subtle vibrations of magic, the whispers of ancient power, even before he understood what magic truly was. The energy coursing through his veins both frightened and exhilarated him, like standing at the edge of a precipice with wings untested.
Yet, amidst the chaotic energies, a spark of curiosity flickered within him. His head tilted slightly as he observed a small stone near his feet. His crimson-violet eyes dimmed slightly as calm settled over him, the glow retreating inward like embers cooling.
He reached out, and the stone rose at his command, hovering above his palm. Then, with a thought, it crumbled to dust, each particle suspended in the air before him. Another thought, and the dust reformed—not into the original stone, but into a perfect sphere, smooth and gleaming.
His first steps were uncertain, each movement a negotiation between warring instincts. The scorched earth shifted beneath him, still hot enough to sear flesh—yet he felt only a pleasant warmth. He followed the pull instinctively, each step leaving faint impressions in ash—not footprints but perfect circles where energy transferred from his form to ground, small spirals of green sprouting in his wake.
The devastation stretched to the horizon in all directions save one. There, beyond the edge of destruction, forests still stood. Something within him responded to their presence—a yearning beyond the primary pull of his missing half.
As the daylight strengthened, he approached a pool of water that had somehow survived the devastation. The face that looked back at him was strange—beautiful and terrible at once. For a moment, the reflection shifted, and he saw not himself but another—similar yet different. Eyes of violet laced with crimson, features sharper, wilder.
"Brother," came the thought, though he had no concept of what a brother was. Only the certainty that the other was part of him, the missing half that had been torn away.
The hollow ache within him intensified, a gnawing emptiness that echoed through his fractured being. It was a loneliness beyond words, a silent scream for a missing piece, a yearning for wholeness that transcended mere survival.
No birds sang. No insects chirped. The world knew something had awakened and held its breath in wary anticipation.
As the first rays of dawn broke through the clouds, painting the ravaged forest in hues of grey and gold, he took his first purposeful steps away from the mirror pool. He was incomplete, a half-being, a creature born of chaos and fragmented across dimensions, but he was alive. Within his fractured essence, a burning determination ignited to understand his own nature and to find the missing half of himself.
He had no name, no history, no memory of life before the Rift. Yet as he walked, a word formed in his mind, rising from the depths of his fragmented consciousness.
Vesperian.
The name settled within him, a label for the chaotic entity he had become. It felt right, though he could not say why. Perhaps it had been whispered by the Rift itself, or perhaps it was a fragment of memory from one of the many lives that now comprised his being.
Vesperian. The Rift-born. The incomplete one.
He paused at the edge of the devastation, where scorched earth gave way to living forest. Behind him lay destruction and chaos, the birthplace that had shaped him. Before him lay the unknown, a world he did not understand but felt compelled to explore.
The pull of his missing brother, of the other half of his being, was too strong to ignore. It was a summons, a destiny he could not deny. With one last look at the pulsing Rift that had birthed him, Vesperian stepped forward into the living forest, leaving perfect circles of ash in his wake.
For a moment, a sense of rightness washed over him. The forest welcomed him with a sigh—leaves rustling, branches swaying. His crimson-violet eyes dimmed to a gentle glow as tension eased from his newly-formed body. The chaos of his birth faded behind him. Here, in this realm of life and growth, perhaps he could find answers. Find wholeness.
Then he felt it.
A sharp, cold sensation pricked the back of his neck—like being watched by unseen eyes. The forest fell unnaturally silent. No insects chirped, no birds called. Even the wind died.
He turned, slowly, senses heightened. Nothing visible pursued him, yet the emptiness itself seemed to hold malevolence. His gaze swept the treeline, searching for movement, for signs of threat.
Instead, he found something worse.
Where his footsteps had touched the forest floor, the vegetation was… changing. Leaves curled with unnatural iridescence. Bark twisted, revealing patterns that resembled ancient symbols. A small flower by his foot transformed before his eyes—its petals elongating, darkening to the same violet-crimson as his eyes, before the bloom turned to face him like a sentient thing.
"First-born," whispered a voice—not from the flower, but from everywhere and nowhere.
Vesperian staggered back. The word echoed through him like a physical blow. His fractured consciousness rippled with recognition, though he could not understand why.
Above, through gaps in the canopy, the sky shifted. Stars blinked out one by one, then reappeared in a new constellation—one that resembled the rune he'd seen reflected in the pool beside his face.
The hollow within him—the void where his other half should be—suddenly burned. Not with pain, but with overwhelming yearning. For an instant, he felt his brother's presence so strongly it was as if they occupied the same space once more. A flash of violet eyes. A shared breath. A desperate reaching.
Their souls brushed against each other across the void—a touch so brief yet so profound it sent tremors through his entire being. In that fleeting connection, he felt his brother's confusion, his rage, his equal desperation to be whole again. A wordless promise passed between them—I will find you—before the universe cruelly wrenched them apart once more.
The severing was like losing him all over again. The emptiness returned, colder and more absolute than before, a wound reopened and salted.
Then gone.
"He comes," hissed the forest around him. "The bound one stirs. The sundering cannot hold."
Vesperian's back collided with a tree, and where it touched, the bark peeled away revealing a perfect mirror of the Rift that had birthed him—a miniature tear in reality, pulsing with the same obsidian-purple light.
A sharp crack split the air. From the shadows between trees, a figure emerged—tall, cloaked, face hidden within a deep hood. This was no mere wanderer but a Void Warden, one of the ancient guardians tasked by the Council to maintain the boundaries between realms and enforce the natural order of sundering.
There was something profoundly wrong about its movement—as if it existed in multiple places at once, its outline blurring and shifting with each step. Where its feet touched the ground, no leaves crushed, no twigs snapped. And though it spoke with a voice, the sound seemed to bypass Vesperian's ears entirely, materializing directly within his mind.
In one hand, the Void Warden held what appeared to be a shard of pure darkness—a fragment of nothingness that hurt to look at, as if it were a hole cut from reality itself.
"Rift-born," the figure said, voice neither male nor female, yet carrying ancient authority. The words seemed to form in multiple layers, past and future tenses overlapping in impossible ways. "You-are-will-be-should-not-be here."
The Void Warden raised the shard, which drew light into itself like a hungry void. "The Council has decreed-decrees-will decree. The sundering must-will-shall remain. You will-must return to the void."
Power gathered around the Warden's form—cold, ancient, and merciless. Tendrils of magic slithered along the forest floor toward Vesperian, leaving frost-blackened vegetation in their wake.
His instincts screamed for him to flee, but something deeper—something primal—rose within him. His crimson-violet eyes flared with sudden, terrible light. The fragments of races within him unified in a singular purpose: survival.
"I am Vesperian," he said, voice steady despite never having spoken aloud before. "And I will find my brother."
The forest trembled. The Void Warden hesitated.
From deep within, power surged through Vesperian's veins—raw, untamed, and far greater than he had yet realized. His incomplete form suddenly glowed with blinding light, forcing the hooded figure to shield its face—revealing, for just an instant, that beneath the hood was not a face at all, but a swirling vortex of stars and darkness.
In that moment of distraction, a second presence materialized from the shadows behind the Warden—another cloaked form, smaller but moving with lethal grace.
"Now!" the second figure shouted, leaping from the shadows like a blade unleashed.
And the world, once still, fractured into chaos. The air split with a sound like shattering glass. Light bent around them in impossible angles. The ground beneath their feet rippled like water. Trees groaned and twisted, their branches reaching down like grasping hands.
Vesperian felt himself falling—not down, but sideways—into another reality entirely.
He would not return to the void. Not until he was whole. Not until the other half of his soul stood beside him once more.
And the first step of that journey lay through the mysterious figure who had just saved him.
The journey had only just begun.