Before the skies bled and fmes crowned kingdoms, before Kus Aetherion became the name that silenced world's and stirred nightmares, he was only a boy—barefoot, wild-haired, and curious. And he belonged to no one… except maybe to her.

  Sofie.

  Their vilge, a tucked-away breath of peace Elden Hollow,existed outside time. The world forgot it, and for a while, so did fate. The sun painted everything gold in summer, and the stars stayed longer in the winter sky. No soldiers came. No kings ruled. It was, for a time, perfect.

  "Kus! Hurry, you slow lump!" Sofie's voice rang through the fields like wind chimes.

  Kus—shirt rumpled, eyes gleaming—ran up the grassy hill, his breath caught between ughter and effort. "I'm not slow! You're just loud."

  "Loud enough to wake you from your brooding!" she shot back.

  They colpsed beneath the old sycamore tree at the crest of the hill. It was their tree. Their kingdom.

  Above them, the sky rippled with falling stars—fiery trails of silver burning through indigo.

  "A meteor shower," she whispered. "Look."

  Kus stared in silence, awe simmering behind his usual stillness.

  "Do you think… things fall from the sky because they're lost?" she asked.

  He frowned. "No. I think they fall because something's calling them home."

  She turned to him. "Do you ever feel like you don't belong here?"

  Kus didn't answer right away.

  "I don't belong anywhere," he said softly. "But with you… I forget that."

  Sofie reached over, brushing a smudge of dirt from his cheek. "Then stay near me. Even if the sky falls."

  ---

  The years passed quietly, like whispers on a breeze.

  Kus had no parents, no bloodline to speak of. A war took them long before memory could keep them warm. The vilge raised him, but the truth was: he raised himself. With bruised knuckles and quiet fury, he learned how the world worked.

  And yet, he was always gentle with Sofie.

  She would find him by the river, shirt off, skin bruised from bor, reading from tattered books she had given him.

  "You're the only boy I know who reads myths with a bleeding lip," she'd tease.

  "They teach me more than fists ever will."

  "What, like how to sy dragons?"

  He looked up. "Or how to become one."

  She paused. "Don't become the monster, Kus."

  "Only if monsters stay away from you."

  ---

  One festival night, nterns floated like tiny suns over the fields. Music rose, sweet and awkward. Kus, uncomfortable in his patched shirt and worn boots, stood on the edges while Sofie danced barefoot in a circle of ughing children.

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him in.

  "I'm not good at this," he said.

  "Neither am I. That's why we dance together."

  They twirled beneath hanging lights, her ughter anchoring him. For a moment, Kus forgot he was broken. For a moment, he belonged.

  ---

  But peace has a time limit.

  One afternoon, a traveling merchant tried to take more than he paid for—from a girl too young to scream.

  Kus was there.

  He left the man with shattered ribs and a warning carved into his face.

  Later, with his hands bloodied and rage cooling in his chest, Sofie found him by the well.

  "You can't solve everything with fists," she said.

  "I didn't," Kus replied. "I solved it with fear."

  She looked at him long and hard. "One day, you'll scare people without lifting a finger. What then?"

  Kus stared at the horizon, where the clouds seemed heavier than before.

  "Then they better hope I never find a reason to."

  ---

  A storm hit the vilge weeks ter—rain so thick it erased the world.

  Kus and Sofie sheltered in an abandoned barn, curled under hay.

  "I dreamt something st night," she whispered. "There was fire. And you… you stood in the middle of it. Everyone else burned. But you didn't."

  Kus said nothing.

  "I think something's coming for you, Kus."

  He met her gaze. "Let it come."

  ---

  It was the st time they were alone.

  The Pulse hit.

  A shockwave across the skies. Cities fell. Empires fractured. Power awakened in some. Horror in others.

  And just like that, Kus and Sofie lived thier lives

  But the past still breathed in him.

  In his silence, in the way he never smiled again.

  The world would come to know Kus Aetherion as a force—merciless, unyielding. But once, he was just a boy who swore to a girl beneath a tree that he would never let her fall.

  And if the world burned for that vow… so be it.

  ---

  Far away, in the ruins of an empire once untouched, a forgotten god stirred—its breath caught in wind, its voice trapped in lightning.

  And something ancient whispered:

  "He remembers."