Prologue: Born of Silence

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Prologue: Born of Silence

The sky tore open the night Raizen was born.

Above the Hollow Cradle — a forgotten land where winds did not howl and the stars never blinked — the eclipse and solar flare collided. It bathed the mountains in a dead white glow. As monks knelt in silence, a single cry never came. Only stillness. A child had been born, but not like any before.

His eyes opened, silver like frozen moons. His skin radiated faint energy, and across his back, a mark formed — a black crest shaped like a burning eye.

They called it the Void Crest.

“He is not meant for this world,” one monk whispered. But Master Daijo, the oldest among them, stepped forward. “No,” he said calmly. “He is meant to change it.”

They named him Raizen — a word in the forgotten tongue meaning silence before the storm.

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Chapter 1: The First Spark

Raizen never played like the other children. He meditated under lightning, walked barefoot through snow, and spoke rarely. The monks taught him the basics of martial focus, but the boy learned too quickly — absorbing movement, energy, and silence like air.

At age seven, the Skyfall Monastery was attacked.

Bandits crept through the valley, believing the monks weak. One raised his blade toward a crying child. Raizen, barely taller than the attacker’s waist, stood in front of him.

He raised a hand.

The world blinked.

A scar of shadow opened in the air — as if reality itself tore. The bandit vanished. The rift snapped shut. The child he protected wept not in fear, but awe.

The monks stared in horror. Master Daijo looked at the boy, then to the sky. “He’s touched the void,” he whispered. “But it hasn’t touched him back — not yet.”

Raizen looked down at his trembling hand. His voice was calm.

“I didn’t mean to destroy him. But I didn’t mean to forgive him either.”

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Chapter 2: Eyes of the Abyss

Years passed. Raizen was now eleven, meditating under waterfalls, training with eyes closed, listening to things beyond sound. Sometimes, he would stare into the void between moments — that frozen silence just before the wind moved, or before lightning cracked. There, he heard it.

A voice.

Low. Endless. Familiar.

It whispered, “What you are cannot be taught. Only remembered.”

He began training himself. Creating pulses of black energy that could silence magic itself for brief seconds. Birds would fall mid-flight. Flames would flicker and vanish. The monks grew wary. Even Daijo became silent.

They began calling him "White Soji" behind closed doors — the Silent One Who Judges. The name reached his ears. He embraced it.

One morning, standing beneath a sky split by stormlight, Raizen whispered his first vow:

“No one gave me this power. I will not beg to control it. I will master it… or erase everything.”

And when the clouds parted above him for the first time, the Void itself listened.

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Would you like me to continue this arc into Chapter 3 (“Names and Graves”), where he finds out the truth about his origin and leaves the monastery?

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