The world clawed its way back into Kain's awareness one torturous fragment at a time.
His first feeling was the sound, a series of awful cracks and pops running through his body
It began in his legs, a grinding ache that made him flinch, bones shifting and fusing with sharp snaps that stole his breath.
His ribs expanded next.
Pain hit him hard, then slowly faded into a strange warmth that spread through his body.
It felt soothing, but also frightening.
He lay half-buried in soft mud and small stones, a shallow stream washing over him and soaking his torn robes, which clung to him uncomfortably.
This wasn't the fast, dangerous river he expected to land in—it was a wide, marshy floodplain with only a thin layer of water.
His head pounded with every heartbeat, but even that pain faded as the warmth sped up his healing.
"What exactly am I supposed to do from here on?"
Kain groaned, pushing up on his arms, water streamed off him, dripping from his hair downward.
He tried to blink, but everywhere was still shrouded in darkness.
Gasping heaving. "Oh, I'm so screwed. Can some miracle just please happen?" he pleaded silently, waving a hand before his face.
"This has to be a nightmare," he whispered, his voice still alien.
What he wanted, more than anything, was clarity, to see, to understand, to claw back some control in this chaos.
What he feared was oblivion being trapped forever in helplessness, just another victim in this brutal world.
"Okay, calm down, Kain. You've read about this stuff. Hit by a bus? Check. Waking up in a fantasy world? Probably check. So the power up should appear any moment from now."
But seconds stretched into minutes and yet there was nothing.
He clutched his head, fingers knotting in wet hair, then he heaved a deep breath.
In his old life, he'd dreamed of escape—of adventure, power, now, that dream twisted into mockery.
"I wanted to be the hero, dammit. Slaying monsters, building something real. What is this?"
He flopped back into the mud with a splash, arms splayed out and a bitter look on his face.
"Seriously, if this is my big reincarnation moment, where's the cheat menu?"
The humor frayed as the reality sank in deeper. The blackness wasn't lifting, it was absolute.
His heart raced faster, questions piling up like storm clouds.
Why him?
Why this body?
And how was he supposed to survive?
He sat up again, probing his eyes gently with his fingers.
They felt intact, but sealed, as if the void itself had woven a veil over them. There wasn't pain, it was just… nothing.
Before he could spiral further, a new wave crashed over him, not water, but memories. They flooded in like a dam bursting in his mind.
Not his own fragmented recollections of rainy streets and dead-end jobs, but Vaelor's.
He gasped, clutching his temples as the onslaught hit.
Vaelor, the blind prince, was born under the double-cursed eclipse. It wasn't just a celestial event, it was a harbinger of doom, a rare alignment where the sun and moon darkened the sky twice in rapid succession, ripping open a gateway for ancient evils to seep through.
The double eclipse was deemed a resurgence of greater darkness, a cycle that echoed the world's original sin, inviting chaos back to feast on the land.
Vaelor's birth during one such event had marked him from the start, his eyes sealed by void energy, turning him into a living omen, a vessel for something malevolent that the dynasty feared would unravel their rule.
The memories deepened, painting a vivid tale of humiliation. In the grand halls of the Palace, Vaelor had been a constant target.
Nobles sneered at him during feasts, calling him "the shadow prince" or "void's fool," their voices dripping with false pity.
"Look at him fumble like a beggar," one lord had mocked, loud enough for the court to hear, as Vaelor knocked over a goblet and the wine spilled on the floor.
Servants, emboldened by the elite's disdain, joined in, tripping him in corridors, swapping his cane with a crooked stick, or whispering crude jokes as he passed.
Even the lowest of the low ridiculed him as well. "Hey, blind bat, catch!" they'd yell, tossing rotten fruit that smacked against his chest, their laughter echoing like hyenas.
Isolation had been his companion, siblings plotting behind his back, viewing him as a weakness to excise.
And the end… a blade came across his throat, warm blood choking his final breaths as murmurs of "for the greater good" faded away.
Kain reeled, the weight of it all pressing down on him. But the memories didn't stop at Vaelor's personal hell, they expanded, unfolding the grim state of Ecliptica itself.
This world was a blood-soaked ruin, a place where treachery was the currency and mercy a fool's delusion. People exploited each other at every turn, nobles hoarding resources while peasants starved in storm-ravaged fields, slave traffickers herding the weak into chains for labor in aether mines.
Wars festered all over, factions clashing over tainted power sources, poisoning rivals, or burning villages to ash.
It was a land of every imaginable horror, Nexus grounds harboring nexusborn were all over the place.
No corner was safe, even the air carried the rot of despair.
Through Vaelor's recollections, Kain pieced together the world's ancient origins, not as dry history but as bitter lessons drilled into the prince during lonely tutor sessions.
Ecliptica had formed eons ago, when the land gave birth to primordial aether.
These aether-connected sacred sites, birthing a golden age where the Aetheric Order, a society of sages and warriors, wielded the energy in harmony, fostering energy that healed lands and raised civilizations.
But the Fall changed everything, when a rogue Order member drunk on ambition tried to summon a god to the world.
The event, forever called the First Cursed Eclipse, corrupted the world's core spawning void-touched horrors, cursing bloodlines like Vaelor's with blindness as a mark of possession, and dooming Ecliptica to cycles of resurgence where evil bubbled up anew.
Kain slumped, overwhelmed by everything he saw. "This isn't a fantasy adventure," he murmured, voice trembling.
"It's a nightmare!"
He had just begun to process the deluge, sorting Vaelor's pain from his own confusion, when a distant rumble shattered the quiet.
It started as a low vibration underfoot, growing into a deafening roar. Heavy splashes through water, the beat of massive wings, snarls, and the shouts of rough voices barking orders.
Armies on the march, charging through the floodplain.
The ground trembled as beasts approached, Komodo dragons, enormous and armored, their scales shining and riders perched high with spears glinting.
Above, wyverns sliced the air with leathery flaps, hisses punctuating their dives, while griffins bounded with eagle-like screeches.
Hundreds of them, a horde of scaled, feathered, and fanged mounts carrying warriors in spiked gear, weapons rattling like a deadly orchestra.
Kain's pulse spiked.
He scrambled up and darted aside with surprising grace. His steps were steady as if blindness had been his lifelong companion.
He weaved between rocks and puddles, while his heart was pounding.
The aerial riders on wyverns and griffins barely looked at him, their beasts hurtling past in a whirlwind of spray and roars, intent on whatever conflict lay ahead.
But the ground troops on the Komodo dragons lingered just long enough, their laughter cutting through the din like knives.
"Oi, look at this fool! Does he think he is royalty, parading about in those tattered rags?" one rider jeered, voice booming over the hiss of his mount.
Another chuckled, drawing a bow with a deliberate creak. "Out of the way, you piece of shit!"
The arrow whistled, grazing Kain's shoulder with a deliberate nick, drawing a thin bead of blood.
Kain cried out, stumbling into the mud with a wet thud.
"Hahaha!!!!!"
The riders erupted in wild, unrestrained laughter, their Komodo dragons rumbling in echo as they thundered onward, voices fading into the distance like a cruel echo.
He lay there, breath ragged, the shallow cut stinging like fire. His life had flashed before him in that split second, the sound of the arrow, the casual dismissal of his existence.
Horror gripped him, it was cold and unrelenting.
Was this really what this world was about? Lives so worthless they were playthings, discarded without a thought?
He pressed a trembling hand to his wound, feeling the warm slickness of blood against his fingertips. For a long moment, he couldn't move.
Not from fear but from understanding.
That arrow hadn't been meant to kill.
It had been meant to remind him of how pathetic his life was.
Life wasn't sacred here, it was entertainment.
Kain pushed himself upright slowly, mud clinging to his robes. His fingers curled into fists.
"I'm so screwed!"
The laughter still echoed in his mind, blending with Vaelor's memories of jeers and spilled wine, of rotten fruit and cruel whispers.
The two humiliations his and Vaelor's merged.