Current Age: Sakamoto – 4.5 years old
Season: Late autumn
Location: Village of Velduin, near the northern cliffs of Lucala
The leaves were dying.
Not just falling — curling, like they were afraid of what came next.
That’s when I first knew:
Something beyond the woods had awakened.
Three days after Ravian’s letter…
Three days after Aelira’s surge…
The sky cracked open.
It wasn’t thunder.
It wasn’t magic.
It was something ancient falling fast.
I saw it — a streak of violet light, cutting the clouds like a blade across parchment.
It landed beyond the Northern Cliffs — a dead zone where no one traveled. Not even monsters.
The guild didn’t send a scout.
They sent us.
“We’re sending you north,” the minotaur clerk grunted. “You’re the only team dumb enough to say yes.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“And desperate enough to try,” Ravian added.
“Any info on what fell?” I asked.
“Just a reading. Old mana. Not demonic. Not divine. Something... forgotten.”
“Perfect,” Aelira sighed. “If we die, I’m blaming Sir Cluckles.”
We left that night.
Velduin behind us.
Aelira rode her summoned root boar (yes, she figured out how to summon a plant-mount).
Ravian walked beside me, cloak drawn, hand near his dagger.
I held Niris strapped across my back, humming with tension.
“Something sleeps up there,” she whispered. “And it remembers me.”
“Everything remembers you,” I muttered.
“Not like this.”
We reached them by sunrise.
Jagged black stone.
Freezing wind.
Old banners torn by time.
And at the base?
A crater.
Still glowing faintly violet.
Inside the crater was a pod.
Metal. Covered in seals and runes I didn’t recognize.
The surface cracked.
Inside… a girl.
Floating.
Eyes closed.
Hair white as snow.
And then—
She opened her eyes.
Violet. Piercing.
She looked at me.
And said:
“Sakamoto… Echoborne…”
“How do you know my name?!”
She collapsed.
We carried her back to Kael and Elira.
Elira ran tests. Probed her aura. Weaved magic diagnostics.
“She’s human… mostly,” Elira murmured. “But her soul is layered. Like it’s lived more than once.”
“Like me?” I asked.
“No,” Niris said. “Not like you. She didn’t reincarnate.”
“She was sealed.”
When she woke, she stared at us like we were strangers in her childhood home.
“My name is Ireina.”
“I don’t know how long I slept.”
“But I dreamed of a blade… that would wake the world.”
She looked at me again.
“And it’s you.”
Back in Arcthen’s ruined halls, the masked figure stirred again.
One of the Shadowsworn returned.
“The star has fallen. She’s near him.”
“Then we move.”
He raised a relic: a blade of bone, wrapped in red cloth.
“Echoborne. Wildweaver. Embersight.”
“Three sparks. One curse.”
“Time to test what the new age is made of.”