[A/N: First 6 chapter is infodum. This details has a huge impact on the story and this things are common knowledge in the world of Ceres,not some secret confidential stuffs. Also Skyre witnessed this events from prison of memories(opps spoiler, sorry)]
Millions of years ago, before humanity had a history of its own, there was a world called Ceres.
It was a world unlike any other.
Five enormous continents stretched across its surface, separated by vast oceans and surrounded by lands that seemed to have no end. Ancient forests covered entire regions of the world. Mountains pierced the clouds, their peaks glowing with strange energy. Rivers flowed through valleys where creatures that existed nowhere else on any known world hunted beneath the trees.
Ceres was beautiful.
It was also merciless.
The world was inhabited by countless races.
Demons ruled vast kingdoms beneath blackened skies. Elves lived within ancient forests. Dokkabi clans occupied territories hidden beyond the reach of ordinary travelers. Demi-humans lived among humans and monsters, while corrupted beasts wandered through wilderness untouched by civilization.
And above them all were the beings known as the Divines.
They were neither demons nor humans.
They were something else.
Something that existed beyond the ordinary understanding of mortal races.
Among the Divines, one name was remembered above all others.
Norvana.
Norvana was known as the source of the world's mysterious power.
The power was called Norvan Power, a force that existed naturally within Ceres. It flowed through the land, the oceans, the atmosphere, and even the bodies of certain creatures.
To the inhabitants of Ceres, Norvana was not merely a powerful being.
She was closer to a god.
And the Divines were treated as gods.
They possessed power beyond the comprehension of ordinary beings. They could alter landscapes, command forces of nature, and accomplish things that mortals could only describe as miracles.
Yet despite their overwhelming power, the Divines rarely interfered with the affairs of the mortal races.
They watched.
They observed.
And, for the most part, they remained above the conflicts of the world.
That was why the suffering of one particular race continued for thousands of years.
The race was humanity.
But humans did not truly belong to Ceres.
They were foreigners.
No one knew exactly where they had come from.
Some ancient records claimed that humans had arrived through a mysterious phenomenon known as the Chasm—a strange rupture that occasionally appeared in the fabric of reality.
The Chasm did not behave like an ordinary portal.
It appeared without warning.
Sometimes it remained open for only a few moments.
Sometimes it lasted for hours.
And sometimes, something came through.
No one understood why.
No one knew who created it.
And no one knew what existed on the other side.
But whenever the Chasm appeared, humans could emerge from it.
Not always from the same place.
Not always from the same era.
Not even from the same kind of civilization.
Some humans who appeared on Ceres seemed to have come from worlds resembling medieval civilizations. They carried swords, bows, and primitive weapons.
Others came from worlds far beyond the technological age of Ceres.
They possessed machines, advanced knowledge, and technology that the inhabitants of Ceres could not understand.
There were even humans who came from worlds whose very existence could not be explained.
Different worlds.
Different histories.
Different civilizations.
Yet they shared one thing.
They were human.
And Ceres was not their home.
The native races recognized that immediately.
Humans possessed no natural connection to Norvana's power.
At least, not at first.
They were physically weaker than many of the races native to Ceres. They had no ancient kingdoms. No powerful bloodlines. No inherited understanding of Norvan Power.
They were strangers in a world ruled by beings who had existed for thousands upon thousands of years.
And strangers were rarely welcomed.
At first, some humans tried to hide.
Others tried to negotiate.
Some attempted to establish settlements.
But eventually, the truth became unavoidable.
Humans were useful.
They were weak.
They were numerous.
And they could be controlled.
So they became slaves.
For thousands of years, humans lived beneath the authority of other races.
They worked in mines.
They built cities that they would never be allowed to live in.
They cultivated fields belonging to masters who considered them property.
Children were born into slavery and died without ever experiencing freedom.
There were no great human institutions.
No united human kingdoms.
No powerful human armies.
No place where humans could gather without fear.
A human child did not inherit a kingdom.
They inherited a chain.
The native races did not consider humans their equals.
To them, humanity was an invasive species—a foreign race that had somehow entered their world.
Some treated humans as livestock.
Others treated them as tools.
And because the Divines rarely interfered in mortal affairs, humanity's suffering continued almost unnoticed.
For generation after generation.
Century after century.
Millennium after millennium.
Humans fought back many times.
They always lost.
There were individuals among them who became exceptionally strong. Some humans learned how to use weapons. Others discovered ways to manipulate Norvan Power. A few even became powerful enough to threaten the rulers of their regions.
But every time a human began to rise, the native races crushed them.
Human leaders were assassinated.
Rebellions were destroyed.
Villages were burned.
Entire bloodlines disappeared.
Any hope that humanity could one day stand equal to the native races was buried beneath countless graves.
Eventually, humans began to believe that freedom was nothing more than a story.
A fantasy told to children.
Something that had never existed and never would.
Then came an age that later historians would call the Dark Age.
It was the period when the Divines ruled over Ceres while humanity remained beneath the control of other races.
But the humans had another name for it.
The Age of Hope.
The contradiction existed for a reason.
Because during that age, something happened that changed the history of Ceres forever.
A Chasm appeared.
It opened somewhere within the lands controlled by the native races.
At first, nobody paid attention.
Chasms had appeared before.
Most of them were meaningless.
Sometimes they brought strange objects.
Sometimes animals.
Sometimes nothing at all.
But this Chasm was different.
Something came through it.
A human.
He looked ordinary.
There was nothing about his appearance that suggested what he would become.
He had no army.
No kingdom.
No great civilization behind him.
He arrived alone.
But the moment his feet touched the soil of Ceres, something changed.
He could feel it.
The power flowing through the world.
Norvana.
The mysterious force that native races had spent their entire existence learning to control.
He understood it.
Not perfectly.
Not immediately.
But instinctively.
As though some part of him had always known it existed.
He learned faster than anyone thought possible.
He adapted to Norvan Power.
Then he began to use it.
And when the native races discovered what he could do, they laughed at first.
They would not laugh for long.
The human possessed strength unlike anything they had seen before.
He could destroy monsters with his bare hands.
He could tear through armies.
He could manipulate Norvan Power at a level that even ancient beings struggled to comprehend.
And unlike the humans who had lived on Ceres for generations, he did not accept the world as it was.
He looked at the chains around humanity.
He looked at the kingdoms built upon human suffering.
He looked at the races that considered his people nothing more than livestock.
And he reached a conclusion.
Humanity would not be freed by negotiation.
It would not be freed by begging.
It would not be freed by waiting.
Humanity would be freed through power.
So the man named Kael Gorjer began to walk.
And wherever he walked, kingdoms fell.
He declared war upon the rulers of Ceres.
Demons.
Monsters.
Elves.
Demi-humans.
And eventually, even the beings who called themselves gods.
He did not come to Ceres to become its ruler.
He came to destroy the world that had enslaved humanity.
At first, the native races believed that one human could never defeat them.
Then the first kingdom fell.
Then another.
Then another.
The man continued forward.
He fought armies alone.
He destroyed fortresses without support.
He crossed battlefields covered in thousands of soldiers and emerged from them without an army of his own.
His power became so overwhelming that the rulers of Ceres began to fear his name.
The humans simply called him their savior, hero Kael Gorjer.
The demons called him a monster.
The Divines watched him from above.
And eventually, history gave him a name that would survive long after his existence became legend.
The Hero of Calamity. The 1st hero, Kael Gorjer.
But that name belonged to a future that had not yet arrived.
For now, he was simply a human who had stepped out of a Chasm.
A foreigner.
A stranger.
A man who had entered a world that did not want him.
And he was about to begin the greatest war Ceres had ever witnessed.
The age of human suffering was coming to an end.
But the age that would follow would be far more terrible.
Because sometimes, freedom does not arrive peacefully.
Sometimes, it arrives like a calamity.