Chapter 1: The Weight of a Single Drop
The rain in the port city of Aethelgard didn't wash away the filth; it only made it sink deeper into the cobblestones.
Arian wiped a mixture of sweat, mud, and freezing rainwater from his brow, his breath pluming in the frigid night air. His muscles screamed in protest, fibers tearing and knitting back together in a cruel cycle of exhaustion. He was hauling a massive ironwood crate—weighing nearly two hundred pounds—up the slippery wooden ramps of the merchant docks.
In a world where magic dictated a man's worth, Arian was a statistical anomaly. He was Rank 0. An Unawakened Mortal. Not even an Initiate. While children at the age of seven usually showed signs of Aura Condensation (Rank 1), Arian's mana veins were completely dormant, as still and silent as a frozen lake.
"Keep moving, trash!" a harsh voice cracked like a whip through the pouring rain.
Arian didn't flinch. He just tightened his bleeding grip on the ropes of the crate and forced his left foot forward. One step. His right foot followed. Another step. This was his slice of life. There were no glorious battles here, no epic spells lighting up the sky. There was only the bitter taste of copper in his mouth and the agonizing reality of hard labor.
The overseer, a Rank 2 Mana Foundation (Profound stage) brute named Vorek, stepped onto the ramp. Vorek didn't need a raincoat. A faint, glowing red barrier of fire mana hovered an inch above his skin, instantly vaporizing the raindrops with a soft hiss. To Vorek, Arian wasn't a human; he was a beast of burden that happened to walk on two legs.
"If that shipment of Abyssal Kelp is ruined by the rain, I'll peel your skin off and use it as a sail," Vorek sneered, casually kicking a passing stray dog into the murky ocean below. The dog didn't even have time to yelp before the dark, churning water swallowed it.
Arian's gray eyes flickered toward the dark water, a strange, hollow calmness washing over him. He felt the coldness of the world, the sheer brutality of it. The strong devoured the weak. It was a rule as natural as gravity. Yet, looking at the turbulent, black waves crashing against the wooden pillars of the dock, Arian didn't feel fear. He felt a bizarre sense of kinship. Water was formless. It was kicked, displaced, boiled, and frozen. But given enough time, water could carve through the hardest mountains.
Patience, Arian told himself, adjusting the crushing weight on his bruised back. Water never rushes unless it needs to.
He finally reached the warehouse doors, dropping the heavy ironwood crate with a dull thud. His hands were shaking uncontrollably, the skin torn raw. He stood in the shadows of the massive stone building, watching the Awakened harbor guards laugh and conjure small sparks of light to light their pipes.
They were so far above him. Even a Rank 1 Aura Condensation (Initiate stage) guard could crush a boulder with their bare hands. Arian was seventeen. By all societal metrics, his potential was zero. His future was sealed as a dock rat destined to die of exhaustion or sickness before his thirtieth birthday.
But as Arian stood in the freezing rain, closing his eyes, he focused on a deeply hidden sensation. No one knew this, not even the overseers who beat him. Deep within his chest, where a mana core should have been, there was an absolute, terrifying emptiness. But at the very bottom of that empty abyss, there was a single, microscopic droplet of azure energy.
It wasn't mana. It was something older, denser, and infinitely heavier. It didn't grant him super strength or the ability to conjure spells. It just sat there, heavy as a star, forcing his mortal body to endure the unimaginable pressure of its existence. It was the reason he hadn't died from the grueling labor.
He didn't know what it was yet. He didn't know that this single drop was the primordial essence of the deep—the foundation of a path that would eventually drown the gods themselves.
Arian opened his eyes, the gray irises catching a brief, imperceptible glint of blue. He turned away from the warmth of the warehouse, pulling his ragged cloak tighter around his shivering frame, and walked back out into the freezing storm to carry the next crate.
He was at the bottom of the world. But the ocean is always deepest at the bottom.