Prologue

  The Gathering of Shadows

  It was not the familiar breath of the night winds. It was a silence that breathed heavily, as if the world itself was holding its breath.

  Far to the north of Europe, above a forgotten island swallowed by eternal mist, stood a colossal stone castle, leaning over the grey sea like a living creature watching in absolute stillness.

  Inside the castle, the shadows gathered. They came from the far ends of the stars, from the cracks in time, from the death corridors no tongue dared to name.

  ?

  At the heart of the great hall, there was a waterfall unlike any other. It poured without sound, falling from an unseen wall into a bottomless pool.

  But its waters…were not ordinary waters.

  They glowed with a strange color, a color known only to a few souls scattered across the vastness of the cosmos.

  The color of Arthalaine.

  ?

  Arthalaine…a color that lived and died on the ancient soils of Mars, a color that shifted with the sighs of dust, beating blue-grey when it mourned, urning ashen green when it raged, and glowing violet when it remembered.

  ?

  Beneath the cascading waters of Arthalaine, the memories began to surface.

  They were not images…they were living echoes, souls breathing through the magical waves.

  ?

  The gathered shadows drew closer to the edge of the pool, watching, their hollow eyes flickering with a trembling that hadn’t touched their spirits in centuries.

  ?

  There, amid the swirling currents of Arthalaine, the vision of a young boy formed…standing alone beneath a sky that was not the sky of Earth.

  He was not fully human, nor was he fully alien. He was something between both —a fragment of another world, and a first step toward a destiny without a name.

  ?

  Whispers rose from the shadows:

  “He has moved from his world…”“He has set foot on the Earth…”“The fracture that cannot heal has begun.”

  ?

  And upon the shimmering surface of the waterfall, they saw him clearly…Ryan.

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  The boy who carried light in his veins, the boy whose new world would deny his truth, the boy who would one day shatter the night — without even knowing it.

  ?

  The waters continued to fall, and the memories unfolded one after another, as if Arthalaine itself was telling the story that no mortal lips dared to speak.

  ?

  Chapter 1

  The Fall

  The sky tore open in a silent scream. A single spark — a tiny flare of light — fell from the heavens, trailing silver fire through the dark clouds.

  It spiraled downward, unseen by any eye except those who watched from the old castle hidden in the mist.

  It plunged towards a forgotten island far below…and crashed into the heart of a deep, ancient forest.

  ?

  Ryan awoke to pain. The world around him was a spinning blur of mud, roots, and broken leaves. He lay crumpled against the wet earth, his body screaming with every tiny movement.

  The trees towered above him, ancient and gnarled, their twisted branches knitting the sky into a ceiling of tangled shadows. There was no moonlight here — only a heavy, breathless darkness pressing down on everything.

  He gasped for air, tasting the cold dampness of the soil. His memories were a shattered mirror — flashes of blinding light, falling, the silent roar of the wind, and now… nothing.

  Just survival.

  ?

  He forced his aching limbs to move. First his fingers twitched, then his arms, and finally he pushed himself up, gasping. His ribs burned with each breath, but they held.

  Somehow… he was alive.

  ?

  Staggering to his feet, Ryan clutched the trunk of a nearby tree for support. Around him, the forest was utterly silent — no animal calls, no whisper of wind. Even the air seemed too thick to move.

  It was as if the entire world was waiting… holding its breath.

  He stumbled forward, each step a battle against pain and exhaustion. He needed to find shelter, water, anything.

  But every direction looked the same — endless walls of trees and darkness.

  ?

  Suddenly, the ground gave way beneath him.

  Ryan shouted as he plunged downward, slipping through a hidden hole masked by fallen leaves. The fall was short but brutal; he slammed into rough stone and cold water below.

  Gasping, coughing, he struggled to his knees in the shallow pool where he landed. He was in a well — an ancient pit carved from stone, half-filled with stagnant water.

  The walls were slick with moss and too high to climb. For a moment, panic flared inside him.

  Trapped.

  ?

  But then… he felt it. A faint current of air, brushing against his face from one side of the pit.

  Hope.

  He crawled toward it, hands scraping raw against the stone. There — a narrow opening in the side of the well, just wide enough for him to squeeze through.

  Without hesitation, Ryan forced himself into the darkness.

  ?

  The tunnel was tight, damp, and filled with the stench of rot. He dragged himself forward, inch by painful inch, ignoring the sharp rocks tearing at his hands and knees.

  Only the whisper of air guided him — a promise that somewhere ahead, there was an exit.

  Minutes — or hours — blurred together as he crawled. Time meant nothing here.

  Then, finally, a faint light appeared in the distance. Ryan gritted his teeth and pushed harder, until he spilled out of the tunnel into the open air once more.

  ?

  He collapsed onto the grass outside, gasping like a drowning man. Above him, the sky was beginning to pale with the first hints of dawn.

  He had survived.

  Again.

  ?

  And as he lay there, staring up at the awakening sky, somewhere deep within the halls of the shadowed castle, the watchers at the waterfall of Arthalaine leaned closer to the swirling waters, their hollow voices whispering:

  “He survives. He moves forward still. But he will not escape us.”

  The game had begun.

  And Ryan, alone and wounded beneath the foreign skies of Earth, had no idea just how far — or how dark — his journey was about to become.