The cliffs of Ecliptica rose like the fangs of a dead leviathan, their edges worn smooth by centuries of storms that ravaged the land.
Prince Vaelor's body lay sprawled across a narrow ledge, his robes, once a symbol of royal grandeur, were now shredded rags, soaked through with blood that pooled beneath him, seeping into the cracks of the stone.
His blind eyes stared blankly at the storm-heavy sky, as if they held the weight of a prophecy too dark to speak.
Born under the cursed double eclipse, Vaelor had been marked from his first breath as a vessel for something ancient and malevolent, a curse the Dynasty whispered about in dread.
The dynasty kept him alive out of obligation, a blind prince navigating palace halls by touch.
But tonight, a dagger had ended that obligation.
"Why…?"
Those had been Vaelor's final words.
He had suffered, and been ridiculed his whole life, how could this be his ending?
Three guards stood back, their rusted armor clanking softly as they caught their breath.
Gavrik, the lead guard, was a grizzled brute.
He wiped a meaty hand across his brow, smearing sweat, and spat a thick glob of mucus that landed close to Vaelor's limp fingers. "That's the end of our royal burden," he growled, kicking a loose stone that vanished into the abyss below.
Joren, the youngest of the trio, barely past his teens, shifted uneasily, his hands fidgeting on the hilt of a sword still shiny from lack of use.
His wide eyes darted to the body, then to the darkening sky.
"You think it's true, Gavrik? About the eclipse?" His voice trembled slightly. "They say those born under it draw the gods like moths to a flame. What if his death angers them?"
Gavrik let out a harsh, barking laugh that echoed off the cliffs. "Gods? Can you be serious right now? And even if his death angers them, it has nothing to do with us."
"We weren't the ones who killed him, It's the high lords who will experience their wrath." He added.
Gavrik turned to Torv, the third guard, a hulking figure with a scar slicing through his left cheek, and grinned wickedly.
"What do you say, Torv? Shall we give the vultures a royal feast, or send him tumbling for one last laugh?"
Torv smirked.
"Sure, let's send him off proper!"
With a coordinated heave, they pushed Vaelor's body to the very brink.
"This is okay too," One of them said.
They straightened and then turned away.
As the last rays of sunlight bled away, the cliffs plunged into darkness.
Vultures circled overhead, their wings flapping through the dusk.
One landed on the ledge, its talons scraping the stone with a grating screech, its head cocked as it gazed at the prize ahead.
Elsewhere, in a world far from Ecliptica's cosmic desolation, another man was dying.
Kain's life ended in a brutal, chaotic instant.
He was crossing a rain-slicked street in his small, gray city, headphones blaring a forgotten tune, "Take me home," a song he'd hummed absentmindedly to drown out the hum of traffic when a bus came out of the night.
The tires screeched, a high-pitched wail but it was too late.
The impact hurled him like a ragdoll, bones snapping with sickening cracks that reverberated in his fading mind.
Pain exploded through his chest, his legs buckling under the force, his head slamming against the pavement with a dull thud then darkness swallowed it all.
The driver's horrified face, pale and wide-eyed, mouth agape in a silent scream, was the last thing he saw before his vision faded, his body ignored by passersby who hurried past with umbrellas and averted gazes.
Kain was no one special just a twenty-something stuck in a dead-end job at a call center, dreaming of escape to a life of adventure but never finding the courage to chase it, his sketchbook of fantasy worlds now soaked and forgotten beside him.
Now, he was gone.
But death was not the end.
It was a threshold, a doorway to something vast and unknown.
A jolt of raw, electric energy surged through him, like lightning snapping Kain back to awareness.
His body, Vaelor's body twitched violently, wounds stitching themselves shut with a searing pain that made him grit his teeth until his jaw ached.
But his eyes saw nothing, only an endless black void that pressed against his head.
"My eyes!!"
Panic came as he realized he was blind, his hands scrabbling over the rough stone of the cliff's edge with desperation while his fingers trembled.
"What… what's happening to me?" Kain said, his voice strange in this new form, it was higher, sharper, laced with an accent he didn't recognize.
His hands explored frantically, feeling the tattered silk of Vaelor's robes.
Memories flickered, a chaotic collage clashing in his mind, rain-soaked streets, the bus's blinding lights, the pain of impact mingling with fleeting, fragmented images of marble halls echoing with a woman's scream, a throne room, the cold glint of a blade slicing through flesh.
Vaelor's life bled into his own, a confusing tale he couldn't unravel, each memory pulling him deeper into terror and confusion.
Who was he now? Kain, or Vaelor, the blind prince murdered in cold blood?
A sudden warmth ignited across his chest, a tingling pulse that spread through his limbs, a swirling glyph etched into his skin, a mark he couldn't see but felt with every fiber of his being.
The sensation was alien, invasive, yet it carried a strange vitality, as if the cursed eclipse that had bound Vaelor now stirred within him.
Kain froze, heart pounding, his breath catching as he pressed a trembling hand to his chest, feeling the glyph beneath his tattered robes.
What was this? He questioned.
The questions spiraled, unanswered, his mind reeling with the weight of his new reality.
The warmth intensified, and injuries that he had suffered before began to mend themselves, bones grinding back into place painfully.
It was slow, torturously slow, nothing like the instant miracles he'd read about in those fantasy novels back home, no flash of light, no benevolent healer's touch, just this raw, primal reconstruction that left him sweating and trembling on the cold stone.
Every breath sent spikes of pain through his chest, rib, and every part of his body and yet he didn't die.
He couldn't die.
The realization hit him like a second impact, a mix of awe and terror.
He pushed himself up, hands scraping the rock, disoriented and lost in this darkness.
The cliff's edge shifted beneath him, loose stones crumbling away into the abyss.
"No, no, no!"
Kain clawed, hands stretched forward, his legs trembled, weak from the healing process, and his mind screamed with the instinct to survive, even as his body betrayed him.
But it was no use.
The edge gave way with a crack, and Kain plummeted.
The fall felt eternal, his stomach churned as the distant roar of the river grew louder, a primal growl from the depths.
He couldn't see the ground rushing up, but he felt its pull, the inevitable crash that would end this nightmare or begin a new one.
His mind raced, flashes of his old life, the rain-soaked street, the bus, the pain mixed with the terror of this new world.
Who was Vaelor? Why was he here? And what was on his chest.