Morning sunlight pooled lazily across the crooked roofs of Brindlebrook, the humble town where Elion had perfected the art of wasting potential. He was halfway through another aimless stroll when a shadow—long, deliberate, impossibly steady—cut across his path.
"Elion."
The voice carried a gravity that didn't belong in such a small, sleepy corner of the world.
He turned. Morvian stood at the edge of the dirt road like a storm wrapped in human shape, staff anchored against the earth, eyes seeing far more than Elion wished anyone could.
"Oh… you're the old guy from the stories," Elion said, scratching the back of his neck. "Should I bow or something?"
Morvian's jaw worked once—irritation or restraint, hard to tell.
"I did not cross half of Eldraxis in search of courtesy. I came for you."
"For… me?" Elion blinked. "That sounds like bad news."
Morvian ignored that. "You are the chosen heir to the Aethral Line, the only one capable of restoring the seal before our world unravels entirely."
Elion laughed—an awkward, brittle sound.
"Sir, I don't even believe magic is real. I can't fix a fence without injuring myself. A chosen hero? Wrong guy."
The mage exhaled slowly, and the air warmed as if reacting to his irritation. "Doubt does not negate destiny. Where is your family blade?"
Elion froze. The memory hit him like the tail end of a nightmare: soft fingers on his collar, lips brushing his throat, the warm tangle of bodies in that dim room… and then the cold, humiliating realization that he had been robbed. The blade—his father's last relic—gone.
His chest tightened.
"I… I don't have it," he whispered.
Morvian's eyes sharpened to a dangerous glint. "Explain."
Elion swallowed, cheeks heating in shame. "I met someone. Last night. She… uh… stayed over."
He could still feel her hands on his skin, the whisper of her breath against his ear—too sweet, too deliberate to have been genuine. The ghost of that intimacy made his stomach twist.
"She took it. The blade. And I didn't notice until this morning."
Morvian's frustration snapped like a whip across the air.
"You lost the Aethral Blade to a bed-thief?! Do you understand what you've done? That blade was the lock—your bloodline the key!"
Elion flinched but muttered, "It was just a rusty old family keepsake. Didn't think it mattered."
Morvian paced once, fingers tightening on his staff. "Everything matters. Every omen, every relic. And you—" He faced Elion, voice trembling with controlled fury. "—you treat fate like a tavern joke."
"Maybe because it sounds like one," Elion shot back, anger flickering beneath his embarrassment. "You're talking about seals and demons as if they're real."
Morvian's expression darkened. "They are real."
As if summoned by the very words, the sky above Eldraxis trembled—an ugly shiver, like the world exhaling sickness. Far beyond Brindlebrook, the ancient seal cracked again.
And from the widening breach crawled shapes—smeared silhouettes, bodies bending wrong, movements twitching like broken marionettes. Their whispering carried on the wind, a sound like teeth dragged across bone.
Morvian closed his eyes. "More have escaped."
Elion watched the horizon in uneasy silence. For the first time, he felt something that didn't belong in a normal day. Something that scraped against instinct and whispered run.
Morvian pointed toward the road.
"We leave. Now. You will come with me to Aelthameir and stand before the king. And if you wish to survive what is coming, you will learn quickly."
Elion hesitated. "And if I refuse?"
The mage met his gaze with the exhaustion of someone who had already seen the ending.
"You won't live long enough to."
Elion couldn't hesitate, he knew that the old man some how right. He had felt it; the seal cracking and if truly the seal was deteriorating or whatever the old man said, he would be far safer with someone who knows something than waiting in a village where the misfortune might hit any moment.
So he no longer resist, for fear has stolen his strength for arguments.
And so Elion followed him—bewildered, reluctantly, heart still bruised from the betrayal he refused to dwell on. Each step took him farther from the life he understood… and closer to a fate he did not want.
But the seal was not cracking.
It was starving.
And the world looked like food.