They say the world was once whole.
A sphere so large, its continents stretched beyond the skies, its oceans deeper than memory. It spun slowly, as if afraid to stir the lives that clung to its surface. Gods once walked here—or so claim the shattered scriptures. In those ancient days, Talent was a blessing. A gift. A way to grow, to build, to heal.
But that world is gone now.
It ended in a moment no one remembers, and yet everyone suffers from. They call it the Fracture—when the sky tore like paper, when oceans rose to devour cities, and when the very essence of Talent turned volatile. The sun dimmed, the earth cracked, and out of the chaos rose clans, factions, warlords—each clutching at whatever remnants of power they could preserve.
The Millionfold World, they call it now. A planet swollen and broken, stitched together by ruins and ambition.
And Talent... is no longer a gift.
It is currency. It is war. It is inheritance, hoarded by the great clans like sacred blood. The strong grow stronger by clinging to their bloodlines. The weak are left to scrape in the dust, scavenging recipes, begging old ruins for scraps of power.
In the western wastes, past the dead forests and the shifting bones of the Drowned Mountains, lies the forgotten remains of the Drifting Ash Clan.
Once, they were healers to emperors. Now, they are ash on the wind—extinct in all but name.
Yet even in ash, an ember may glow.
His name is Kael. A boy with no brothers, no titles, and no future. Born with a Soothing Ember, a talent so weak it can barely mend a bruise.
He should not matter.
And yet—he holds a fragment. A page torn from an ancestor's lost compendium. It hums in his hands when the moonlight touches it. It whispers of fusion, of paths forgotten. Of powers not granted, but made.
He is the last of his line.
And in a world ruled by blood and birthright, he will burn his name into the sky—not as a chosen, but as the one who chose himself.
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