Reader's Guide — No Major Spoilers)
The World as It Is Now
Year 699 of the Eclipsed Calendar.
Seven hundred years ago, the real sun was devoured.
What devoured it remains classified even within the highest rings, but every child knows the silhouette burned into every history chip:
twelve wings folding around a sphere of fire until the fire went out.
Humanity did not die—at least, not immediately.
Long before the Eclipse, the ancient god-race known as the Architects (now extinct) left behind seven orbital rings encircling the planet like metallic halos.
Each ring, the size of a small country, carries an artificial sun on its inner surface.
These seven false suns are all that keep eternal night from swallowing the world.
The surface is now divided into three layers:
The Sky-Rings (1st to 7th)
Clean air. Real gravity. Cities of glass and steel.
Population: less than 0.8% of surviving humanity.
Ruled by the Seven Stellar Lords—humans who fused with ring fragments and became something close to gods.
The Mid-Strata
Half-collapsed megacities clinging to the support pillars of the rings.
Perpetual twilight, barely breathable air.
Most of humanity lives here, paying water and air taxes to the heavens above.
The Fallen Sectors (Surface Level)
Eternal red dusk. Poisoned clouds.
Hollow Saints wandering like walking catastrophes.
Here, even hope is contraband.
2. The Stigma System — How Power Works
Every human born after the Eclipse bears a Stigma: a black mark somewhere on the body.
It is not ink.
It is not birthright.
It is a wound in reality, shaped after a dream the Devourer is having.
Basic rules every surface child learns before they can walk:
The Stigma is your talent.
A swordsman's mark may resemble a broken blade on his palm; a healer's might appear as a closed eye on her throat.
The more you use your Stigma, the more it spreads.
Spread too far → you hear the wings → you stop being human → you become a Hollow Saint, the tentacled abominations roaming the fallen zones.
Killing someone and taking their Stigma Core lets you steal their talent.
This is why gangs harvest fresh corpses before they cool.
There is a theoretical upper limit: twelve "wings" of progression.
No living human has ever reached more than six.
Records of anyone reaching the seventh or above were erased by the rings centuries ago.
3. Known Surface-Level Factions
Iron Teeth Gang (recently dissolved)
Former rulers of Sectors 11–12. Specialized in live Stigma harvesting.
Cleaners
Ring-sanctioned death squads. Their mandate: burn anything showing signs of seventh-wing resonance or higher.
The Last Church
An underground sect claiming the Devourer is not evil, only sleeping—
and that one day someone will complete the Eclipse and bring merciful darkness to all.
Scavengers
Everyone else.
No flag. No future.
Just the daily gamble of not being eaten.
4. Current Anomalies Under Ring Surveillance
Unidentified authority signature detected in Sector-12 (new).
Sudden cessation of chronic Stigma-bleed events within the same zone.
Repeated 0.1–0.7% dimming of the sixth artificial sun with no mechanical explanation.
Children folding red paper flowers for reasons unknown.
5. Important Terms
Hollow Saint — A human fully consumed by their Stigma.
Rust Puppies — Child slaves used as bait or living blood bags.
Wing Resonance — The sound only Stigma-bearers hear when someone nearby ascends toward the theoretical twelve wings.
The Final Bite — Prophecy that the Devourer will one day fully awaken and finish what it began.
Estimated time remaining: roughly three years.
That is all information cleared for surface-level distribution.
Read the main story at your own risk.
The rings are always watching.
The darkness is always listening.
And somewhere in Sector-12,
something has just unfolded its first wing.