THE ECLIPSE LEGACY

The echoes of the vice guild master's desperate threats still lingered in Ian's thoughts, but exhaustion swallowed them whole. He could barely process anything. Right now, survival was enough. The weight of everything about the battle, the awakening, the betrayal had pressed down on him, and he knew that forcing himself to think would only drain him further.

"I'll deal with it later… tomorrow…"

With that, Ian flagged down a cab and headed home.

The city lights blurred past him, distant and unreal. The streets of Auriasia were still alive, buzzing with the remnants of a world that never stopped moving, yet Ian felt completely detached. It was as if his body was here, but his mind was still trapped in that cursed cavern, lost in the ruins where everything had changed.

By the time he reached home, his limbs were leaden. He stripped off his dirt-streaked clothes and stepped into the shower. The warm water cascaded over him, washing away the dried blood and grime, but not the weight pressing on his chest.

Minutes later, he barely managed to pull on a clean set of clothes before collapsing onto his bed.

The moment his head hit the pillow, sleep devoured him.

His mind then created dreamlike illusions as lucid as it could be.

Ian found himself back in the cavern.

But something was different.

The suffocating darkness was gone, replaced by an eerie silver glow. The jagged ruins and scattered relics shimmered as if they were alive, pulsing with some unseen rhythm.

The air was thick, not with dust, but with whispers.

"Return…"

"Unravel…"

"You are not the first… nor the last…"

Ian turned, searching for the source of the voices, but all he saw was the ground beneath him shifting and rewinding causing the shattered stones piecing themselves back together, broken walls reforming as if time itself were folding in reverse.

And then, he saw it.

His imprint, the strange symbol that had burned itself onto his skin when he awakened was glowing. The markings pulsed like veins of liquid silver, forming intricate runes that he couldn't decipher, yet somehow understood.

"You have inherited what was lost."

The voice was neither male nor female, neither kind nor cruel. It simply was.

Suddenly, the ruins around him twisted, shifting into something else entirely.

A towering monolith, covered in inscriptions that felt impossibly ancient, stood before him. At its center was a carving an exact replica of the imprint on his arm.

The closer Ian stepped, the clearer the whispers became.

"Once, there were wielders of time… Custodians of the Eternal Thread."

"But time is forbidden. And those who wield even a fraction of its power… are forsaken."

Ian's breath hitched. The air around him cracked, the vision distorting like shattered glass. His own imprint flared, heat searing through his arm. Images flooded his mind.

Battles waged in the fabric of time itself.

Warriors manipulate the past and future as weapons.

A calamity that swallowed them all.

And then….

A shadowed figure. Watching. Waiting.

The whispers turned to roars.

"AWAKEN!"

Ian jolted awake, gasping. His heart pounded against his ribs, his body drenched in cold sweat.

The room was silent, the faint glow of streetlights filtering through his window. But his arm….

His imprint was still glowing.

Not as bright as in the dream, but faint streaks of silver traced along his skin before slowly fading.

Ian sat up, breath unsteady. That had been more than just a dream.

It was a memory but not his own, but of something long lost. Something forbidden.

"Wielders of time… Custodians of the Eternal Thread…"

His fingers curled into a fist, feeling the unfamiliar power coursing within him.

This was no ordinary Eclipse Awakening.

It was something else entirely.

For the first time, Ian realized that he had inherited a legacy the world had tried to erase.

After a few minutes focusing on that matter, Ian tried to divert his attention to other things.

Ian then forced himself to focus. There was something he needed to confirm.

All Eclipseborn received an imprint upon awakening, it was an insignia that marked their existence as Awakened. By inserting a portion of their Eclipse Essence into the imprint, it should reveal their assigned rank, abilities, and status.

Usually, newly awakened individuals had to wait for their powers to stabilize before the imprint became usable. The process took days, sometimes even weeks.

But Ian…

He hadn't had the luxury of waiting.

Back then, in the depths of the cavern, he had fought blindly, relying only on instinct and a fragmented understanding of his abilities to survive.

Now, it was time to know.

Closing his eyes, Ian channeled a small amount of energy into his imprint. The moment his essence made contact, his mind was overwhelmed by a sudden rush of information.

Words. Numbers. Symbols.

But one thing stood out above all else.

His Gift Rank.

Ian's breath hitched.

"No way…"

His eyes widened as the answer burned itself into his thoughts.

[GIFT RANK: UNIQUE]

"An… Unique rank?!"