Prologue: The Name That Shouldn't Exist
The rain didn't fall in Ydrael that night.
It simply hung—suspended mid-air, as though time had exhaled and forgotten to inhale again. Droplets hovered in the lamplight like frozen tears. And below them, in a street with no recorded name, a boy lay on the cobblestones, breathing, barely alive.
He had no memory.No name.Not even a face he could recall as his own.
Just a flicker of cold in his chest, like something ancient had coiled inside his heart and whispered, "You are not supposed to be."
He gasped awake.
A dull throb echoed in his skull. The kind of pain that came not from injury—but from absence. As if something had been scraped out of his mind with purpose and cruelty.
The boy sat up slowly, his breath misting in the air. His coat was torn. His fingers were bleeding. He didn't know why. Around him, the city slouched in silence—towers bent like mourners, windows watching like eyes, alleys curling inward like whispers. The rain still hadn't moved.
And then—
A voice. Not loud. Not even spoken aloud.
"You've crossed the first Thread, Sol."
He froze.
That name. Sol.
It clung to him like it belonged—yet he had no memory of ever hearing it before. Still… it felt right. Like a coat left for him at a door he didn't remember knocking on.
"Sol Veyne," the voice repeated. "Pactbearer. Echowalker. Failure."
The air trembled.
A shadow peeled off the wall in front of him.
It didn't move with the wind. It didn't mimic his own. It stood—tall, lean, hollow-eyed, face stitched where a mouth should be.
In its hands, it held a blade that shimmered like broken glass and forgotten promises.
Sol staggered back, heart pounding. The voice whispered again:
"The Nameless Throne remembers you."
And the world resumed.
The rain fell. Hard. Fast. Real.
And with it came the scream of steel meeting steel.