The sky was the wrong color.
Elias, the shepherd of Thornwick Border Village, had gone out to graze his sheep in the early morning hours. He had been doing this for years — the same slope of the same hill, at the same time, every single day. The sheep always grazed the same spots, the wind always blew from the same direction, the sun always hit at the same angle. Elias liked this routine. Routine meant being safe.
But that day, the sun wasn't yellow.
It was midday, and the sky was turning a purplish red. Elias rubbed his eyes first. Then he looked at one of his sheep. The animal had stopped too, head raised, staring toward the hills. Sheep didn't do that. Never.
"What's going on?" he muttered, to no one in particular.
The sky answered him.
Reality cracked right in the middle of the clouds. There was no sound. Just the sight of it. Like an invisible nail had dragged across the skin of the heavens. From that crack, no color spilled out, no light. Only blackness. And from within that blackness, things began descending. At first they looked like dots. Then they took shape. Wings. Horns. Eyes made of fire.
Elias forgot about his sheep.
He couldn't have told you exactly what he was thinking. His legs just moved. Down the hill, toward the village, as fast as they could carry him. Behind him the sounds were wrong — not animal sounds, not human sounds. The ground vibrated under his feet, but the trembling wasn't coming from below. It was coming from above.
He didn't look back. He didn't have the courage to look back.
He just ran.
He never made it to the village.
A shadow fell over him from behind. It was warm. Elias felt that much, just for a fraction of a second — a warmth that pressed through his skin. And then everything ended.
That day, no one in Thornwick survived.
That was the first day of the Great Alliance War. Though nobody called it that yet. The name came later, much later, when people tried to piece together what had happened and make some sense of it. In the moment, there was no war. Because war requires both sides to know what they're doing.
The humans didn't know.
The demons did.
That's why the first ten years were so devastating. The kingdoms were full of defenses built against each other — fortresses protecting trade routes, fortified positions against neighboring states. But the Hell Gates were opening in the sky. Not from the north, not from the east. From directly above. No fortress was built for that.
And the demon armies weren't chaotic — that was the biggest shock of all. In the stories traveling merchants told, demons were wild creatures, uncontrollable, unpredictable. But what came was organized. They had commanders. They communicated with each other. And their numbers never seemed to thin.
King Aldric was the strongest man of his era. Four blessings, a lifetime spent in battle, a name spoken with respect even in rival kingdoms. When he stepped forward in the first great pitched battle, his army was watching from behind. Royal cavalry, academy graduates, seasoned commanders.
Demon Lord Malzahar killed Aldric before he got within three steps of him.
The army didn't shatter that day. It took a few days. But it shattered. Because something foundational had broken for people — the truth that even their strongest meant nothing against this. That truth hit everyone differently. Some ran. Some shut themselves away. Some kept fighting, wildly, without thinking.
Strategist Soren was one of the sharper minds left. Three blessings, one of the kingdom's most capable commanders. He drew up organized retreat plans, moved people to safe positions, built defensive lines. Then he was killed in an assassination. By a man who had worked beside him for ten years. The man wasn't human.
Demons could take human shape. When that came out, trust ceased to exist.
The destruction of the Mage Academy was a different kind of wound. Thousands of years of accumulated knowledge. Hundreds of students. Dozens of teachers. It closed inside a portal. Gone. When people lost the place where magic was taught, they understood how far back they had been pushed.
Borders shrank. Cities sealed themselves behind walls. Villages were abandoned. Every night new cracks opened in the sky.
But the demons couldn't enter the royal capitals. Protection spells — shields woven by priests over centuries, fed by blessings — were holding the capitals. So the demons hit the borders. Border villages. Border towns. The people who lived there.
The poor. The desperate. The forgotten.
In the Thornwick Border Region, the Valther family was trying to stay alive.
Cedric Valther used to be a cloth merchant. You didn't need to be brilliant to be a good merchant — Cedric knew that. You needed to be reliable. Keep your word. Deliver on time. He did all of that. He carried cotton from Thornwick to the capitals for years. Modest but steady income.
His wife Mara came from a carpenter's family. She had learned woodwork from her father, then opened her own shop. She made furniture, repaired things. Her hands were rough, her voice was clear. Neither of them wanted much from life. A home. An income. Children.
The war took everything.
Cedric's caravans were burned. His goods were plundered. The roads from Thornwick to the capitals fell under demon control, merchants couldn't pass. The family was pushed to the outer neighborhoods — not at the foot of the walls, but past that, near the dump. Cedric sold whatever he could find. Sometimes he hauled human corpses for pay. Sometimes he quietly moved weapons stolen from demon carcasses. Mara repaired neighbors' broken things.
And they had children.
Their first was a girl. Elara. A beautiful, quiet baby. Mara loved her from the first look. But it was a war year, and there was no milk, no food, and no priest to call for healing. Elara died at six months. Starvation, cold, a simple illness — it could have been any of them. All of them, probably.
Cedric didn't cry that night. Neither did Mara. They both stared at nothing for a long time. Then Cedric got up and went to work.
When their second child was born, the family was as prepared as they could be. Mara cut back on her own food to produce milk. Cedric worked harder, took worse jobs. Long, difficult months.
But the child lived.
Aurelion. Cedric chose the name. It had an old meaning that most people didn't know anymore. Cedric had heard it years ago on a trade route and it stayed with him. It sounded strong. Maybe that's why he picked it.
The baby was a strange one. Other babies cried constantly. Aurelion would sometimes lie still for hours. His eyes would track things — his mother's hand, the light in the room, the sound from the door. At three months he focused completely on Mara's face. She didn't know what it meant, but something shifted in her chest.
At six months he sat up without crawling.
At one year old he said his first word: "Light."
Mara remembered that night. The baby was lying in his crib and candlelight was slipping through the window. Aurelion looked at that light. "Light," he said, clearly, calmly. Like he was trying to describe it. Mara let out a slow breath. She couldn't look at Cedric.
"This child is different," she said.
Cedric said nothing. But he knew.
At five, Aurelion loved running. By six, he loved it less. At five, running was just fun. By six, he had started thinking about what he was running toward.
The children in Thornwick played with him, and when teams were picked, most of them wanted to be on his side. Not because of strength or speed. Aurelion saw what was happening around him. In climbing games, while others searched for the fastest route, Aurelion found the safest one. "That branch won't hold," he'd say, or "Go around there, that part's slippery." He was right. Always.
"How do you know?" asked Kern, his closest playmate, wide-eyed.
Aurelion thought about it. Really thought, as if he'd never asked himself that before. "I see it when I look," he said finally.
"We look too."
"I guess I look differently."
The first time Cedric taught him to hold an axe, it wasn't a toy — it was a carpenter's axe, heavy and real. "Careful," Cedric said. "It's heavy." But when Aurelion took it, his hands adjusted to the weight immediately. He didn't shift his grip, didn't struggle to find the balance. He just held it like he already knew.
"Who taught you that?" Cedric asked.
Aurelion shrugged. "My hands just wanted to."
Cedric looked over at Mara. She was already looking back.
At seven years old, Aurelion was walking through the village dump when he saw something. He bent down, examined it, then picked it up and carried it home.
It was an Imp. Small, winged, beginning to rot.
"What are you doing?!" Cedric shouted the moment he walked through the door. His voice came out louder than he meant. He was scared, honestly. A child touching a demon — nobody would take that well.
"Looking," said Aurelion, calmly. He'd set it on the table and was leaning over it. "At how it died."
"It doesn't matter how it died."
"It does." He pointed to a spot. "Look. That mark on the neck. That's not a knife wound. Too thin. An arrow. But the archer shot from very close. So the demon was hit while it was in the air. The wings are intact, the claws too. So it was shot before it landed. Shot while it was descending. Why was it descending? Why did it come down?"
Cedric had no answer.
"Fear," said Aurelion. "Or surprise. Something surprised it."
Cedric stood there frozen, staring at his son. Seven years old, analyzing a dead demon. While everyone else had been too afraid to go near it, this child had dragged it home to study it.
That evening, Mara whispered to Cedric: "When he turns eight, you know what happens."
Cedric knew. The Awakening Ceremony. The day blessings revealed themselves.
"I know," he said.
He was lying. Or maybe not lying — maybe just not saying what he actually thought. Because what he thought was too large to say out loud.
The Awakening Ceremony in the Thornwick Border Region was nothing like the capital cities. In the capitals, there were celebrations, families wearing their best clothes. Here, it was an old Awakening Stone in the middle of a stone cemetery, a tired priest who came through every three months, and a handful of children.
That morning, twelve children were waiting. Aurelion stood at the end of the line. Black hair, thin face, very still. The others were talking, asking questions, getting excited. Aurelion was waiting.
Cedric and Mara stood outside the line. In the border regions, the poor didn't stand close to ceremonies — it wasn't a written rule, but everyone understood it. Mara was squeezing her hands together. Cedric was just standing.
Priest Brennus was an old man. He had begun his service with a grand ceremony in better days. Now he was the kind of priest who traveled to the smallest villages to read children's blessings. He didn't complain about it. The war had taken things from everyone.
"Tom," he called. "Place your hand on the stone."
Tom placed it. The stone glowed faintly. A symbol appeared on his chest, unclear.
"One blessing. Endurance. The Earth God's gift."
The family nodded. Normal. Ordinary. Tom could become a soldier, could survive. But he wasn't special.
The line moved forward.
A girl received two blessings. Her family cried out with joy. One child received a curse — Dark Attraction, meaning demons would find him more easily. His mother sat down where she stood and wept.
Then it was Aurelion's turn.
Brennus remembered this child. The one who had examined the demon tracks. There was something particular about his expression — not childlike excitement, not fear. Just waiting. Like he already knew the outcome.
"Name?"
"Aurelion Valther."
"Place your hand on the stone."
Aurelion placed his hand.
For the first few seconds, nothing happened. Brennus frowned. Sometimes the stone responded slowly, rarely. But then the stone trembled. Not just trembled — it cracked. Fissures ran through thousands of years of granite. Brennus jumped back.
And the light exploded.
The first symbol appeared on Aurelion's forehead. Gold. A battle axe.
"One..."
The second. On his chest. Shield and sword.
"Two..."
The third. On his shoulders. A wind spiral.
Brennus's hands were shaking. Three blessings hadn't been seen in the border region in fifty years. This alone was extraordinary.
But the light didn't stop.
The fourth. On his back. An eye symbol.
The fifth. On his hands. Flame.
The crowd went completely silent. Five blessings. This meant history. This child could rise to the very top of a kingdom. Could become a general. Could become a king.
But the stone was still glowing.
The sixth. On his wrist. An infinity knot.
Brennus fell to his knees. His legs just gave out. "Six... God protect us... six..."
Then the seventh light came. And this one was different. Not gold like the others. White. Pure, dense, painful to look at. It wrapped around Aurelion's entire body. And the stone —
The Awakening Stone shattered.
Granite fragments scattered everywhere. Brennus threw his arm over his face. Children screamed and scattered. One fell, another ran.
Aurelion was standing. Inside the light, eyes closed, standing.
The light faded.
Seven symbols were on his body. Each in a different place. Each from a different god. And every one of them was glowing.
Bleeding from where granite had cut his arm, Brennus noticed something in the wreckage of the stone. On one of the last pieces, very faint, very faded — a mark. As if an eighth symbol had tried to form. Had almost made it. But the stone hadn't been able to hold.
Brennus stared at it. For a long moment.
Then he got up and said nothing about it. The weight of this moment was already enough. The rest could wait.
Cedric and Mara ran in from outside the line, breaking the separation rule. Nobody had the nerve to stop them.
Mara grabbed her son. Held him tight. Like she didn't want to let go.
"You're alright," she said. Not a question.
"I'm alright." Aurelion hugged her back. But he lifted his head and looked at the wreckage of the stone. His expression was thoughtful.
Cedric was beside them, his voice unsteady. "What did you feel?"
Aurelion thought about it for a moment. "Full," he said. "All at once, I was full. Then there was a crashing sound and it was over." He paused. "But something feels missing."
"Missing?"
"I don't know." He looked up at his father. "I don't know, Dad. It just feels that way."
Brennus's report reached the capital in three days. The mounted courier rode through demon attacks to get there. When he arrived, he could barely stay in the saddle.
King Vareth III was a young man, and the weight of the war had made him look older than he was. When he received the news, he dropped his wine cup. Not set it down — dropped it. It fell on the table, didn't break, but rolled.
"A lie," he said. "Impossible."
Brennus knelt. His injured arm was wrapped, his face was pale. "I saw it, Your Majesty. The stone shattered. Seven symbols."
"Stones don't shatter."
"This one did. The fragments are still there."
Vareth looked at his advisors. Seven men, experienced and sharp, each powerful in their own field. They were all looking at each other.
Wizard Lord Malthus spoke. Four blessings, the man holding together what remained of the academy. His voice was flat, emotionless. "We should kill the child."
Silence.
"Seven blessings is instability," he continued. "The gods may be using this child. A tool. A puppet. Maybe a demon trap. Maybe—"
"Maybe he's our hope."
The voice came from the woman in the corner. Strategist Caelia. Early forties, cold-faced, calculating. But her calculations usually turned out to be right.
"We've been losing for thirty years," she said. "Every year we pull back a little more. If this is real, if seven blessings is real—" She looked at Vareth. "You'd have to be out of your mind to kill this child."
Malthus objected. Caelia pushed back. The king listened to both.
Finally he raised his hand.
"Bring him. Protect him. Watch him. If he seems dangerous—" He didn't finish the sentence.
That night, royal guards rode toward Thornwick.
But Aurelion wasn't there.
Mara had received word earlier. How, from whom? In the border regions, everything traveled by ear — a courier had heard, told a merchant, the merchant told his man. By the time the guards were on the road, the Valther family had already left Thornwick behind.
They went east. Toward the demon lines.
Cedric questioned it. "Into demon territory? Are you serious?"
"Are you more afraid of the guards or the demons?" Mara asked.
Cedric didn't answer.
Aurelion held both his parents' hands. It was night. They had packed light — only what was necessary. Food. Water. A few valuables. Mara carried one more bundle. Cedric didn't ask what was in it. He probably didn't want to know.
They walked for three days.
On the fourth day, they saw the Imp.
Small, winged, fast. It came toward the family. Cedric stepped forward. Instinct. Fatherhood. But Aurelion pushed him aside. Surprising strength for an eight-year-old — he shoved Cedric sideways.
He was holding a farmer's axe he'd found along the road.
The Imp attacked. Aurelion stepped to the side. The axe rose. One strike.
The Imp fell.
Silence. The sound of wind through trees. Cedric on the ground, catching his breath. Mara frozen.
Aurelion looked at where the demon had fallen. Then at the axe. Then at the Imp. His face held no fear. No triumph either. Just one thing.
Curiosity.
"That was very easy," he murmured.
Cedric got up. Came to his son. Put his hand on his shoulder. He wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. He just held on, firmly.
Aurelion looked at his father. "You're alright," he said. Not a question.
"I'm alright." Cedric cleared his throat. "You — you're alright, aren't you?"
"I'm alright." Aurelion looked around them. "Should we keep going?"
That night the family survived. But something had changed inside Aurelion. He had noticed it — what he had seen. Before the Imp attacked, he had known where the attack was coming from. Not with his eyes. Somewhere deeper, somewhere more inside. As if the fight had slowed down in his mind.
It was the first awakening of Battle Intuition. But he didn't know that. He only knew something was different.
The next four years are hard to describe, because during this time Aurelion was nowhere officially. The royal records had no trace of him. The kingdom was searching. The demons, once word reached them, were searching too.
He was living on the border.
There were people there — those who had fled, those who were hiding, those who would do whatever it took to survive. Most of them had one blessing or none. They were considered weak. But they were alive. Aurelion moved in among them.
At twelve, he killed his first Demon Knight. He was alone. He had a broken spear.
By now the ability to slow a fight in his mind was something he could use deliberately. Every move the Knight made was visible to him a step ahead. Titan Body absorbed the blows. Absolute Weapon Mastery guided the spear correctly. And Holy Energy — that white glow — lit up the tip of the spear.
The Knight died.
Aurelion didn't rename himself that day. The border people already called him "the Silent Child" — he didn't talk, he just acted. He accepted the name. For a while.
At sixteen he was found. But this time he didn't run.
There was no army in front of him. Just one person. Middle-aged, cold-faced, royal uniform. Strategist Caelia.
"You know who I am," said Aurelion.
"Yes."
"I know you too. You were the one who argued against killing me when the royal advisors were deciding."
Caelia raised an eyebrow. "How do you know that?"
"I heard. Information travels on the border." Aurelion paused. "Why are you here?"
"To bring you to the king."
"No. Why are you here?"
Caelia looked at him for a moment. Then, for the first time, she spoke honestly. "Because I want to talk to you. The king gives orders. I give explanations. There's a difference."
Aurelion looked at her. Searched for a lie. Couldn't find one.
"Go on," he said.
Caelia explained. Defense lines were collapsing. The great cities were holding but the smaller ones were falling one by one. There were armies, but no morale. And every passing year the demons came more organized.
"You're killing demons," she said. "But there's something before that. You're thinking. You're understanding why they behave the way they do. That's different."
"And?"
"I want to teach people that. If you'll be the bridge."
Aurelion turned. He looked back at the border people — ordinary, blessingless, exhausted people. He had fought beside them. He knew they had value.
"I'm taking the blessingless too," he said.
Caelia hesitated. "That's—"
"A non-negotiable condition," said Aurelion. "They may not have power. But they have minds. They have courage. We can't ignore them."
Caelia looked at him. Then she lowered her head. "Alright."
At twenty, Aurelion received his eighth blessing. He hadn't planned it — it just happened. Extended Life. The Time God's gift. One morning he woke up and felt his body had slowed. Not its strength, its aging. He calculated. About seventy percent slower. This gave him time.
At twenty-three came the most critical point of the Great Alliance War.
Demon Lord Malzahar — the same man who had killed King Aldric — was marching west. Capital Vareth, the target. If it fell, humanity couldn't hold what remained.
For the first time, the kingdoms truly united. Aurelion spent months traveling for this — he spoke with twelve kings, convinced every one of them. This was his seventh blessing in full use. Absolute Charisma didn't mean pretty words. It meant presence. When he spoke, people believed. Not just what he said. Him.
But when the army gathered, Malzahar was waiting.
"Seven blessings," he said. His voice was strangely level. "I carry seven too. But mine are curses."
Aurelion looked at him. The thing in front of him wasn't quite a man — enormous, black-armored, eyes like fire. "What's the difference?"
"Curses take power but demand payment. Yours were given to you, limited." Malzahar stepped closer. "We'll see."
The battle lasted three days.
Aurelion lost the first two. He had to accept that. Malzahar's dark magic worked differently — it partially disrupted his foresight, wore down Titan Body. On the morning of the third day when he got up, he had been on his knees.
Malzahar approached slowly. He wasn't in a hurry. "The gods have abandoned you."
Aurelion looked up at the sky. He asked something. Silently. To the gods. No words — just a question.
The answer came. But not as a sound. As light.
The ninth symbol settled into the eighth position. Magic Engineering Intuition. And in that moment Aurelion saw it — the pattern of Malzahar's magic, the movement of dark energy, and within that movement, a small gap. A mistake. An opening.
The broken sword in his hand went into that gap.
Malzahar's eyes widened. "That's impos—"
The sword entered his heart.
The Demon Lord fell. For the first time in history, a Demon Lord had been killed by a human.
His army scattered.
Malzahar's death turned the war. But it didn't end it. Demons were a system, not just an army. A system doesn't die when one commander falls.
Aurelion spent these seven years not on battlefields but building. Magic Engineering Intuition was a revolution in this sense — systematic use of mana stones, loading energy into weapons, dungeon control. This knowledge had existed before, scattered and poorly understood. Aurelion organized it, made it teachable.
The United Academies were founded in this period. Twelve kingdoms, one shared center of knowledge. Not war but knowledge would hold people together.
When he turned thirty — though he looked twenty, thanks to Extended Life — he felt something. The tenth blessing. Or it wasn't quite a blessing. It was a calling. Plutonya. The realm of the gods. The path to that nearly impossible place was opening.
But first there was the Tenth Gate.
This gate was the source of the demon invasion — the master passage behind all the individual portals that opened, deep inside the demon realm. If it closed, the demons couldn't come. Aurelion's technology had made this possible. Humans could open portals too now. A reverse invasion.
He was thirty-five, looked twenty, and crossed into the demon realm with ten thousand elite soldiers.
That battle is difficult to describe because the details aren't fully known. The demon realm was different — gravity worked strangely, mana density was toxic for humans, and the defenders were the Demon Prince's own guards, nearly unkillable.
Aurelion faced the Demon Prince alone. It lasted ten minutes.
No one saw exactly what happened. They only saw this: the Prince fled. And the Tenth Gate closed.
Aurelion disappeared.
His army searched. Days passed. Weeks. They found nothing.
Then an old priest — perhaps the grandson of Brennus's grandson — had a vision. Aurelion rising through light. Upward. Toward the gods. Toward Plutonya.
And after that day, Aurelion Valther was never seen again.
He didn't die. That much was certain. Because signs came, now and then, unclear ones. A candle suddenly lighting in a temple. An impossible position held in a battle with no explanation. Small things. But not nothing.
He lived for 170 years. Extended Life and Plutonya's influence together. Through that time the things he had built held.
The United Academies kept twelve kingdoms bound around knowledge. Not war — knowledge. Magic engineering opened a new era. Humans weren't only defending anymore, they were invading demon strongholds, entering dungeons.
Aurelion's symbol — that seven-pointed star — spread everywhere. Onto flags, temple walls, history books.
But the space at the center of the star was still being debated. That faint mark where an eighth symbol had tried to form and the stone had shattered before it could. Some said it was the place for an eighth blessing. Some said it was Plutonya's symbol. Some said nothing at all. They just looked.
And the world kept believing one thing:
A human is born with six blessings at most.
Seven blessings was a miracle. And that miracle was never repeated.
Eight hundred years passed.
In a small border town, three hundred kilometers from Thornwick, a child was born.
And that child had, from birth, six symbols on its body.
And at the center of those symbols —
The same empty space.
His name was Joel.
That name was, for now, just a whisper. A quiet expectation. The unease his mother felt when she looked at him.
Aurelion's story had ended. But his legacy was only now beginning.
Because the world had forgotten the seven-blessed. It had settled into believing "six at most." It had told itself "Aurelion was a miracle" and "it won't happen again."
But the gods — those silent, distant, mysterious gods — perhaps had other plans.
Perhaps that empty mark from eight hundred years ago was about to be completed.
Perhaps Joel would not be the New Champion of the Seven Seals but something else entirely.
And perhaps — just perhaps — Aurelion's real story was still continuing, somewhere in the mists of Plutonya.
END OF CHAPTER 0
Eight hundred years later, the world may be waiting for a new hero.