As Aether drifted into sleep, his consciousness was pulled back into a memory he had tried to bury.
In that life, the awakening ceremony had ended in disaster. He could still see the "unusual" looks on the faces of the gathered nobles—looks of pity mixed with hidden scorn. He had failed to awaken any mana at all.
The worst part was his father. The King hadn't yelled; he had simply looked at Aether with a cold, crushing disappointment in front of the most powerful families in the kingdom. Soon, rumors began to spread like a plague through the capital: The Second Prince is a mana-less failure.
Devastated, the prince had spiraled. He distanced himself from everyone who loved him, spending his days in a lazy haze and his nights drowning his sorrows in alcohol, wandering the palace like a ghost.
One night, seeking to escape the suffocating walls of the palace, he went to roam the kingdom's streets in disguise. Out of the shadows of a quiet alley, an old man draped in a mysterious, tattered cloak appeared suddenly.
The old man looked into Aether's eyes and asked a single, piercing question: "Do you ever wish you could change your fate?"
upon seeind the old man Aether was first stund.
Aether's expression turned bitter. "If I had awakened that day," he replied, his voice trembling with unspent rage, "I would have become strong. I would be out there right now, fighting the beasts that are attacking our borders. My father and my family would actually be proud of me."
The old man listened in silence. Without a word, he reached into his robes and handed Aether a strange, ancient artifact.
"I hope you can change the fate of this world," the man said softly.
Before Aether could ask who he was or what the object did, the old man vanished into the night mist. The prince, clutching the stone artifact, had returned to the palace and eventually dismissed the encounter as a strange dream, forgetting the old man entirely.
but unknowingly when the ruins of gods destory the kingdom he use that stone artifact
present day
Aether woke up slowly the next morning, the sunlight streaming through his bedroom window. The dream was so vivid he could still feel the weight of the artifact in his palm.
"So... the rune was given to me by that mysterious old man," Aether whispered, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "But why me?"
He thought about the catastrophe he knew was coming—the "catastrophic" end this world was destined to face. There had been no mention of an old man or an ancient artifact in the original "novel" or history he remembered. This was a variable he hadn't accounted for.
Aether looked at his hands, then at the faint glow of the rune on his chest. A new fire sparked in his eyes.
"Anyway," he thought firmly, "I won't be that drunken and lazy prince again. I will write my own fate this time. I will become the pride of my family."
The past was a shadow, but Aether was finally ready to step into the light.