The air in Athens felt heavy that morning.
Not from the weight of heat or smog, but from something else, an uneaseness, like the city itself was holding its breath. The sky was a sharp, unnatural blue, and the aura lights embedded in the buildings flickered in and out.
Kim Taewoo adjusted the strap of his backpack and glanced up at the Parthenon ruins, where tourists still gathered in small, murmuring groups. Out of nowhere, Greece alert system started sounding.
Taewoo's phone buzzed. A news alert.
"BREAKING: Tensions Rise Among the Four Clans. Insiders claim an all out war is about to erupt"
Taewoo's stomach twisted. Kurogane, Jangsan, Moirai, Mugon, names that used to feel like distant legends, now plastered across every screen. His fingers trembled as he scrolled.
Another alert headline:
"Global Aura Fluctuations Reported, Gravity Shifts in Tokyo, Blackouts in New York, Aura Storms in Seoul. Tornadoes and earthquakes on the rest of the world"
His heart pounded. His family was in Seoul. His friends. Everyone he cared about.
A low hum shivered through the air. It started deep, in the bones of the earth, and rose like the hum of an engine ramping up to overload. The ground trembled. The air seemed to bend, pulling at the edges of reality itself.
The tourists stopped murmuring. Everyone looked up.
The sky cracked. An invisible force started dragging everything upward. Loose stones, buildings, cars, even people, floating, weightless, a breath away from breaking free of gravity itself. Taewoo's feet lifted off the ground. Then it snapped back A sudden, vicious slam, the force of the world returning all at once. People screamed as they hit the ground, bodies twisted. Windows shattered. Cars crashed. Buildings ruined. Taewoo barely had time to react before debris from the buildings next to him fell upon him.
The world went black. The Four Clans had struck.
The Kurogane clan unleashed gravity itself, ripping the streets from the earth, pulling buildings upward like ragdolls in the wind.
Jangsan's fury spread like wildfire—a pulse of raw, destructive energy tearing through the land, disintegrating everything it touched.
Moirai's curse seeped into the very fabric of life, a sudden, terrible binding. People froze mid-scream, mid-step, their limbs twisted and locked in place.
And from the shadows, the Mugon clan struck without a sound. Entire neighborhoods fell silent, cut off from aura, from sound, from life itself.
The world now was just a battlefield for the war the clans so much desired, the price was paid in the cries of the innocents.
Taewoo wakes up, how even? He should be dead, or so he thought.
Rubble fell on him, he was sure, it was the last thing he saw, that should have crushed him flat.
Yet somehow, it hadn't.
His hands trembled as he touched his chest, his arms, his face. No pain. No blood. No broken bones.
At this moment he heard a voice, the voice was so soft, like a sound caught by the wind. He didn't understand what it murmured.
As he checks his feet, the debris seems to part ways in 2 sides, as if the world was subtly bending away from him in 2 directions. And then it was gone. Everything went back to normal.
Silence returned. The dust settled. The chaos outside had stopped.
Taewoo stared at his trembling hands.
"Why... am I alive?" he whispered
When he tried to get up, a clear voice, cutting through the fog like a blade.
"Don't move."
Taewoo froze. His breath caught in his throat.
From the shadows of a crumbling archway, she stepped out. A woman, tall and composed, draped in tattered black robes that fluttered despite the still air. Her eyes glowed faintly, a sharp, cold silver, like moonlight. A thin band of markings ran across her skin, a Moirai clan seer's mark, intricate and spiraling, glowing faintly against her skin. That's when binding chains rose up from the ground and held taewoo hostage.
"You're... alive," she said, almost to herself. Her voice was calm, but there was a flicker of something else beneath, surprise? fear?
She took some steps closer, as the chains pulled taewoo harder to the ground, making him kneel.
"Who are you?" she asked
Taewoo, couldn't phrase a word, due to still being in shock.
The mysterious woman then forced taewoo to introduce himself with the help of her controlling nature. As control is the main power of the moirai clan.
"My name ... my name is Taewoo."
The chains rattled as Taewoo struggled for air, his chest heaving under their crushing weight.
"Kim Taewoo," she whispered, voice low, as if testing the sound of it. "You should be dead."
"Tell me... why are you alive?"
The chains chocked him.
The pressure was getting higher, crushing, invasive, unbearable. As if someone was in his head stealing his memories.
And then, the chains cracked.
The woman recoiled, eyes wide in shock. Her aura, once sharp and suffocating, shattered, as if it had collided with something that was superior to her power.
A voice, not hers, not his, but something else, echoed in the silence. A sound aery, clearer this time, resonating deep within him.
"Perception, fortify... mine."
Taewoo's hands were shaking, but he felt it, a pressure rising inside him, coiling like a storm held barely in check.
And as the dust settled, the chains crumbling into nothing, Taewoo looked up, his eyes unfocused, but faintly glowing, a soft red colour flickering in his eyes.
Taewoo sat there, blinking slowly, still trembling, but a strange clarity settling over his features. His breath steadied. The chaos in his mind, the pressure of her control, it was gone, replaced by a calm, focused stillness.
"That's... not possible. Not without... intervention."
She stared at him, searching for something in his expression, in the faint glow that lingered in his eyes, not bright, but subtle, like the last flicker of an ember.
Such a presence, she had only felt coming from the moirai clan head.
But deep in the back of his mind, he could feel it, something was awake inside him. Watching. Listening. Waiting. Not a beast. Not a demon. Something... different. Balanced. Calm. Quiet. But if it wanted to, it could see through the world itself.
"Who... are you really?" she asked again, her voice softer now, less a demand, more a genuine question.
Taewoo met her gaze, unsure how to answer.
He didn't know either.
That was when the voice inside of him replied.
"Sit down. Shut up."
The words weren't loud, but they struck with the force of a stone dropped into still water.
She fell on her knees. As if the air weigthed tons.
"No... I... I am a Seer... I serve"
"You serve no one." The voice cut through her. Cold, matter-of-fact, as if naming a fundamental truth of the universe.
In that instant, the faint, invasive threads of control, the influence of the Moirai Devil of Binding Chains, snapped.
The woman gasped, as the fog lifted from her mind. Her aura unstable, as if a puppet's strings had been cut. She looked at taewoo like she was an other person.
And then, the voice spoke again, calm, but with a weight that settled deep into both of their bones.
"The war is already here. We must plan our next moves."
***
Tokyo, headquarters of the kurogane Clan.
The air in the grand chamber of the Kurogane Clan vibrated. Massive banners hung high, emblazoned with the clan's crimson sigil, their edges torn and singed from the recent chaos.
At the far end of the chamber, seated atop an elevated dais, was the Kurogane Clan Head, His eyes burned with a deep, unrelenting gravity, and the aura around him pressed down like the weight of a thousant stars.
Before him, the heavy doors creaked open, and a figure stepped through, a young man, tall, composed, yet with a faint edge of arrogance in his stride. His black uniform bore the insignia of the Kurogane heir, a stylized crest of a rose entwined with chains of gravity. His aura shimmered faintly around him, a subtle distortion that warped the air in his wake.
He knelt.
"Father, did u summon me?"
The Clan Head did not move, did not blink, his gaze fixed on a holographic projection floating before him: a map of the world, dotted with violent aura spikes. At the center, one point, pulsing faintly, Greece.
"This should be impossible"
"It's unstable," the Clan Head continued, voice dark. "But it... resonates. Not like ours. Not like the others. This is… new."
"You want me to find it?" The young man asked.
"Not just find it." The Clan Head's gaze sharpened, gravity around him tightening like a noose. "I want you to contain it and bring it to me"
"I am sure all 4 of us felt it, the fluctuation, tha change in the aura strings. The others are also on the move. Don't waste time."
"As you command father, I Kurogane Arata, will succeed in your request."
***
Elsewhere in the world, the storm had already begun to weaken.
In Seoul, beneath the twisted skyline of the Jangsan stronghold, a roar of fury shook the earth. The Jangsan leader, with his aura crackling like a live wire, stood atop a skyscraper's ruins, eyes burning toward the west.
"Find it. Bring it to me. We'll claim it before the others."
In Athens, uppon the ancient temple of the Moirai clan, storm clouds swirled unnaturally, lightning crackling in unnatural patterns across the sky. A lone figure, cloaked in shadows, whispered in a voice,
"Our borders have been breached… we must act."
And in Washington D.C., the Mugon clan's war room fell into a tense, suffocating silence. A single voice broke it, cold, precise.
"Mobilize our best fighters. If we don't seize this… the balance will favour the one that will."
The world was no longer stable.
The hunt had begun.
And somewhere, in the wreckage of a fallen city, Taewoo stands, unaware of the storms gathering, or the monsters now chasing his faint, flickering glow.