After explaining the world, I suppose it's only fair I explain myself.
My name is Rain.
Just Rain.
No family name. No lineage. No crest to trace back through dusty records or noble halls. When people hear it, they assume I chose it because it sounds gentle. Soft. Poetic. Something you'd name a child you wanted to protect.
They're wrong.
I chose the name Rain because I hate the rain.
Most of the time, rain isn't powerful. It isn't dramatic. It doesn't crash down like the stories claim. It's a weak, miserable drizzle that soaks you slowly, seeps into your clothes, chills you to the bone without ever giving you the dignity of intensity. It falls endlessly, quietly, without direction or conviction.
It never commits.
You don't fight rain like that. You just endure it—cold, uncomfortable, and helpless—until it decides to stop.
For a long time, that's what I was.
Someone forgettable.Something that existed without impact.
But once—only once—someone told me something different.
They said that sometimes, rarely, rain becomes something else entirely.
A storm.
Not the kind sung about in taverns or painted into heroic murals—but a real storm. The kind that drowns valleys, tears mountains open, and reshapes the land whether anyone wants it to or not. Thunder that cracks the sky. Wind that rips roofs free. Rain that doesn't ask permission to fall.
Unstoppable. Unignorable. Alive.
That's the Rain I want to be.
Not the drizzle people step through without looking.
But the storm no one sees coming until it's already overhead.
I don't have a last name because I don't know who my parents were.
I don't remember being born. I don't remember a face leaning over me, or a voice murmuring reassurances. When my eyes first opened to this world, I was staring up at a cracked wooden ceiling, swaddled in threadbare blankets inside a crib that creaked every time I moved.
The blankets smelled of herbs… and rot. Old attempts at cleanliness layered over something no one had the resources to fully wash away.
The orphanage sat deep in the slums of the Kingdom of Ignis, tucked between leaning buildings and narrow alleys where sunlight rarely reached the ground. It was the kind of place people passed by quickly, eyes forward, pretending it didn't exist.
Nobody there was anybody.
We grew up in filth while nobles dined under polished chandeliers and the King of Ignis basked in his stone halls, far removed from the stink and hunger that defined our days. The walls of the orphanage sweated in summer and froze in winter. Rats were common enough that no one screamed anymore.
That was my beginning.
No memories. No inheritance. No before.
Just hunger, noise, and the slow realization that nobody was coming to save us.
I stayed there.
Year after year.
I learned early how to be quiet. How to stay out of the way. How to endure without complaining because complaints only reminded the world you existed—and existence invited attention.
This year, I turned fourteen.
In Okrith, that age matters.
Fourteen is when children stop being treated as children. It's when core training becomes serious. When instructors begin watching for signs—alignments, affinities, sparks of promise. Some kids my age are already called prodigies. Some have already been scouted by knight families or mage guilds.
People say by now you should feel something.
A pulse of Mana when you concentrate. A whisper of Ether in prayer. The sharp tension of Aura just beneath the skin.
I've felt nothing.
No Mana stirring when others cast simple spells. No connection when Evokers speak of spirits. No divine whisper curling into my thoughts.
And Aura—the hardest, wildest energy of all—might as well be a story from another world.
Empty.
That's what I feel.
As if my core exists in theory only—present, but silent. Like a blade that never leaves its sheath because it doesn't know how.
I live in Ignis, a smaller kingdom within Okrith. Outsiders love to exaggerate what that means. They picture endless battlefields, blood running through the streets, knights dueling to the death every other day.
That's not the truth.
Ignis is loud. Rough. Dangerous.
But it's also alive.
Yes, duels happen. Fights break out. Pride and power clash more often than words. But it isn't constant war—it's survival sharpened into a culture. People here respect strength because weakness gets you killed quickly.
And strangely…
The chaos was comforting.
In a place where everyone is too busy fighting for territory, pride, or power, no one has time to look at the nameless orphan hiding near the walls.
No one notices the drizzle.
No one pays attention to Rain.
And maybe—
That's why I'm still alive.