Seventeen years had drifted by since that fateful night, and Ryn had grown into a young man under the care of a simple farming family in the village of Nirval. To the villagers, he was merely a quiet lad, helping his father plow the stubborn soil and gathering firewood from the mountain's edge. But beneath that calm exterior lay a world of noise that only he could hear.
Since his childhood, Ryn knew he was different. He saw shadows flitting in the corners of his vision and heard whispers emanating from the tree branches, as if the forest were speaking to him in an ancient, forgotten tongue. Worst of all was the mark on his shoulder—a tattoo invisible to everyone else, which pulsed with a searing, white-hot pain whenever he drew near the Pillars of Light that guarded the heavens. It felt as though his very blood were boiling, as if a beast were clawing to escape from beneath his skin.
On the eve of his seventeenth birthday, the air grew unnaturally heavy. Ryn lay on his wooden cot, but sleep remained a distant stranger. Suddenly, a thread of pale blue light seeped through his window—a glow that didn't belong to the stars, but seemed like a living, breathing entity. The light beckoned toward the "Forbidden Forest," a place shrouded in legends of wandering spirits and invincible monsters.
"Ryn... return to us..." the wind whispered his name.
Driven by an impulse he had never felt before, Ryn left his home and followed the light. The Forbidden Forest swallowed his footsteps, and the tangled trees looked like giant fingers reaching out to seize him. With every step deeper into the dark, the mark on his shoulder throbbed with increasing violence, until he reached a clearing in the heart of the woods that no human foot had touched for centuries.
There, within a circle of ancient stones etched with cryptic symbols, hovered the Black Mirror. It was a mass of liquid darkness, reflecting a future Ryn dared not witness. He reached out a trembling hand toward its cold, obsidian surface, and the moment he touched it, the world around him exploded. He saw the Pillars of Light shattering like glass, saw flames consuming Arthalon, and saw himself standing atop the ruins of the world—his eyes overflowing with a terrifying black flame.