Heavy rain descends from the blackened sky, the scent of rain and earth intertwines and permeates throughout the institutionalized city, a pale young boy with hair as dark as a night sky stripped from its stars and eyes shaded by a strange color of emerald, neither quite glowing nor dull but somewhere inbetween. His porcelain face dirtied by a pained expression which is a sheer contrast to the rags he calls clothes, clothes so pityfully draped over him, a slave would kill his master in disgust if he were forced to wear these clothes.
The boy slums against an obsidian-coloured wall, one hand clutching his stomach as if he was on the brink of starvation not like he was unfamiliar to the feeling, but starvation was not performer who was nearing the final act of the boy's life but instead it was the flow of dark red viscous fluid seeping out of him through the wound inflicted upon his stomach, in his other hand a slow burning cigarette was emitting a light glow as it also was nearing the end of its own life.
Vanier coughs and groans as he says in a barely audible voice,
"What a cruel fate….
The world as humanity knows was never whole, instead it had been fractured into countless realms like broken shards of a forgotten mirror. The true scale of the countless realms is not known as Humanity had only clawed their way into three, and even that had cost too much.
No one really knows when Golden rifts first started appearing in the world, the only thing certain was that they had always been there like some kind of festering disease. These glittering wounds in the fabric of the world were beautiful, radiant and merciless.
At the beginning they were worshiped and hailed as divine gifts, Well of course as anything that promised power always was. The brave or more accurately those who were desperate for power, money or status and some out of morbid curiosity had ventured into the rifts.
Within these rifts, trails of differing situations, intensities and enemies were present. Each rift also had their own restrictions, some restrictions were shown before entering the rift such as a limit of those who could enter, while other restrictions were only known once one entered the rift. Once one enters a rift there are only three ways of leaving, they must clear the rift, or have an rare artifact which allows one to leave but the drawbacks are ussually make it impossible to use multiple times, and finally the last way is the simplest its death. But those who returned from the trials of the rifts came back enlightened, their bodies were sharpened, their senses heightened and limits broken…
Then everything changed....
Once a random number trials around the world were cleared, A large singular gate appeared, it was build more like a monolith than a gate, one which shined of desire. The gate was covered in a substance similar to gold but shined even brighter than it.
The golden gates were quite different as compared to normal rifts, the only restriction present for the golden gates were a max limit of a 100 people can enter at once and unlike the rifts the regardless of the result of the expedition the gate can be tried again as long as no one from the original expedition was alive within the gate, but due to the minimal restrictions the cruelty of the gate was immeasurable.
But after the golden gate was cleared, the reward was not the regular abilities or items instead the warriors were send out the of the gate and the golden gate slowly creaked opened. Behind the golden gate lied another world(realm)-lush, bright, colourful and untouched. Humanity named this realm Paradisa.
But as time passed by, Humanity had completely occupied Paradisa, cities crowded the land like a swarm of locust on a poor farmers cropfield and resources dwindled to the point that the extinction of man neared closer than it has ever been. Thus they needed a new realm so they hunted.
Rifts were no longer trials given by gods to test humanity, they had instead become a tool for humanity to exploit. After countless deaths, Humanity had finally cleared all the rifts required to reach the random threshold set by the universe and the golden gate appeared once agian, the fight within the golden gate was more difficult than the previous gate, it took 20 tries, the sacrifices of 20,000 souls to finally clear the gate.
But this time the true veil was removed, the new realm was Vast, fertile and full of beauty, But it was not safe, Monsters roamed freely, their presence was immense and suffocating, even so, the powerful claimed it and the rich followed, together they filled the land with kingdoms ruled by the families of the strong or rich.
And the weak….. they were left behind in the lower realms to rot. After the claiming of the third realm, the lower realms started to change, Factories were built where once homes stood, smoke had covered the sky giving a gloomy look throughout the whole realm and worst of it the waste from the upper realms were dumped on the lower realms.
As one ascends up the realms, the difficulty of the rifts increased, due to this a new phenomenon emerged, rifts started appearing to children, at the age of ten. These rifts were called as Enlightenment Rifts.
Unlike their deadly counterparts, these were simple and predictable almost… merciful, up to ten people were allowed to enter, and with nine seasoned warriors guiding a single child, victory was almost guaranteed.
Upon clearing these rifts, the child received a blessing,
A Title.
A Title defined everything, It granted a core ability something very unique and powerful, it single handedly shaped ones future. Other abilities can be gained later but a Title was the essence of how one fights.
But not every child was chosen, In rare cases , a child would reach the age of ten and nothing would happen, these children who were abandoned by fate, were branded as lesser, they were cast down to the lower realms, forced to live among the smoke and waste,
Vanier was one of them.
Born into a renowned family of warriors, his future should have been glorious, But fate was cruel to him, when his time came , no rift appeared, and so, he fell. Cursed to toil in the factories, working endless hours for scraps so he could live another day
The rags on the lower part of his body had already been tained in a deep disgusting red, the fatal wound he had received on his stomach was neither a result of a rift or even a fight worth remembering,
No,
In truth he had been unceremoniously mugged and stabbed by a kid, no less.
Vanier sighs as he says,
"Well there goes a months' worth of work, how am I even gonna afford the shitty food I usually eat."
"It's not like it matters anyways…" ,he say while looking down and entering deep in thought,
Vanier starts thinking of his current predicament and his life ever since being banished to the lowest relam, which has been fillied with misfortune at every step he had taken, these thoughts cause him to be filled by an unending rage and anger towards the world, which was unsual to him, even though life had been unfair to him, Vanier rarely ever gets angry instead he is usually smiling , sarcastic and witty to the people around him in the slum. This outlook that Vanier puts up makes the others believe that he is an unwavering optimist, but the reality is that he is just as pessmistic as the others and uses humor to mask the truth that has been gnawing at him for the past 7 years.
Then he looks up to the sky with the pained expression on his face now replaced by a face of hatred, he grits his teeth and curses,
"Just if I had gotten that fucking Rift, I would being enjoying life relaxing surrounded by so many pretty women, but noooo instead I have to work every single day just to barley survive"
Vanier anger reaches a boiling point causing him to throw the cigarette out his hand and lift his middle finger towards the sky, and curse out,
"YOU KNOW WHAT FUCK EVERYONE, HIGH RANKING NOBLES, ENLIGHTEN ONES AND FINALLY THE CRUEL GOD WHO THINKS I DESERVE THIS SHITHOLE"
Vanier lowers his hand knowing no one is listening, quickly he placed the other hand on the wound as his outburst had caused the wound to worsen as if the Cruel God might have heard his disrespectful outburst and as painful spikes of pain shoot out to all parts of his body, he groans out
"Maybe I should not have done that…."
His eyelids begin to feel like the ending curtains of a show which should have ended long ago, his eyes became blurry, and the pain in his stomach slowly dissipates with the cold embrace of Lady Death replacing it. And just before the final essence of life leaves his body,
A bright golden glow penetrates the darkness of the night and forces itself through his eyelids and blinds his eyes, he winces his eyes and turns his head as a reflex to the uninvited intrusion, Vanier kept his head turned till the his eyes had stablized to the sudden light. Then with careful awareness Vanier opens his eyes, A Golden Rift had appeared in front of him, It was an Enlightenment Rift as Enlightenment rifts have mysterious runes with a particular Golden glow floating around it as compared to normal Rifts. But due to the pitiful state he was in, he didn't notice the golden runes.
Vanier stares in disbelief,
"Is that... is that a rift?... well dying in a rift would be less pathetic, no?"
He Groans as he gets up with a new sense of vigour with in him, a hope for a more honorable death, he slowly stumbles towards the golden glow of the golden rift. But before he could step inside the rift, He passes out from blood loss and ungracefully falls into the Rift...