ENIGMATA

PROLOGUE

The Star Who Defied the Sky

For the first time in a thousand years, the stars went dark.

Stars that once shimmered brightly were no more. Only the dead blackness loomed over the world. As if the heavens had sealed their eyes, and the world below forgot how to dream, with fogs curling up the continent, winding through valleys, drowning forests, and crawling up the once mighty mountains.

From the heavens, moonlight pierced the dense fog, though its light fell upon a singular structure, ancient and foreboding. A spiral tower, rising from the earth as if it were a nail driven up towards the heavens.

"Some once believed it was God's judgment. Others think that it was once the home of a great Sage. But don't worry, Rael—just old wives' tales," someone once told him. "No need to think hard about it."

It loomed amidst the moonlit fog, weathered but unbroken. Its surface worn out from age, but standing proud as a relic of an age long gone. Though the winds carried no songs, nor rustle of leaves, only the slow breath of mist and fog.

Rael's boots struck wet stone with each step, his soles skidding slightly through the moss carpeting the spiral path. The tower held no lanterns, only the fading memories, the stone worn by the steps of those who once climbed it. Though it held no names, these grooves whispered the ascent, both sacred and doomed.

Every step upward made the world below disappear into the blur of fog. Every glance upward reminded him of how endless this tower seemed. His breath quickened—not from fear, but from the thinning air. The higher he went, the less there was to breathe. Still, he climbed.

He gripped the hilt of his dagger, leather-wrapped handle soaked with sweat from the climb. Its blade was plain, iron, imbued with faint glyphs—simple, but sturdy. He didn't know what awaited him at the top. Only that the answers he needed could not be found below. Not from the ruins, nor the ashes of the village. Not in the voices of priests and scholars who had long forgotten how to look up.

The wind shifted. It didn't make a sound, but brushed against him, soft and cold, like fingers across the back of his neck. As the fog ahead grew thicker, Rael froze, his heart pounding in rhythm with the silence. He could barely see three paces ahead, as the fog swelled, reluctant to let him pass.

And so from the folds of his coat, he drew his pen— slender iron stylus, with a bone handle, etched with glyphs. Few remembered the old scripts; fewer still dared inscribe them on living flesh. Yet, he uncapped it with shaking fingers, then turned his palm and began to write.

After writing, he whispered "Auros luma".

The ink shimmered gold as it soaked into his skin. Light bled from his palm—soft, pulsing. Not bright, but enough to pierce the veil of fog around. The glyph flickered in rhythm with his heartbeat. A fragile star, pulsating in the dark, defiant of the sky.

"This will do," he whispered.

He stepped forward once again, one hand on his dagger, the other lit like the stars that once pierced the night sky.

As fog thickened more up ahead, the light from his palm faltered, struggling to push through the dense veil. The glow that once lit several steps barely reached beyond his fingertips. Though the glyphs still pulsed on his skin, steady but dim, like a lantern slowly losing its flame.

The veil closed in, dense and suffocating, as though urging him to go back. The glow from his palm weakened, swallowed by the thickening haze. He stood still, tense, but listening. No movement, no voices, no sounds at all. Only the pressure of the fog and the rough stone beneath his boots.

And then, for a heartbeat, something shifted. Not in the fog, but within him. The glyph on his palm stuttered, its glow breaking into an unfamiliar pattern—the gold tinged with a flicker of crimson. His pulse hitched. For a breathless moment, the light vanished. Darkness closed in. Then—the flicker of gold, weak, but steady. He didn't move. Not yet.

He glanced over the edge of the stairwell, but saw only gray. The drop below vanished. The world outside the tower seemed to disappear. Still, he gripped his dagger and continued forward. With every step he took, the fog didn't part—it clung. Whatever watched, whatever waited, he would not yield. Not here, not after coming this far.

"I will not turn back!" he cried.

Yet, his voice vanished into the fog, unheard by anything living. But the tower heard. The tower felt different now. Less like a place and more like a test. Then a sound. A chime—soft, clear, and close. He stepped forward again. He didn't hesitate. He started climbing faster.

The tower was no longer quiet. Rael's breath caught— he wasn't alone. Something ancient was watching. It had noticed him. And deep within the tower's throat, something began to stir— slow, vast, and no longer asleep. And far below, across a continent cloaked in ash, the first echoes reached the ruins.