The Witch's Forest – Year Unknown
There was no name carved onto his skin. No records of his birth. No lullabies to rock him to sleep.
Only the cold whisper of wind through ancient trees and the suffocating weight of chains tighter than memory.
He was six years old when they finally discarded him. A child born beneath the roots of the Witch's Forest, hidden like a curse. Not for his safety—but for the Silver Eagles' shame. A half-forgotten bastard left in the shadows, born of a noble's sin and buried beneath their pride.
He never cried—not because the pain didn't hurt, but because no one had ever answered his cries.
The witches knew of him. Some scorned him. Others pitied him. A few simply pretended he didn't exist. He was their ghost. A slave not worth a name, breathing only because death hadn't yet found the time.
Until one morning, the elder witch whispered a spell of silence over his chains. And they led him deep into the forest, farther than he'd ever seen. Past cursed roots, forgotten altars, and moss-covered bones that once belonged to other forsaken things.
They said nothing. Only left him there, in the Grand Magic Zone's edge, where the mana swirled like storms and beasts hunted anything with warmth in its blood.
And they walked away.
No food. No cloak. No hope. Only his thin limbs, half-starved body, and a dull ache in his chest where love was supposed to live.
---
For a while, he waited. Hours passed. Then night fell like a guillotine.
The forest was not silent.
It breathed. Growled. Whispered in tongues he did not understand. Eyes glowed between the branches, and mana in the air burned like frost against his skin. His body shivered, but his gaze did not move.
The Grand Magic Zone – First Night
The beasts came in silence.
The first was a shadow—a thing with too many limbs and too little shape. It crept across the trees like smoke with teeth, its growl rumbling through the roots of Kael's spine. He didn't scream. He didn't run. He stared.
Because he had nothing left to fear.
When it leapt, a bolt of mana surged from the forest's heart—feral, wild, untamed. It struck the beast mid-air, turning flesh into ash before the creature ever reached him. The explosion knocked Kael back, tore his shirt open, seared his skin—but he didn't die.
He just lay there, eyes wide, staring into the canopy, chest heaving with the realization that the forest itself had rejected the beast… but not him.
Something had accepted him. Claimed him. Or maybe it simply recognized its own.
That was his first night. It wouldn't be the last.
---
He survived. Somehow.
He ate insects. Learned which moss was safe. Drank dew from cursed leaves and chewed bark to keep his stomach quiet. Days bled into weeks, and every moment was a war against everything that lived, breathed, or slithered.
His limbs hardened. Skin thickened. Eyes learned to spot magic in the air before it struck. He stopped flinching at pain. Pain became a companion—familiar, steady.
But the worst part wasn't the beasts. It wasn't the hunger, the storms, or even the magical maelstroms that twisted the skies and cracked the earth.
It was the loneliness. That absolute, soul-draining silence between battles.
He would stare into the still pools of mana-tainted water and whisper to his reflection—not because he needed answers, but because he needed to hear a voice.
Even if it was just his own.
---
One night, under a bleeding red moon, the ground beneath him cracked. Not from danger—but from power.
His hands had been clenched, fists trembling, skin split from punching a dead tree over and over. Not out of anger. But because his fingers felt like they didn't belong to him. His body felt foreign. His soul—it felt trapped.
And something inside him had whispered:
> "Breakit."
That's when it happened.
The air screamed. A pulse of mana exploded around him, unseen and silent, but everything—trees, mist, mana-beasts—froze. Like the world itself had hesitated. For one breath. One blink. As if asking:
"What was that?"
---
Kael had no answer. Just a headache that made his vision split and a sense of something else moving inside him. Two presences. One warm and wild like open skies. The other cold, coiled, and heavy—like chains around his heart.
Neither had names.
Yet both felt like… him.
---
Two Years Later – Age 8
---
There was a rhythm to the Grand Magic Zone. A cruel one. Every time Kael thought he understood it, it changed. Every time he found peace, it shattered.
The beasts grew bigger. Hungrier. The storms thicker. Even the mana turned wilder—as if the forest was testing him, demanding proof that he belonged.
Kael never screamed.
He learned to listen to silence, to stillness. Because the creatures that killed were rarely loud. They were quiet. Efficient. Just like he had to become.
But what unnerved him more than monsters or magic were the dreams.
He had no memory of his birth, but the dreams always came as flashes—visions of people with silver hair and cold eyes, of blood on marble floors, of whispered curses and broken promises. They came in fragments, but always ended the same way:
Chains.
A hand reaching toward light—
And someone laughing as it was dragged back into darkness.
He would wake drenched in sweat, gasping—but never crying. He hadn't cried in years.
---
The Dual Magic awakenedslowly. Not in one grand explosion, but through subtle shifts in the world around him. Animals began avoiding him—not out of fear, but confusion. The air near him sometimes shimmered when he was calm… and thickened like iron when he was not.
Freedom and control. Sky and shackle.
His mana didn't lean one way. It tugged in both directions, like two gods fighting inside him.
Sometimes he could breathe easier, feel his body lighten, leap higher. Other times, he'd freeze mid-step, his limbs locked, his heart pounding like a prisoner in a cage.
It made no sense. But nothing about Kael ever had.
---
At eight, he stopped looking for salvation. The forest was his home. His curse. His kingdom of rot.
He became something more than human—but not quite monster. Something feral, silent, and deeply aware of every breath, every shift in the wind.
He stopped talking to his reflection.
Stopped pretending he was meant to be saved.
But the dreams—those never stopped.
---
The Legend of the No-Leaf Grimoire came to him in one such dream.
It was a voice—not his own, not any he remembered. Deep. Slow. Reverent. Like the forest itself had found words.
"There was once a grimoire that had no leaf. No clover. No cover. No name. Not even a single soul has ever held it."
"Not because it was lost. But because it was waiting."
"For something beyond virtue. Beyond sin."
"For one who belonged to no law of man or magic."
The dream ended with a flash of a grimoire so dark it swallowed light. Blank. No seal. No crest. Only an aura that twisted reality around it. Ancient. Forbidden.
When Kael awoke, he could still feel the heat of its presence in his palms. And the echo of a name in the wind:
Lucius… Zogratis.
He didn't know who that was. But the forest did. It went still when that name fell from his lips.
---
At age eight, Kael stood barefoot atop a ruined monolith, eyes cold, jaw set, hair grown wild. The storms circled behind him like wolves with no master.
He no longer wished for rescue. He no longer needed to be wanted.
All he wanted now—
Was to become strong enough…
That no one could ever chain him again.
This was the chapter written by my friend, he dropped it right after first chapter, since, I am continuing his FANFIC, it's a proper sense to write that chapter again before I start writing my fanfiction.
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Thank you for reading, most of the times it would be once a week release book, but if I am free or excited, there you go, you many have two to three chapters in a week, drop anything you wanna add, i already have a solid plan for my first fanfiction, for a few chapters I will be relying on ai to correct my paragraphs, cause I donot want any spelling mistakes, and yeah, have fun, stay safe, hope you guys enjoy my fanfictio.....
1376 words, not bad for a proluge ig