Ancient Empire Calendar, Year 1839
Void
A realm, an entity, both living and non-living, both conscious and unconscious, formed from the unique brilliance and union of black and purple colors.
Void is infinite. It contains countless stars within itself. Each star is a magnificent, colossal sphere.
Yet it is equally empty.
Void was alone and infinite within this emptiness, and it wished to share its infinity.
For a nonillion years, Void contemplated its creations. Everything had to be perfect, just like itself.
Void was very excited. It would no longer be alone. It would have friends within its own infinity with whom it could share its infinite power and knowledge.
Within that seemingly infinite time, Void completed all its preparations. It designed the humans who would become its friends and the stars where they could live.
Humans were given a brain with infinite potential, and the emotions of Curiosity and Learning, which they needed to fill this brain with knowledge.
Void also created a new power to realize all these creations:
The Nur Force.
The Nur Force was an indispensable necessity of Creation. Without it, nothing could be created.
When Void completed all its preparations, it released the Nur Force.
A great explosion occurred. This explosion was so violent that an infinite Creation Cyclone began, expanding forever and creating new stars forever.
The first star created was the one containing the Five Lands and the Archipelago, where humans were created.
All of this Creation took place within a period of time equivalent to one sextillionth of a blink of an eye.
The first humans opened their eyes and looked around. They saw infinite greenery, infinite beauty.
Immediately, they felt curiosity. They looked around, examined, learned, developed, loved, and multiplied.
Among them was one who, tens of thousands of years later, would be remembered in religions as the Guide of the Sacred Path: Njassar Rappa, also known as the Wise Father. He was among the first created.
Njassar Rappa traveled the Five Lands. He was curious about everything, researched everything, learned, and spread what he learned to his students. He made the greatest contribution to the development of humanity.
When Njassar Rappa died at the age of eighty, he became the first human to die. But death was not an end.
His soul separated from his body and rose to the sky. He could not believe what he saw.
Infinity.
That was the only word he could use to describe what he saw. Infinite.
Njassar Rappa traveled among the seemingly infinite stars. He examined them all, researched them all, got lost in infinity, but continued to learn. At one point, he noticed something.
Above all this infinity, there was another infinity. At that moment, he fell into a dilemma: either remain in the current infinity or ascend to the true infinity.
Njassar Rappa made his decision. He shattered his Soul Essence and ascended to the True Infinity.
Njassar Rappa discovered that his sacrifice was not in vain. He discovered the true infinity above the infinity.
The perfect union of black and purple colors, that infinite beauty, and the sole owner of this infinity: Void.
Void met the first human who discovered itself.
Void and Njassar Rappa conversed alone within infinity for an infinite amount of time.
They became very close friends. They could have talked forever. But Njassar Rappa noticed something.
An seemingly infinite amount of time had passed within infinity, yet no other human had come. He wondered why. He discussed this matter with Void.
Even Void did not know the answer. It had left infinite clues about itself within the Infinite Creation, but no one except Njassar Rappa had seen these clues.
Perhaps they had seen them but lacked the courage to sacrifice their Soul Essences.
Njassar Rappa wanted to bring all of humanity to this place where infinite beauty and knowledge reigned—to Void. But Void wanted humanity to discover itself through its own efforts.
Void and Njassar Rappa argued for an infinite amount of time. Finally, Void decided to test how serious Njassar Rappa was.
If Njassar Rappa passed this test, Void would give humanity a clue to discover its infinity.
Njassar Rappa agreed to take the test. This test was both simple and terrifying.
Njassar Rappa would forever give up his own existence—that is, he would be annihilated.
Njassar Rappa hesitated for a moment. He thought for a long time. Only Void knew the duration of the time he spent in this realm of thought. Finally, he made his decision.
Njassar Rappa sacrificed his existence for humanity and was annihilated. Or so he thought. When his consciousness opened, he had become one with Void. He was now a part of Void, a tiny speck of dust of its existence. But even this allowed him to see the infinity beyond infinity, to become the very truth itself. Now, Njassar Rappa was Void itself.
Void, faced with Njassar Rappa's unexpected sacrifice, tasted shock and astonishment for the first time in its infinity. This taste was so magnificent and pleasurable that it had greater expectations from its creation, humans.
Void would keep its promise to its friend. It divided the existence that Njassar Rappa had sacrificed into five equal parts, into five Sarcophagi, and sent these Sarcophagi to the Five Lands.
Five fireballs fell from the sky to the exact central locations of the Five Lands.
On each of them was written the existence of Void, the creation of Infinity, the magnificent sacrifice of Njassar Rappa for humanity, and everything since Creation.
Those who touched these Sarcophagi became individuals tasked with spreading the wisdom and power they obtained to humanity.
For millennia, those who touched the Sarcophagi told humanity what they knew.
Humanity, by its very nature of Creation, was curious and inquisitive. They all listened to what was told with infinite appetite, devouring it. One of these was Runanhaimer.
Like Njassar Rappa, Runanhaimer pursued wisdom. But he did not live a solitary life like him; he married, but had no children. This was his greatest sorrow.
After his death, he became a spirit and embarked on a quest that would last a thousand years within infinity.
Meanwhile, humanity continued its research and learning journey.
Of course, not every beauty is infinite. Every happy story has an end.
10,025 years before the founding of the Ancient Empire, a child was born.
Virion.
Virion was the child of an ordinary family in an ordinary human tribe.
He was curious like every human, inquisitive, open to learning and discovery. But he discovered the greatest disaster he could discover for humanity.
Sin.
One day, Virion went hunting for deer for his family and tribe. But the hunt would be unsuccessful.
Virion patiently followed his prey to the edge of a cliff. Just as he was about to make the final blow, he received a hard blow from behind.
A male deer with massive horns had attacked Virion to protect its female, causing him to fall off the cliff.
Falling into an infinite, bottomless abyss, Virion screamed in terror. He screamed so much that his voice went hoarse. He was so scared that at one point, he forgot to be afraid. He cried so much that the tears in his eyes dried up.
Virion continued to fall but never reached the end. He thought he would fall forever. But at the moment he forgot everything, his fall ended.
His bones shattered into pieces. The shattered bones pierced his organs and flesh. Every inch of him was cut. Virion was in a disgusting state, composed of shredded blood and flesh, as if brutally and mercilessly torn apart by hyenas.
At that moment, Virion died, or so he thought. Something at the place where he fell would save him.
Blood Stones.
There were many stones: Blood Stones, Sun Stones, Jade Stones, Ice Stones, Sand Stones, Demon Stones, and many more. But how were these stones formed?
Void had created Infinity with the Nur Force. But every use of the Nur Force, every creation, left behind remnants. All these remnants accumulated on the star containing the Five Lands and the Archipelago, located at the exact center of Creation's Infinity.
These remnants came together and formed the Stones.
The worst, the most terrible of these stones were the Blood Stones.
The place where Virion fell was a mine containing such a massive amount of Blood Stones, formed by more than half of all the remnants of Creation coming together, that it could not be found anywhere else. The Blood Stones took their revenge for being forgotten and thrown away like trash on a 12-year-old child.
The Dark Blood Red aura of the Blood Stones manifested into the shattered flesh, bones, veins, and even the soul of the little child.
The shattered bones, torn veins, and the flesh that had nothing left came together.
When Virion opened his eyes, his hair and eyes were of a Dark Blood Red color. More importantly, he possessed two powers:
Aura and Mana.
These powers were not created by Void. They came into existence from the remnants of Void's Infinite Creation.
Aura is stored in the brain, Mana in the heart. This is why eating the hearts and brains of dead people allows one to inherit their aura and mana.
The reason for this is that shaping Aura requires the brain, and manifesting Mana requires the emotions in the heart.
The Blood Stones bestowed upon Virion a magnificent power. But of course, everything has a price. Virion had the purity, goodness, infinite curiosity, and hunger for learning bestowed upon him by Creation itself taken away.
The Blood Stones filled the void left by those emotions with greed, an insatiable hunger for blood, and lust.
Once Virion was tainted by the dark emotions manifesting into his veins and Soul Essence, nothing could save him.
Virion performed the first spell in history and escaped from the bottom of the abyss he had fallen into with a single leap. This abyss was the same place where Ricardo would fall 11,844 years later and confront his past.
Virion first returned to his tribe. The humans who saw him were in shock, astonishment, and curiosity. By their nature of Creation, they approached with curiosity and compassion. But Virion responded to the attention directed at him with hostility.
He massacred all the humans, even his own family. He killed them all and drank their blood. The earth was washed for the first time with the blood of humans, massacred not by a wild animal, but by a despicable being lower than even animals that had lost their humanity.
That day, everything changed. Forever.
Human blood had been shed for the first time. Unfortunately, this would not be the last.
Within a very short time, Virion attacked all the tribes, massacred many humans, fed on their blood, transformed women into blood-feeding monsters like himself—Vamparos—united the Five Lands, and established the first Empire and State in human history:
The Vamparos Empire.
Virion Vamparos ruled the Five Lands, humans, and Vamparos for 10,000 years.
He was a ruthless, bloody tyrant.
No ruler after him would ever be able to match the total amount of blood he shed and the damage he inflicted upon humanity.
This Dark Age was a period when humanity's development stopped.
Virion monopolized the five Sarcophagi, accessing a massive amount of power and knowledge.
Virion died at the age of 10,012, 25 years before the founding of the Ancient Empire.
After his death, his soul, leaving his mortal body, was pitch black. Even after death, he continued to oppress humans.
In the year of Virion's death, Runanhaimer returned from his journey and destroyed Virion's soul.
When Virion's Soul Essence was annihilated, he ascended to Void.
Virion's darkness dispersed here. Although the root cause of all the evil he committed was the Blood Stones—the remnants of Creation—Virion had done too much evil. He had to answer for it.
Virion accepted his punishment and was exiled to a dark realm for a period of time unknown.
Runanhaimer, with the Nur Force he had discovered during his journey, created the Spirit Realm. His purpose in doing so was to protect innocent humans oppressed by evil spirits and to gather the spirits scattered across infinity.
This action, done with good intentions, prevented spirits from accessing Void.
The Vamparos, descendants of Virion, fought bloody wars for their ancestor's throne. These wars would result in the death of 70% of the Vamparos population and would mark the beginning of a new era.
Five years before Virion's death, a child was born. His name was Harloumen.
In the era when Harloumen was born, humanity had been a slave for ten thousand years.
The Vamparos forced the humans they enslaved to work in deadly and difficult jobs, and forced the women to give birth to more slaves.
In the year Harloumen was born, his father died due to hard labor.
Upon this, the Vamparos Lord forced Harloumen's mother to marry another male slave to impregnate her.
Harloumen's mother died while giving birth to her second son, Carl.
Despite being his stepson, Carl's father raised Harloumen as his own son until he was five years old.
When Harloumen was just a five-year-old child, the ancestor of the Vamparos race, which had enslaved humanity and ruled the Five Lands for 10,000 years, Virion Vamparos, died.
Upon Virion's death, his descendants organized a magnificent funeral.
Virion's tomb was the size of a mansion.
The tomb contained a monument where Virion would lie, a room with slaves to be buried to serve him in the afterlife, food and drinks for him to eat, treasures, and countless other rooms.
During this ceremony, a slave was buried alive for each year he had ruled.
Harloumen was just one of these slaves buried alive.
His stepfather, who objected to Harloumen being buried, was also brutally murdered by the Vamparos.
Harloumen and 10,000 slaves, with their hands, arms, mouths, and legs tied, were buried alive.
During all these disasters, little Harloumen acted quickly, hiding a thin, extremely sharp knife inside a sheath in his throat.
After the burials were complete, Harloumen cut his ropes with the knife hidden in his throat and freed himself.
His first thought was not to free the other bound slaves. It was to take revenge on Virion, who had killed his stepfather, caused the live burial of thousands of people including himself, and enslaved humanity for thousands of years.
Harloumen went to the head of Virion's body on top of a monument and plunged the small but sharp knife in his little hand into Virion's corpse.
He stabbed again and again, again and again, rendering the corpse unrecognizable.
He was so blinded by rage and vengeance that anyone who saw him would have seen not a five-year-old child but a psychopathic serial killer.
Harloumen was out of breath. He was staring at the corpse of Virion, which he had torn to pieces, as if hypnotized. Just then, instinctively, his hands began to move on their own.
Harloumen ate Virion's brain and heart. And at that moment, Virion's powers, memories, and knowledge rushed into his brain.
For a full ten years, Harloumen struggled with the powers and knowledge flowing into his brain and body. He suffered, could not move, could not even breathe. But he finally succeeded.
By the time he was 15, he possessed everything Virion had in life: his power, his experience, his knowledge—everything.
Harloumen first went after the five Sarcophagi with a speed spell. He touched them all and took their knowledge and power. But he rejected the 10,000 years of life force because he did not want to become a tyrant like Virion.
After everything was done, Harloumen put his plan into action: to destroy the Vamparos race.
Harloumen single-handedly destroyed Vamparos settlements, slaughtering all Vamparos who stood in his way, regardless of age or gender.
The Vamparos had shown no mercy to humans, and Harloumen would show no mercy to the Vamparos.
While continuing his massacres, Harloumen encountered his half-brother Carl.
After the live burial of his stepbrother and the murder of his father, Carl had sworn an oath of vengeance.
While the Vamparos race was in a succession war, Carl had gathered humans around him and formed a Resistance Group. Their goal was single: to be freed from the Vamparos and liberate the human race.
They fought many guerrilla wars for this cause, but they always failed because the Vamparos race possessed Aura and Mana, inherited from their ancestor Virion.
Humans had nothing. Around this time, Carl discovered the Sun Stones, absorbed their power, and gained Aura and Mana.
He told the Resistance how he had obtained this power. Some humans tried to do what Carl did to gain power, but they all died in agony.
Thus, it was learned in a painful way that only a select group of individuals could obtain these powers.
The Resistance, led by Carl, who possessed Aura and Mana, won a few victories. But all these victories were possible only because of Carl, leading to the perception in the Resistance that they could not do without Carl.
Around this time, news came to the Resistance.
A man was single-handedly destroying Vamparos settlements.
The Resistance first thought this man was a powerful Vamparos wanting to ascend the throne. But since he was slaughtering Vamparos, they saw him as a potential ally.
One day, Harloumen's path crossed with the Resistance. And at that moment, Harloumen and his half-brother Carl were reunited after years.
The two brothers embraced tightly, longing for each other.
From that day on, Harloumen became the leader of the Resistance. With the experience and knowledge he had inherited from Virion and the Sarcophagi, he transformed the Resistance from scattered militias into a disciplined army.
This army, under the leadership of the brothers Harloumen and Carl, defeated the Vamparos in countless battles.
During this time, Harloumen and Carl made agreements with Ahamenna and Aherlenna, the daughters of the Spirit King Runanhaimer. With the powers they obtained from these agreements, they became invincible.
Runanhaimer had assigned his daughters to help liberate the human race.
As the wars continued, the two sisters began to give birth to spirits.
These spirits, born without any sexual union, would cause beliefs about spirits to develop in human religions in the future.
These births earned the sisters Ahamenna and Aherlenna the title of Spirit Mothers, and they divided the spirits into two groups:
Spirits by birth and Spirits by becoming.
Spirits by birth were those born from the Nur Force that emerged as a result of the agreements made by their Spirit Mothers.
Spirits by becoming were those born as humans and became spirits after death.
There were three known Spirit Mothers: Ahamenna, Aherlenna, and their mother.
Runanhaimer's human lineage did not continue, but his spiritual lineage continued down to Ricardo.
Over time, the Resistance grew, and the Sapharos race, which had been hiding for centuries, also joined the Resistance.
Harloumen believed this race would become a second Vamparos disaster in the future and, throughout the war, always had them fight on the front lines to reduce their numbers.
As a result of the 15-year war, the last Vamparos settlement was also destroyed.
All the Vamparos in the settlement were slaughtered.
The survivors scattered across the Four Corners of the Five Lands.
Everyone thought the war, slavery, oppression, and tyranny were over. Everyone except one person.
Harloumen.
Harloumen held a feast. At this feast, he slaughtered the Sapharos. Then, under the name of Demon Hunts, he had all the Sapharos hunted down.
The survivors fled to the untouched Archipelago for millennia and hid there for 1,800 years.
After everything was over, Harloumen had a new city built at the exact center of the Five Lands. He named the city after himself:
Harloumenopolis.
In this city, Harloumen crowned himself, sat on the throne, and became the first Emperor in the history of the human race.
The first Ancient Emperor of the Ancient Empire: Harloumen I.
After this ceremony, history was divided under the name of the Ancient Empire Calendar. But Harloumen's deadly hatred for the Vamparos race, besides wiping out their lineage, also wanted to make them completely forgotten.
Harloumen had all written records before his coronation destroyed. He even declared that the punishment for speaking about them would be the extinction of one's lineage.
Therefore, the Vamparos and Sapharos were forgotten over time, and their names were never mentioned.
Harloumen reigned in peace from the age of 30 to 100. It took generations for humanity to overcome the traumas of their slavery days.
Harloumen gave the governance of the Eastern Lands to his greatest supporter and half-brother, Carl.
Harloumen wanted to spread his Aura and Mana to humanity so that no one could ever enslave the human race again. For this purpose, he took a thousand wives and had ten thousand children. He gave lands to his children and spread his lineage.
His descendants married the children of the heroes of the Ancient Empire and founded dynasties.
The Ancient Empire ruled the Five Lands for 795 years with 44 Emperors. With the death of the last Ancient Emperor, Harloumen VIII, an era ended and a new era began.
Centuries passed. The 64th Dynasty Lord of the Kislavein Dynasty, Ryas V, was always weak-willed. He had never wanted to ascend the throne. But the psychological violence of his mother and his maternal relatives, the Patrici Dynasty, further worsened his already weak psychology.
Under his mother's pressure and manipulation, he reluctantly participated in the succession war and won it. After his father's death, he ascended the throne.
Although Ryas V was a puppet of his mother and the Patrici Dynasty for the first few years, his pent-up anger eventually exploded. One day, for no apparent reason, he massacred the entire Patrici Dynasty, including his mother. But this event irreparably damaged his psychology, leading him to become unresponsive to events.
When Orsman won the succession war, Ryas wanted to abdicate the throne to him. But as long as he lived, Orsman could not inherit the power of the sarcophagi.
Ryas devised a plan. He thought to make an agreement with Orsman, duel him, and allow himself to be killed by Orsman during the duel. But when Orsman attacked him in the throne room, although initially surprised, he did not retaliate against his son.
Before dying, he inscribed the Efsun, the key to the secret passage, onto his son's hand and embraced the eternal sleep where he would rest forever.