Riser is a beautiful region; it connects all regions. Our kingdom was famous for adventuring and weapon crafting. Our king was an S-rank adventurer; he had solved many mysteries throughout history, including several God Trials. One of the greatest weapon-craftsmen in the region was my father, well known throughout Riser and the kingdom. Even the king sent weapons to our workshop.
My mother kept a garden full of medicinal plants and flowers. When I was half a year old, her daily routine was to visit the garden early each morning, then help my father manage the workshop's finances—I forgot to mention, she was also its manager.
It was the same day the mysterious sword arrived at the castle. The same day the king entered the ruin. The same day everything changed.
That morning, at the castle, a stranger handed a mysterious rusted sword and a letter to a guard, then vanished into thin air. The guard brought the sword and letter to the queen. She tried to read the letter but couldn't—it was written in an unknown language. She sent it to a scholar, but even he couldn't decode it either. She set the sword aside, uneasy, and turned her attention to the messages waiting for the king's return.
That same morning, far outside the capital, in an ancient ruin removed from every region, the king arrived searching for Utopia. The weather and climate there were unlike anything in Riser. The moment his foot touched the ruin's ground, he and his team entered the God Trial known as the Fall of Utopia.
This trial was different from the others—no monster attacks, no traps, only a dark path leading deep into the earth. The King and his team pressed forward until, by midday, a bright light swept across the passage, revealing a wall covered in drawings. At first, they couldn't understand what the drawings meant—but somehow, they found themselves reading them anyway.
Many years ago, a mystic stone fell from the sky. When it struck the land, it summoned unknown magical beings, later named poltergeists. They rampaged across the world, destroying everything in their path. A great assembly of every race gathered before the World Tree:
- Humans
- Elves
- Demons
- Monsters
- True Dragons
- Fairies
In the middle of the meeting, an ancient voice spoke from the sky: *"I will give knowledge and power to one person. Decide among yourselves who will carry everything that comes with it—the power, the knowledge, and the pain."* Then, more forcefully: *"Come forward—who will lead this war and carry all its pain? Come forward."*
Everyone froze in fear. Only one person stepped forward and, in doing so, gained the power and the knowledge. Through his overwhelming aura, he united every race and led them into war. Slowly, the battlefield came under his control. He defeated the enemy and sealed them away in an unknown place—and then he vanished. No one ever learned where he went, or even who he truly was, or which race he belonged to.
At the victory gathering, with no leader to claim credit, conflict broke out again—this time between humans, elves, monsters, and demons, each vying to be named champion of the victory and to decide the future of the world. That second war brought only fire and ash. It reshaped the history of Utopia and split the world into five:
- The holy land of Riser, for humans
- The live hell of Rendon, for demons
- The great forest of Sylvia, for elves
- The dark forest of Hells, for monsters
- And the lost country of Utopia itself
At the end of it all, a chest of mysterious weapons and tools—remnants of that first war—appeared before the king. When he touches the chest, they teleport into the front of the kingdom's gates, and the ruin vanishes into the air behind it.
The king returns with both shaken and confused, his team carrying the mysterious weapons in hand. He decided the weapons should be checked first and made plans to tell the Queen everything once he returned—the trial, the true history behind it, and the strange arsenal they'd recovered. He didn't yet know that a rusted sword of a very similar kind was already waiting for him back at the castle, sitting untouched on the queen's table, and that a piece of it was about to travel somewhere neither of them expected.
Because that same afternoon, the queen had grown tired of the sword's silence. She sent it on to be examined properly—to the one workshop in the kingdom she trusted above all others: my father's.
At the workshop, a crowd of adventurers had already gathered for the day's usual business. My mother was there, holding me. When the shipment of weapons arrived—the rusted sword from the castle among them—she passed me off to one of the adventurers and went to help inspect them. One adventurer called out, "This is a B-rank magic stone"—but no one took him seriously, since he was only F-rank. In the confusion, someone shoved him, and the stone flew into the air, landing straight in the furnace. It caused a massive blast.
I was close to it when it happened. In that instant, the rusted sword—the very one sent from the castle that same morning—shot out of its box and shielded me from the explosion. Everyone froze in shock at the blast itself—and then froze again, in an entirely different kind of shock, once they realized the sword had moved on its own to protect me. It took a full five minutes before anyone could speak.
My mother rushed to me, checking every inch of me for injuries, panic written across her face.
News of the incident spread through the kingdom like wildfire—reaching the castle before the king himself did. The king, the queen, and the guildmaster of the adventurers' guild came to our home that evening. "Our apologies," the King said, "for the foolish carelessness of our adventurer." Then the Queen spoke. "Bring the sword here," she said. "Let Arjun touch it again."
My mother objected—as if she already suspected what would happen.
But the queen gave the order regardless, and I was made to touch the sword. I was only a child; I understood none of it. All I knew was that everyone wanted me to touch it, and my mother did not want me to.
I touched it anyway.
A bright light surrounded me—I was somewhere else entirely, a space filled with color and light—and then I collapsed from mana exhaustion.
The sword transformed into a ring and settled onto my hand.
Everyone stood in shock. My mother and father wore the same expression: *I don't want this. Not again.*
The king and queen declared that I was the legendary hero spoken of in myth. The king, the queen, the guild master, my mother, and my father all confirmed it together:
*I am the legendary hero who is going to save this world.*
By the time the king finally sat down that night, the trial he'd walked that morning, the sword he'd been sent to identify, and the child he'd never met before sundown had all become the same story. He wouldn't understand how closely they were tied together—not for a long time yet.