"To understand the shadow, you must first understand the light that casts it. To understand the present peace, you must read the bloody history of the gods who broke the world to save it."
— AbyssKid
⚠️ Don't read this until you complete 100 chapters! It may confuse you! ⚠️
The Infinite Mana Vein
Long before the great walls of Solaris were built, long before the wind of Zephyros learned to howl across the sky, there was only the source.
In the hidden circles of the modern world, professors teach young students that mana is like a gentle river. They teach that magic is a natural resource that flows peacefully through the air and ground. They teach young mages how to ask the world politely to spark a fire or move a stone.
This is a comfortable lie. The true origin of all magic is not a gentle river.
It is the Infinite Mana Vein.
Imagine a roaring cosmic ocean of pure, boiling energy. It does not exist in the physical sky or beneath the ground. It exists in an entire overlapping dimension. It is the raw essence of absolute creation and absolute destruction.
In its purest form, infinite mana is highly lethal. It is simply too heavy, too chaotic, and too brilliant for the mortal realm to endure. If a normal human directly touched even a single drop of the Infinite Vein, their physical body would not just burn. Their mind, their flesh, and their soul would detonate, erasing them from the timeline.
The human body is like a fragile cup made of cheap clay. The Infinite Mana Vein is a roaring volcano. You cannot pour that into a clay cup.
But there was a time when the world was not ruled by fragile bodies. There was a time when beings of power walked on the earth, drinking mana freely from the Infinite Mana Vein
This was the forgotten age known as the Void Era.
The Void Era is a period of history erased from the public libraries of the royal kingdoms.
It was a time of terrifying wonders and chaos. During the Void Era, there were no human kings or political borders. The world was ruled by beings known as the Primordial Monarchs.
These Monarchs were not humans who learned magic. They were living, breathing extensions of the Infinite Mana Vein itself. They did not need to chant spells or draw complex runes in the ground. If a Monarch wished for a mountain to fall, the mountain simply fell. If they wished for the oceans to part, the water instantly obeyed. They were the undisputed gods of the world, drawing unlimited power across the bridge from the Infinite Vein.
For countless centuries, the Primordial Monarchs maintained a silent balance. They understood that drawing too much power at once could accidentally shatter the physical world into dust. They respected the boundary between their physical realm and the infinite ocean.
All of them respected it, except for one.
His true name has been scrubbed from all historical records. Speaking his true name aloud causes the speaker's tongue to rot and turn to gray ash. In the forbidden texts guarded by the old librarians, he is known only by his cursed title: The Fallen Monarch, or the Monarch of the Eclipse.
The Fallen Monarch was a being of pure greed. He looked at the delicate balance of the Void Era and felt only disgust. He did not want to share the Infinite Vein with the other Monarchs. He believed that power should belong to a single ruler.
To achieve his goal of total conquest, the Fallen Monarch attempted to widen the bridge to the Infinite Mana Vein. He wanted to drag the mana ocean into the physical world, intending to drown the other Monarchs in raw power and their essence.
He knew his own physical form could not hold the entire infinite ocean alone. So, he created vessels.
He gathered the most elite, ruthless human warriors of the Void Era. He stripped away their humanity, burned away their faces, and hollowed out their souls. He filled their empty armor with highly concentrated dark mana stolen from the depths of the Vein.
These terrifying, immortal soldiers became his personal executioners. They were the Black Mist Knights. They felt no pain, required no sleep, and communicated through a psychic hive mind. With an endless army of these dark phantoms at his back, the Fallen Monarch started a brutal war to conquer reality itself.
The world was bathed in blood and ash. The Void Era was coming to an end.
The remaining Primordial Monarchs realized that the Fallen Monarch could not be defeated in a traditional war. His army of shadows was simply too vast, and his connection to the infinite ocean was growing too wide. If he successfully dragged the Infinite Vein into the physical realm, the entire world would violently shatter.
To save existence, the surviving Monarchs made an ultimate sacrifice, and also they created the Primordial Laws.
These were not laws written on paper or debated in a royal court. These were unbreakable laws carved into the fabric of reality, space, and time.
The first Primordial Law was designed specifically to banish the Fallen Monarch. But the Primordial Monarchs knew that human greed was endless. They knew that another arrogant mage or foolish king would try to find the bridge to the Infinite Vein and finish what the Fallen Monarch had started.
To prevent this, the Monarchs enacted the second Primordial Law. They destroyed the open bridge to the Infinite Mana Vein. They restricted the flow of magic into the physical world, allowing only a filtered trickle of ambient mana to leak through into the air.
But to be certain that no mortal could ever manually reconnect to the infinite ocean, the Monarchs placed a permanent restriction inside the soul of every single human being born from that day forward.
These restrictions are the Three Cosmic Locks. They look like glowing golden chains wrapped tightly around the core of a human soul. They are designed to keep the mortal vessel safely separated from the raw cosmic energy.
The First Lock: The Gate of the Mind.
This is the outermost seal. It restricts human perception. It prevents the mortal brain from comprehending the true, terrifying vastness of the universe. It limits psychic ability and mental projection. If an arrogant mage attempts to crack this seal, the sudden influx of truth usually melts their brain instantly, leaving them a drooling, mindless husk.
The Second Lock: The Gate of the Flesh.
This seal restricts the physical body's capacity to store and channel energy. It enforces the physical limits of human muscle and bone. It ensures that a human can only punch so hard, or run so fast, before their body naturally tires out. If a warrior forcefully breaks this seal in a desperate bid for supreme physical strength, the infinite energy rejects the mortal tissue. The warrior's body will mutate, their flesh tearing open as they transform into a mindless, rampaging Mana Aberration: A spasmed monster of bulging muscle and oozing magic that destroys everything until its own heart explodes from the strain.
The Third Lock: The Gate of Origin.
This is the final seal. It wraps directly around the spark of the human soul. It blocks the soul from touching the Infinite Mana Vein. To break this final seal is to invite a true Mana Catastrophe. The exact second this seal shatters, the infinite ocean floods the mortal vessel. The body instantly detonates with the force of a falling star, wiping out entire cities in a flash of raw creation, leaving nothing behind but a smooth crater of gray glass.
For countless generations, these three golden chains have kept humanity perfectly safe, and perfectly weak.
The Dawn Era
With the Fallen Monarch sealed in the dark, and the dangerous Infinite Vein locked safely behind the three Cosmic Seals, the world finally grew quiet.
The terrifying age of gods walking on the earth was over. The surviving humans crept out from their hiding places in the caves and the ruined valleys. They looked up at a bright, clear sky that was no longer choked with black mist and cosmic fire.
This was the beginning of the Dawn Era.
The Dawn Era is the present day. It is the age of fragile mortals. Without the Primordial Monarchs to rule them, humanity slowly began to rebuild. They founded the great kingdoms of the modern world. They built the soaring white marble towers of Solaris. They tamed the high, windy peaks of Zephyros. They cultivated the lush, green forests of Sylphyros and many more.
Over thousands of years, the terrifying truths of the Void Era faded into myths, then into legends, and finally into children's fairy tales. The modern Royal Generals and academy students believe they are powerful. They proudly wear their shiny iron armor and boast about their ability to throw a fireball or harden their skin into diamond.
They do not realize that their greatest magic is nothing but a tiny, pathetic spark compared to the raging infernos of the past. They do not realize they are swimming in a shallow puddle, unaware of the dark ocean lurking just beneath the surface.
The Dawn Era has been an era of beautiful, comfortable, and false peace.
But restrictions never last forever. Chains rust. Seals weaken. Deep in the eternal shadows, the Fallen Monarch has spent years patiently testing the walls of his prison. He has been waiting for the exact alignment of the cosmos, a moment when the light of the sun and the moon is blocked out, weakening the ancient magic that keeps him buried and the correct time to conquer.
He is waiting for the great eclipse, and slowly the Black Mist Knights have begun to slip through the cracks in reality. They are acting as scouts, testing the strength of the modern kingdoms, assessing the fragile children who dare to call themselves Generals.
The Dawn Era is coming to a close. The sun is preparing to set on the age of mortals. The sky is getting darker, the air is growing colder, and the heavy gears of the universe are slowly beginning to turn backward.
The forgotten ghosts of the Void Era are officially rising from the dirt, and unless the fragile children of the Dawn can find a way to master the forbidden cosmic locks without exploding, the fragile world of light will be permanently swallowed by the dark.