The rain lashed down, a cold, unfeeling curtain descending upon the grimy alleyway. Ryo, the top assassin, slid down the damp brick, a spreading crimson stain blooming on his side. He didn't curse. He didn't gasp. His breath came in shallow, controlled puffs, every fiber of his being focused on the dwindling seconds he had left. Betrayed, cornered, and outnumbered, he had still taken a dozen with him. A cold satisfaction flickered in his grey eyes, even as the world began to dim.
His life had been a series of bleak calculations, each move a matter of survival, each breath a calculated risk. An orphan of a nameless hell, raised in the shadows, he had mastered death as an art form. No sentiment, no weakness. Only precision. A final, phantom ache reminded him of the blade still embedded in his ribs, a betrayal by a ghost from a past he'd long since erased. Good. No loose ends. Even in death, Ryo ensured his identity remained a cipher. His vision blurred, the concrete rushed up to meet him, and the world went silent.
The newborn cry, thin and reedy, tore through the cool air of a lavish chamber in Solara. The room, filled with the hushed urgency of midwives, stood in stark contrast to the rough alleyway where Ryo had drawn his last. The infant, small and pale, was wrapped in silk. But the eyes, when they fluttered open for a brief moment, held a startling depth, a familiar, unsettling grey that seemed to gaze into the distant past.
A man, tall and regal, with eyes the exact shade of the child's, entered the chamber. Emperor Valen Aerion, the strongest being in the Fractured Realm, looked upon the swaddled babe. As his fingers brushed the infant's soft skin, a wave of profound unease washed over him – a chilling premonition of immense misfortune and terrible danger emanating from the child. His eyes narrowed, a cold resolve hardening his features. His hand instinctively tightened, a flicker of lethal intent crossing his face as he looked upon the babe.
"This child…" he began, his voice low and dangerous.
A woman, her face pale with exhaustion but her eyes filled with fierce protectiveness, rushed forward. She knelt before him, clutching his robes, tears streaming down her face. "Please, my Emperor! Spare him! He is but a babe, innocent! I beg you, have mercy!" Her voice was thick with desperation, her pleas echoing in the opulent chamber.
Valen stared down at her, his expression unyielding for a long moment. The premonition was visceral, undeniable, yet the raw plea in her eyes held a surprising power. With a heavy sigh, a decision seemed to settle upon him, etched in the lines of his face.
A flicker of unseen energy, almost imperceptible even to the powerful Emperor, passed from Valen's hand to the child. It wasn't a curse, nor a blessing, but a seal—a profound suppression of all inherent Magi and Aura, a severing of any natural connection to Sprites. The child, Orin Aerion, would begin anew, stripped of the very energies that defined Aethelgard.
The next morning, Orin was gone. Placed anonymously on the steps of a distant orphanage in Ventus, the infant felt a familiar chill of abandonment, a ghost of a past life's harsh beginnings. But as the orphanage doors creaked shut, a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer of pure, ancient light touched the baby's forehead. A hidden presence. A silent guide. The assassin's soul had found a new, vulnerable shell, and the game of Aerthos had just begun.