Journey to Become the Zenith

An Omen Across the Ancient Continent

The elves noticed it first.

Of all the races inhabiting in the Ancient continent, the elves were the ones most deeply connected to the world itself.

Their senses extended into the forests, the rivers, the soil, and even the faint fluctuations of moonlight.

So when one of the twin moons was suddenly split apart, their reaction was immediate.

Across the continent, elven settlements erupted into confusion.

There were four major races of elves, and although they all witnessed the same phenomenon, their concerns were entirely different.

The dark elves looked toward the divided moon with grim expressions.

Their relationship with darkness and lunar power made the sight especially disturbing.

Beside them, moon elves stood beneath the strange sky in silence, their faces pale beneath the silver light.

One of the twin moons had been cut.

Not eclipsed.

Not obscured.

Cut.

The separation was so precise that the two halves remained almost perfectly aligned, as though an invisible line had simply been drawn across the celestial body.

A moon should not be capable of being cut.

Yet there it was.

The dark elves exchanged uneasy glances.

”If the moon has truly been damaged...” one elder whispered, his voice barely carrying through the chamber, ”what will happen to our power?”

No one answered.

The moon elves were asking themselves the same question.

Would their connection to lunar energy weaken?

Would their magic fluctuate?

Could something that happened in the heavens somehow alter the balance of their own bloodline?

They had no answers.

And that uncertainty frightened them more than the sight itself.

The wood elves had entirely different concerns.

Their attention was not fixed on the sky.

It was fixed on the forest.

The ancient forests were ecosystems built over countless generations. Every creature had its place. Every predator maintained a balance. Every species, from the smallest insect to the greatest beast, played some role in keeping the wilderness alive.

And among those creatures stood the dragons.

They were apex predators.

Their presence alone influenced the balance of entire regions.

Now one of them had died.

The wood elves felt the disturbance almost immediately.

A powerful life force had simply vanished.

Then another.

The forest seemed to tremble beneath the invisible shock.

”What happens to the ecosystem now?” an elder asked quietly.

There was no easy answer.

A dragon was not merely another animal.

Its death could create a chain reaction that spread through the entire forest.

Meanwhile, the high elves were having perhaps the most complicated reaction of all.

They were the oldest of the four elven races.

They were also the fewest.

Unlike the younger races, they carried memories passed down through generations—memories of events that had long since become myths to everyone else.

When they looked toward the divided moon and the missing stars, some of their elders immediately understood.

Their faces changed.

Fear.

Recognition.

And something dangerously close to resignation.

They knew who had done it.

Or, more accurately, they knew the kind of existence capable of doing it.

The person who had just cut the very stars themselves.

An ancient high elf slowly lowered his staff.

”We have seen this before,” he murmured.

The younger elves around him looked toward him.

”What does it mean?”

The old elf did not answer immediately.

His eyes remained fixed upon the heavens.

Every time that person appeared, something happened.

Something that affected every living being.

Sometimes that existence had saved countless lives.

Sometimes the same existence had brought death on a scale that no ordinary mind could comprehend.

That was the nature of such a being.

A contradiction given form.

A savior.

And a bringer of death.

The high elves understood one thing better than anyone else.

When that person appeared, the world itself was never allowed to remain unchanged.

...

Deep beneath the Ancient Continent, another race remained almost completely unaware of the spectacle above.

The dwarves who were holed up within their vast underground tunnels had no clear view of the heavens.

The stone ceilings above them remained exactly as they had always been.

Torches burned along the walls.

Hammers struck metal.

The rhythmic ringing of forged steel echoed through enormous caverns.

To them, the night continued normally.

The sliced moon was meaningless because they could not see it.

The rain of blood had not reached their underground settlements.

So the dwarves continued their lives unperturbed.

For the moment, their world remained safely beneath layers of stone.

...

The demons were not so fortunate.

Especially the higher-ranked demons.

They had felt the disturbance.

They had sensed the unnatural shift in the world.

And the moment they realized what had happened, an old memory surfaced.

A prophecy.

The prophecy of the late Demon Lord.

For generations, it had been passed down among the higher demons, spoken only in whispers and rarely discussed openly.

Most had treated it as an old tale.

A warning from a dead ruler.

Something that belonged to another era.

But now...

The sky had been cut.

Blood had fallen from the heavens.

And one of the moons had been divided.

Several powerful demons gathered in silence.

No one wanted to be the first to speak.

Finally, one of the higher-ranked demons clenched his fist.

”Could it be...”

He stopped himself.

He didn’t dare finish the sentence.

Another demon looked toward the distant sky.

The question was already written in his eyes.

”Was the prophecy finally coming true?”

The thought alone sent a chill through the gathering.

Supreme Demon Emperor Anos...

Had he truly returned to this world?

...

The other races had no ancient knowledge to rely upon.

They had no memories of the person behind the attack.

They had no understanding of incarnations.

They knew nothing about the hidden struggle taking place beyond their perception.

They only saw the moon split apart.

They saw stars vanish.

They saw blood falling from the sky.

And to them, there could only be one explanation.

Something terrible was coming.

In villages, families gathered beneath their roofs.

In cities, people crowded the streets and stared upward.

Children cried when they saw the blood-red rain.

Warriors tightened their grips around their weapons.

Scholars desperately searched through ancient records.

Priests began praying.

Mages stared at the heavens with pale faces.

Nobody knew what had happened.

Nobody knew who had done it.

And because people feared what they could not understand, the same thought spread from kingdom to kingdom.

The moon had been cut.

The stars had disappeared.

Blood had fallen from heaven.

An apocalypse was coming.