The sky above the village of Suralaya was never truly blue. It was a permanent, bruised canvas of slate-grey and violent violet, choked by the endless ash spewing from the slumbering volcano, Mount Rinjani-Minor.
In the heart of the lower slums, where the heat of the earth baked the wooden shacks until they splintered, the rhythmic, deafening CLANG of metal upon metal echoed through the narrow, crowded streets.
Arya wiped a mixture of sweat and black soot from his forehead with the back of a calloused hand. He was eighteen, but his grueling life at the forge had carved a lean, hardened musculature onto his frame. His skin, a natural golden-brown native to the people of the Southern Archipelago, was currently painted with the grime of hard labor. His jet-black hair was tied back hastily with a frayed strip of Batik cloth.
"Focus, boy! You strike the steel like a blind man swatting a fly!" barked Master Tarja. The old blacksmith sat on a stool nearby, his massive, scarred arms crossed over his barrel chest. Tarja was missing his left eye, a souvenir from his days serving in the Royal Vanguard, but his remaining eye was sharper than a hawk's.
"I am focusing, Kek (Grandpa)," Arya grunted, raising the heavy iron hammer again. He brought it down on the glowing red longsword resting on the anvil. Sparks showered like tiny, angry fireflies. "But the Aether in this ore is stagnant. It refuses to bind."
In the world of Aksantara, everything was governed by Aether—the spiritual energy that flowed through the earth, the wind, and the blood of its people. Warriors cultivated it to enhance their bodies; merchants used it to power the gravity-defying engines of their airships. But Arya? Arya was born with an 'Empty Core'. He couldn't cultivate even a single drop of Aether. In a society that worshipped power, he was worse than a commoner; he was an anomaly. A cripple.
Yet, despite his empty core, Arya had a strange, inexplicable sensitivity. He couldn't use Aether, but he could feel it. He could hear the hum of energy inside the metals he worked with, a talent that made him an exceptional, albeit uncredited, weaponsmith.
"The ore is fine," Master Tarja sighed, his voice softening. "It is the world that is sick, Arya. The floating stones are losing their buoyancy. The leylines are drying up. You can feel it too, can't you?"
Arya paused, letting the hammer rest. He looked past the forge's open archway. Beyond the clustered roofs of Suralaya, the edge of their island ended abruptly, giving way to an endless sea of white clouds. Far below, barely visible through the mist, was the 'Under-Realm'—a cursed, toxic surface crawling with monsters.
"I feel it," Arya murmured. "The earth feels... tired."
Suddenly, the ground trembled.
It wasn't the slow, rhythmic rumble of the volcano. This was violent, jagged, and immediate. The tools hanging on the forge walls clattered wildly to the stone floor. The half-finished sword on the anvil slipped and fell, sizzling as it hit a puddle of cooling water.
A piercing, unnatural shriek tore through the air, echoing from the eastern gates of the village. It sounded like the grinding of metal mixed with the roar of a starving predator.
Master Tarja's good eye widened in sheer terror. He bolted upright, kicking his stool away. "That is the warning horn. And that sound... By the Gods. A Kala beast has breached the perimeter!"
"A Kala? Here?" Arya's heart hammered against his ribs. The Kala were creatures of pure corruption, born in the toxic Under-Realm. They rarely managed to climb the gravity-currents to the floating islands. If one had reached Suralaya, the local militia would be slaughtered in minutes.
"Stay in the forge, Arya! Do not move!" Master Tarja roared, grabbing a massive, two-handed battleaxe from a display rack. Without waiting for a response, the old man charged out into the ash-choked streets, his Aether flaring around him in a faint, desperate aura of orange light.
Arya stood frozen for exactly three seconds. The screams of the villagers began to rise over the sound of crumbling wood and shattered stone. The acrid smell of burning thatch and sulfur flooded the forge.
I can't just stay here, Arya thought, his fists clenching. He might not have Aether, but he wasn't a coward.
He looked around for a weapon. Master Tarja had taken the only finished, high-grade weapon in the shop. The swords on the racks were merely decorative or half-finished.
His eyes darted to the back corner of the forge, to a dusty, neglected wooden chest. Inside lay the only thing Arya owned that hadn't been bought or forged by Tarja. It was an inheritance from the parents he never knew, found wrapped in a bundle next to him when Tarja discovered him as an infant.
Arya rushed to the chest, throwing it open. Inside, resting on faded red velvet, was a Keris.
It was an ugly thing. The distinctive wavy blade—featuring eleven curves, known as luk—was completely covered in thick, brown rust. The wooden hilt, carved in the shape of a stylized, roaring demon (a Rakshasa), was chipped and worn. It emanated no Aether. It possessed no sharpness. By all accounts, it was a piece of junk.
But as Arya wrapped his soot-stained hand around the grip, a strange sensation washed over him. It was a faint, almost imperceptible thrum, like a heartbeat pulsing against his palm.
There was no time to question it. Gripping the rusted Keris tightly, Arya sprinted out of the forge and into the chaos of Suralaya.
The scene outside was a nightmare. The sky had darkened entirely, thick black smoke blotting out the violet sunlight. Panicked villagers were fleeing toward the upper tiers of the island, clutching their children and meager belongings.
In the center of the village square, surrounded by the crushed remnants of market stalls, stood the monster.
It was a Kala-Cahaya, a corrupted beast resembling a massive, mutated tiger, but it was easily the size of a merchant's carriage. Its fur was composed of jagged, obsidian-like crystalline spikes that pulsed with a sickening, toxic purple light. Its jaw was unhinged, revealing rows of translucent, venomous fangs.
Scattered around the beast were the broken bodies of the village militia. Their cheap spears and iron swords had shattered against the creature's crystal armor.
Standing alone between the beast and the fleeing villagers was Master Tarja. The old man was panting heavily, bleeding from a massive gash on his left shoulder. His battleaxe was chipped.
"Foul demon of the Below!" Tarja bellowed, channeling the last dregs of his orange Aether into his arms. "You will not take this village!"
The Kala beast let out a chittering, unnatural laugh that sounded like breaking glass. It lunged forward with terrifying speed, swiping a massive paw toward the old blacksmith.
Tarja raised his axe to block, but the sheer kinetic force of the monster's strike snapped the thick wooden haft in two. The impact sent Tarja flying backward. He crashed through the wooden wall of a nearby tavern, disappearing into the debris in a cloud of dust.
"Kek!" Arya screamed, his voice tearing at his throat.
The beast turned its burning, purple eyes toward the source of the noise. It saw the scrawny teenager standing in the ash, holding a rusted, pathetic dagger. The creature let out a low growl of amusement and began to stalk slowly toward Arya, its spiked tail whipping back and forth.
Fear, cold and absolute, gripped Arya's spine. His legs wanted to run, to flee with the others. He had no Aether. He had no armor. He was dead meat.
But as he looked at the rubble where his grandfather lay buried, a profound, scorching anger ignited deep within his chest. It was an anger at his own weakness, an anger at the dying world, an anger at this monster that dared to destroy his only home.
"Come on, you ugly bastard," Arya hissed, raising the rusted Keris before him in a desperate, defensive stance.
The Kala lunged. It leaped into the air, its massive maw opening wide to swallow the boy whole. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl for Arya. He could see the purple venom dripping from its fangs; he could smell the rotting, ozone stench of its breath.
Instinct took over. Arya didn't try to block—he knew his arms would shatter. Instead, drawing upon years of hammering steel and understanding the flow of kinetic energy, he pivoted sharply on his heel, stepping smoothly inside the beast's guard.
As the monster flew past him, missing him by mere inches, Arya thrust the rusted Keris upward with all his meager strength, aiming for the creature's underbelly where the crystal armor seemed thinnest.
CLANG!
The impact jarred Arya's bones. The rusted blade didn't pierce the beast. Instead, it struck a crystal scale and stopped dead.
The Kala crashed to the ground, whirling around instantly, furious that its prey had dodged. It raised its massive paw to crush the boy into paste.
It's over, Arya thought, his grip tightening on the useless hilt of his weapon.
Is it? A voice, ancient and resonant, echoed not in his ears, but directly inside his mind. It sounded like the rushing of wind through an empty canyon.
Suddenly, the rusted Keris in his hand became unimaginably hot. Not burning hot, but a pure, blinding warmth.
The 'Empty Core' in Arya's chest—the void that had mocked him his entire life—suddenly contracted, and then exploded.
A shockwave of pure, blinding, azure-blue energy erupted from Arya's body. It wasn't the standard orange, red, or green Aether of normal cultivators. It was a color not seen in Aksantara for a thousand years. The Aether of the Skyweavers.
The immense pressure of the blue aura hit the Kala beast like a physical wall, throwing the massive monster backward, sending it tumbling across the dirt square.
Arya gasped, falling to one knee. He looked down at his hand. The rust on the Keris was flaking away rapidly, falling like dead leaves. Beneath the decay, the true blade was revealed—a mesmerizing, shimmering metal folded a thousand times, glowing with intricate, celestial runes along its eleven wavy curves. The hilt, once a chipped wooden demon, now shone like polished obsidian, its eyes burning with blue fire.
The sheer power flooding Arya's veins was intoxicating, overwhelming, and terrifying. The air around him crackled with static electricity. Small pebbles and debris began to defy gravity, floating inches off the ground around his kneeling form.
The Kala beast recovered, shaking its massive head. But this time, it did not charge recklessly. It looked at the boy enveloped in blue light, and for the first time, the creature of corruption felt fear.
Arya slowly stood up. The exhaustion of his daily labor was gone, replaced by a thrumming, divine energy. He raised the awakened Keris, the blue aura wrapping around the blade like a localized cyclone.
"You are trespassing," Arya said, his voice overlapping with a strange, echoing resonance.
He didn't know how to use swordsmanship techniques. He only knew how to swing a hammer. So, he swung the Keris like one.
He slashed the blade through the empty air in a horizontal arc, aiming at the beast twenty feet away.
The world seemed to tear open. A crescent-shaped wave of pure, condensed Aether—sharp enough to cut space itself—burst from the edge of the Keris. The blue projectile crossed the distance in a fraction of a second.
The Kala beast shrieked and tried to leap away, but it was too slow.
The blue wave struck the creature cleanly. There was no explosion, no massive sound. Just a terrifying, silent shing.
The upper half of the monster slid cleanly off its lower half, hitting the ground with a heavy, wet thud. Its toxic purple blood sizzled against the ash-covered earth.
Arya stood there, chest heaving, staring at the bisected monster. The blue aura around him flared wildly for another few seconds, and then, as quickly as it had ignited, the energy vanished. The 'Empty Core' snapped shut.
The glowing runes on the Keris dimmed, though the blade remained pristine and sharp.
Arya dropped to his knees, his vision blurring, a profound exhaustion crashing over him like a tidal wave. As darkness edged into his sight, he heard the frantic footsteps of villagers returning, and the weak voice of Master Tarja calling his name.
Before he passed out, Arya looked at the pristine, wavy dagger resting in his palm. His life in Suralaya was over. The journey had just begun.