It was a peaceful world.

  Golden fields shimmered amber beneath the sun’s light. They stretched across villages and cities under the blue skies of the Central Continent.

  The wind whispered through those fields. Little children played and laughed, while adults worked the lands with magic.

  Within the cities, trade flourished. Both the rich and the poor sought amusement in taverns when night fell.

  It was a beautiful, pleasant life within the most powerful and largest nation of the Central Continent:

  The Empire of Apoxis.

  A nation shaped by the evolution of magic, a strong economy, and warm-hearted people.

  Emperor Saladin III Apoxis was a respected monarch. He ensured peace through diplomacy and rejected military force altogether.

  He was a good ruler, though a man of the heart. In the eyes of his Prime Minister — his right hand — he was a weak man.

  By the minister’s ideology, the heart was not made to govern. He was no advocate of words, relying instead on military might.

  Thus, he succeeded in convincing the old king to establish an army of magical elites.

  And so, the peace of such a beautiful, warm, and gentle nation began to crack.

  The ten other great kingdoms that guarded the Central Continent of humanity grew uneasy.

  The Empire of Apoxis was, by far, the most populous, economically powerful, and thereby the wealthiest nation — and, soon after, a military superpower.

  All other great nations combined could barely match its strength.

  They felt threatened by Apoxis’ militarization.

  Within the nations of the Central Continent, magic was everything: healing, warfare, progress.

  A world that had lived in peace and prosperity since the great war a thousand years past — a war that shattered and isolated the continents — began to crumble.

  Years passed, and the ten magical kingdoms armed themselves. They seized the wealth of their people, pouring all resources into their militaries.

  Legions of mages, knights, and archers were trained and steeped in propaganda.

  The magical nations conspired against the Empire.

  In the end, the arrogance of these magical nations led to catastrophe.

  In one of the ten kingdoms, a child ascended the throne — a child shaped by propaganda against the Emperor.

  The whisper of a serpent — the Prime Minister of that nation — urged the child to invade the Empire of Apoxis.

  The Empire responded swiftly, mobilizing thousands of soldiers and securing its borders.

  The magical kingdom was crushed and temporarily occupied.

  Emperor Saladin III Apoxis did not support senseless bloodshed. He acted strategically and sought to minimize casualties on both sides.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He did not know the true reason for the sudden invasion of one of the great magical nations.

  His people were shaken and grew restless.

  He immediately called for peace negotiations. Yet the Prime Minister responsible had fled to another great magical nation.

  Instead of seeking peace, he presented a construct of lies before the kings of the other nations.

  He assured them that the day had come for which they had been preparing for years.

  The Empire, he claimed, had invaded their lands out of the Emperor’s insatiable thirst for power, aiming to subjugate the entire Central Continent.

  To the sorrow of peace, the kings sided with him. He was no honest man, but a skilled speaker.

  And so, the ten great magical kingdoms united into the Alliance of the Ten Kings.

  The Empire, unable to prepare for this war and possessing only a fraction of the soldiers claimed by the propaganda — for the Emperor had rejected violence — was utterly overwhelmed.

  Thus began the War of the Ten Kings.

  They invaded the Empire, slaughtering everyone on their path to the capital.

  The Emperor fell to his knees before the Ten Kings, ready to give his life for his people.

  But, steeped in pride and hatred, they declared that as long as the Empire existed, it would threaten the Central Continent.

  They resolved that the people of Apoxis must be wiped from history.

  On the Day of a Thousand Tears, which became a sea of blood, the soldiers of the Alliance of the Ten Kings executed all people of the new race: soldiers, farmers, women — and even children.

  There were two races of humans: the dominant second race — also known as the new race — who possessed mana and could wield magic, comprising 95% of humanity, and the nearly extinct first race, also called primordial humans, who had no mana and thus no magic.

  It was a cruel act of envy. Mothers tried to hide their newborns, who later died, unfound but abandoned.

  Left behind were those who, under the gentle Emperor, had never realized they belonged to a different race.

  They remained, in a nation utterly destroyed and driven to ruin.

  The once amber-golden fields were soaked in a threatening crimson. Many survivors could not endure it and took their own lives.

  Others seized their chance, claiming land.

  From the blood of the Empire, more than a hundred splinter nations arose.

  The Emperor, powerless and spared as a member of the first race, took his own life.

  He hanged himself in the shattered throne room, while the mosaic windows cast the setting sun’s light one final time upon the visage of the fallen Empire.

  It is said that on that night, the wind carried the voices of the dead. Across the ruined cities, through the charred forests, to the borderlands where refugees cowered in the shadows of night.

  And as the first dawn broke over fallen Apoxis, nothing of its former splendor remained.

  The Alliance of the Ten Kings withdrew, unable to govern the shattered land, and left behind a vacuum.

  Bandits, warlords, self-proclaimed princes, and remnants of old armies rose. From the ashes of a fallen nation emerged countless splinter kingdoms.

  No law, no order, no faith. Only the right of the strong.

  It marked the beginning of a new, dark age.

  They called it the Era of the Shadow Realms.

  Each of the hundred-plus splinter nations claimed to be the heir of Apoxis.

  The stronger devoured the weak.

  Former provincial commanders crowned themselves kings.

  The cities that survived became fortresses, surrounded by crimson fields and ancient battlefields where bones would still be found centuries later.

  And then they rose.

  Those who had never belonged to the new race.

  The primordial humans.

  Humiliated, despised, and left amidst the wreckage, they had survived.

  Without magic.

  Without hope.

  But alive.

  And from this nameless ash, something would rise.

  Something no kingdom had ever believed possible.

  A new will. A nation of shadows.

  No nation of crown, magic, or gods.

  But a nation of the forgotten.

  A nation of children without names.

  And in the ruins of the old capital, beneath the tattered banner of the Empire of Apoxis, an oath was spoken.

  Never again would they tolerate magic.

  Never again would they kneel.

  Never again would a foreign crown decide their fate.

  A nation of steel, not of sorcery.

  Of blood, not of bloodlines.

  Thus began the Blacksteel Coalition, from which the Realm of Black Steel would rise.

  The Blacksteel Regime.

  Also known as the Empire of Purity, the Supremacy of Technology, and the Perfection of Order.

  And somewhere, in the dirt of the old world, a child was born.

  A child who belonged to no name, no nation, and no law.

  Its name? It didn’t matter.

  Not yet.