Chapter 1 : The Thread That Begins
Kai slammed his palm into the stone again, his fingers wrapped in coarse bandages, knuckles bleeding through. The stone didn't break. Not yet. But he could feel it softening, groaning beneath his strikes. His breath steamed in the cold morning air. Sweat traced his brow, curling down his jaw, vanishing into the dirt below.
The sun had barely cracked the horizon. Mist still blanketed the pine ridge beyond the training grounds, and the only sounds were the wind and the rhythmic smack of his hands against stone. He didn't stop. Couldn't. Every time he paused, the memories came.
And right now, they were clawing through the edges of his mind like smoke.
Kai's hand paused mid-swing.
His chest burned.
Not from the training. From that feeling again.
He lowered his arm, eyes unfocused, slipping backward into the memory like falling through water.
He had been seven.
Just seven.
His village had been quiet that morning. The same cracked-roof huts, the same muddy road winding through the rocky cliffs and forests beyond. His grandmother had made him warm sweetroot soup the night before. She'd smiled as she served it, even though her hands shook and her back curved with age. She'd raised him since he was a baby. She was all he had.
He remembered her voice. Gentle. Worn.
"Don't go far today, Kai. There's talk of falling stars."
He'd nodded, but he'd always wandered.
The canyon outside the village was forbidden. Cursed, they said. That relics sometimes bled out from old Titan graves there — broken things that still breathed. But he had gone anyway.
He remembered the cold. The silence. The way the wind suddenly vanished, like the world had sucked in a breath and held it.
The relic had floated above the ground like a star that had fallen and gotten stuck.
It had pulsed — faint red and blue veins spiraling around a jagged black orb.
And he had touched it.
He hadn't known why.
His fingertips brushed it like a child brushing glass.
And then everything exploded.
The light had scorched the clouds. The wind screamed. The relic burst into his body — or maybe into his soul. He didn't remember the pain. Just the roar. The deafening, endless roar.
When he awoke, the sky was red and black.
His village was gone.
Charred earth. Smoke. Crushed homes. Screams that had already faded.
He'd run through the ruins like a ghost, stumbling, coughing, calling out.
He found her beneath the ash.
His grandmother.
She hadn't burned.
She'd been shattered, as if the energy had ripped her apart from within.
He dropped to his knees beside her, tears not yet formed, mind empty. His fingers shook. He screamed so hard he thought his throat would tear.
And when his voice finally cracked to silence, he stood, turned toward the cliff, and walked straight toward the edge.
He wanted it to end.
If his touch brought death, then he would remove the hand that touched.
Remove the boy that destroyed.
He stepped onto the stone ledge, wind whipping around him. The canyon stretched below like a mouth waiting to swallow him.
Then a voice.
Rough. Loud.
"Boy! Don't move!"
He turned.
A man stood behind him, massive, bald, arms crossed, cloak flapping.
Kai didn't speak.
The man took a step forward. "You do this now, and you rob the world of a future it doesn't even know it needs."
Kai's voice cracked. "I killed them."
"I saw. The sky bled." The man's voice softened, only slightly. "But you didn't kill them. The relic chose. And now it's in you."
"I didn't ask for it!" Kai screamed, tears pouring now.
"Most don't."
Kai's legs buckled. He collapsed, sobbing into the dust.
The man knelt. "Come. Before more find you."
And then the sky broke again.
A shriek pierced the mountains.
A shadow flew overhead — long wings, glimmering silver talons, and burning eyes.
"A Skyhawk," the man growled, standing. "Of course."
The beast circled once, then dove, talons extended.
"Run," the man said.
Kai froze. "It'll kill me."
"I said run!"
Kai ran.
The man turned, planted his feet, and met the beast with a roar of his own, a golden shockwave erupting from his fist as he punched upward.
Claws slammed down, and the mountain cracked.
Kai looked back once.
The Skyhawk screeched, tearing into the man with its wing. He bled but didn't fall. The man grabbed the beast's neck, slammed it into the ground. But it was too fast — it twisted, its beak flashing toward his face.
"No—!" Kai shouted.
He didn't think.
He didn't want to save him.
He just didn't want to watch someone else die.
So he closed his eyes and screamed.
The pulse came again — wild, burning, wordless.
And when he opened his eyes, the Skyhawk was dead.
Its wings were split. Its neck crushed. Steam rose from its feathers, energy burned into its spine like lightning had struck it from within.
The man stood slowly, bloodied, staring at the boy.
Kai fell to his knees again, panting, heart hammering.
He looked at his hands.
What was he?
The man approached, slower now.
He knelt beside him.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"…Kai."
"You have something inside you," the man said. "Something rare. Dangerous. But you're still breathing. That means something."
Kai shook.
"I don't want it."
"That doesn't matter."
He placed a massive hand on Kai's back.
"You're coming with me. I'll train you. Because if you don't learn to live with it… it'll kill you."
Kai looked into his eyes.
There was no pity there.
Only understanding.
And for the first time since that day began, Kai didn't feel entirely alone.
The days that followed were a blur of silence and fire.
The man who had saved him introduced himself only once: "Boji." He didn't say where he came from, or why he was in that remote canyon. But he didn't leave. He brought Kai food. He built a fire. And when Kai woke in the night, drenched in sweat and shivering from dreams of ash and screams, Boji would be sitting there, staring at the flames like he could see through time.
They never spoke of the village.
Kai barely spoke at all.
But the training began immediately.
At sunrise each morning, Boji would grunt and toss him a weighted stick. "Swing," he'd say. "Five hundred times."
When Kai's arms buckled, Boji would wait, arms crossed. "You think strength is about speed? No. Strength is about rhythm. Find yours."
Kai didn't know what that meant.
But he swung. Again and again. His palms blistered. His muscles screamed. He cried, once, the third day, when his knees gave out and his face hit the dirt.
Boji said nothing.
But the next morning, there was clean water by his bed. A cooked root. Bandages.
Kai started again.
Weeks passed. Maybe months.
Boji didn't teach him techniques. Not yet. He taught him how to breathe. How to stand. How to fall.
"You want to punch?" Boji asked one day. "Then learn what it feels like to be hit first."
And he did. Over and over. Boji's strikes were like boulders, but never cruel. Just enough to knock him back, make him stand again.
Kai learned to expect the pain. Then to absorb it. Then, bit by bit, to respond.
He started feeling something strange inside him — a heat, building in his chest when he pushed too far. It wasn't fire. It was movement. Like something coiled, watching.
But Boji didn't ask. And Kai didn't say.
One evening, after a long day of carrying stone blocks up a slope, Kai collapsed at the fire. His arms hung like dead weight. He didn't even bother reaching for the bowl of soup Boji had left.
He stared at the flames. The sky was clear above them. The stars drifted like diamonds suspended in ink.
Boji finally spoke.
"You know why that Skyhawk died."
Kai didn't respond.
"You didn't touch it. You didn't even look at it."
Still silence.
Boji nodded. "That means it's part of you now. That power. The relic's pulse. You didn't summon it. It awoke. It chose you."
Kai sat up slowly. "I didn't want it to."
Boji looked at him. "And that's why you're still sane."
Kai turned away. His voice dropped. "I killed them. My grandma. My whole village."
Boji stared into the fire. "I've seen what relics can do when they fall into weak hands. Greedy hands. But yours? Yours were trying to reach for something you didn't understand."
Kai clenched his fists. "Then I should've died."
"No." Boji's voice was hard now. "You should live. And master it. Because someday, someone else will come looking for what's inside you. And if you're not ready…"
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
Kai lay back that night and stared at the stars until sleep took him.
In his dream, the drum returned.
Louder this time.
Faster.
And when he woke, he wasn't afraid.
He was ready.
—
One year passed.
Kai grew.
Not just in size, but in silence. In control. He no longer flinched when he saw fire. He no longer trembled at sudden wind. His stance had sharpened. His pulse — the strange rhythm inside him — no longer overwhelmed him. It hummed when he focused. When he trained.
Boji pushed him harder.
They trained by rivers, in storms, across jagged mountain paths. Sometimes Boji would vanish for a day or two. When he returned, he carried scrolls, or relic shards, or news from the outer world.
One day, Boji sat across from Kai as they ate roasted rootfish.
"You're ready."
Kai blinked. "Ready for what?"
Boji didn't smile. He never did. "The world."
He tossed a small cloth toward him. Kai opened it. Inside was a badge — black metal shaped like a shard of sky, with a spiral carved at the center.
"What is this?"
"Skycrest Academy," Boji said. "They take in relic-bearers. The ones with potential."
Kai swallowed. "I'm not like them."
Boji raised an eyebrow. "No. You're not. You're worse. Because you don't know how strong you really are."
Kai turned the badge in his hand.
He still remembered the village. The smell of ash. His grandmother's smile.
He looked up. "Will they accept me?"
Boji stood. "They'll fear you."
Kai stood too. "Then why send me?"
Boji finally met his eyes. "Because they need you. Even if they don't know it yet."
Kai looked out over the cliffs where he had once tried to end his life. The wind was stronger now. Or maybe he just wasn't running from it anymore.
He closed his fist around the badge.
"I'll go."
And in the distance, thunder rumbled.
Not from the clouds.
But from the pulse of something waking.
They left the cliffs before sunrise.
Boji walked in long strides, silent, and Kai followed with the badge tucked into his shirt. The path was narrow, carved through rocky forests that hadn't been touched by cities or Empire flags. Each step away from the ruins of his old life made the world feel bigger, more endless — and more dangerous.
By midday, they passed through a dried-up riverbed. Kai stopped to drink from a shallow stream that fed down from the Skyspine Mountains.
He looked at his reflection in the water.
His eyes were different now.
Darker. Sharper.
He didn't look like the boy who cried beside the body of the only person who ever loved him.
He looked like someone surviving.
"Stop staring," Boji said from up ahead. "You'll have time to reflect when you're stronger."
Kai wiped his mouth and caught up.
That evening, they reached a ridgeline that overlooked a basin stretching for miles. Floating islands hung in the air like broken teeth. And far beyond them, Kai could see towers — thin and glowing, with spires shaped like wings piercing the sky.
Boji pointed with his chin.
"Skycrest. That's where your story continues."
Kai stared. His heartbeat quickened.
He didn't belong in a place like that. He had no name, no history. Just a relic inside him and a past soaked in fire.
Still… he took a step forward.
Then the sky screamed.
Boji spun first. "Down!"
Kai dove to the side as a massive shape burst through the clouds above. Black feathers, yellow eyes burning like twin suns, and talons wide enough to crush a house.
Another Skyhawk.
Only this one was armored. Scarred. Old.
Kai hit the dirt and rolled. "Why are they always flying at us?!"
"Relics pulse like beacons," Boji shouted. "You've started glowing, boy."
The Skyhawk screeched again and dove.
Boji lunged forward, slamming his fist into the air.
The shockwave blasted upward and clipped the beast's wing, sending it spiraling. But it didn't fall. It banked hard and came back, faster this time.
Kai stood, trembling. His hands sparked again — red and blue flickers that danced at his fingertips.
"I'll run!" he shouted.
Boji barked, "Don't."
"I don't want to kill you too!"
Boji grabbed his shoulder. "Then control it!"
But Kai backed away. The pressure was building again. His skin tingled. The pulse — the rhythm — it was drumming now, faster, harder. Like something inside was clawing to get out.
The Skyhawk shrieked and dove.
Boji stepped forward, ready.
Kai turned away.
He closed his eyes.
"I'm sorry."
Then the light came.
But not from Boji.
From Kai.
A pulse like thunder ripped outward.
The Skyhawk never touched the ground. It disintegrated mid-air — bones vaporized, feathers burning to ash. The explosion echoed across the valley.
Kai fell to his knees, panting, his body steaming. Boji walked to him, looked at the scorched air where the beast had been, then down at the boy.
Kai didn't look up.
"...It's still happening," he whispered.
Boji knelt.
"Yes. But this time, no one died but the enemy."
Kai's breath shuddered.
"I don't want to be a weapon."
"You're not," Boji said. "But you might become the only one who can stop what's coming."
Kai looked up at the darkening sky.
In the wind, he swore he could hear the beat again.
Slow.
Deep.
Waiting.