“I’ll be leaving soon.” Maman says one day, in the midst of a lukewarm day.

“Ooh!” Astra coos. “Where will you go? Can I join?”

Maman runs a hand through his hair. “Somewhere far, far away.” She says. “And you can’t join me.” He squeaks as she pokes his nose. “You’re too young for it.”

He pouts. “I’m old enough!”

His Maman only smiles.

She’s gone by the next day.

When he first wakes to find her gone, he panics. He looks around his hut, shouting and calling out for Maman, but she never appears. Nothing from the hut is gone—his Maman hadn’t taken anything when she disappeared. But that can’t be right! She said she was leaving, so she’ll need to bring something, right?

He doesn’t find her, nor does he find anything that she’s taken. Instead, all she’s left behind is a single book, with its cover torn and its skeleton snapped.

He doesn’t know what it says. He can’t read. But he does find pictures—drawings of great Islands floating in the air, sketches of animals from the Legends Maman would read to him, of skies where the Sun and the three Moons floating in the sky together. All accompanied by hundreds of pages of writing he can’t read.

It’s frustrating, really.

But he continues trying to read it anyway.

Days pass. And then weeks. And then months. Then years. Seasons come and go as he grows, living from the forest surrounding him and sleeping inside this hut he’d been born in. 

He’s a little sad that Maman’s gone. He misses the times when she’ll read him stories to make him fall asleep. He wants to taste the roasted deer and bunnies his Maman likes to make every week. He wants for Maman to pick him up and put him on her shoulders. He misses all the little things she teaches him day by day.

He wants his Maman.

She doesn’t come back.

He starts to hate her a little, he thinks. It doesn’t last long though. He’s never been one to keep being angry at something, and his Maman did say that she was leaving. Maybe she had something important she had to do?

Maybe she’ll return someday. It’s not as if she said that she’s never coming back. He just has to wait.

At least he tries to convince himself. It doesn’t always work, but it works well enough.

So he waits still. 

Some days he’ll stay stuck in his hut, laying on his bed of straws and reading through the book of pictures and sketches. He’s read through it several dozen times already, but it never gets any less interesting. There’s something captivating about it, of believing that something so incredible really exists.

Some days he’ll journey into the larger forest neighboring the one he lives in. He’ll head there with a hand-crafted basket tied to his back, in search of anything to eat. He’ll find Pulip Nuts and Ulikberries and edible Folik Roots, and when he does, bolded letters will appear inside his mind’s eye.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Rank 0 — 517/50,000 Exp

He doesn’t know what it means, but he knows that he needs to get both numbers to match. His Maman always said that he’ll need to do that. 

Some days he’ll head to the village some distance away from his hut. He’ll go there to meet the old man that likes to buy his fruits, or to find the kind lady who knitted the rags he now wears. He’ll ask what they know about the mystical letters he can see in his mind’s eye, and they tell him the same story.

“They’re Records given by the gods.” The kind lady said once. “We’re blessed with the power to become more than we are now.” She winks. “Once we do, we Rank Up.”

When he asked how to Rank Up, the old man laughed. “Ha! Just giv’ up kid!” He said. “We ain’t reachin’ that threshold in our lives. We’r just street kids you and I, we’r no Noble or Saint or whatev’r.”

He tries anyway. He forages more, crafts more, does more. But he never seems to come any closer. The numbers don't seem to come close to the number on the right.

But he continues to try.

Years pass. He doesn’t really know how old he is—Maman never really told him and he never bothered to find out. He doesn’t let it bother him much.

His days are peaceful, almost slow. It’s nice, he admits. But at the same time, he can’t help but feel like there’s something else he needs to do. Every time he wakes up, for a single moment, he feels that there’s something off—that there’s something he needs to do.

It fades just as quickly, and he moves on.

But one day, perhaps from pity, perhaps from annoyance, the old man finally gives in and starts teaching him how to read. He’s never told the old man why he wants to read so much, but it’s not as if the old man’s ever asked either.

It’s hard. The letters twist and turn in ways he can’t easily grasp. But for as gruff as the old man is, he’s kind. And he’s always been rather stubborn about things. So he reads and reads and reads, trying to bludgeon the meanings of letters and words into his head.

It takes years. But slowly, arduously, the words in the book Maman had left behind start making sense.

And, finally, he reads the first word written in the book.

Eden.

It clicks in him, then. His Maman—she must’ve gone in search of Eden! He can’t be sure, of course, but he has a feeling that’s the case. His Maman’s always loved myths and legends, and what else could she have gone to if not the land where legends live?

A purpose lights inside him. Eden. He needs to find Eden. He needs to grow strong and smart so that he can journey out to find Eden.

Because he wants to find his Maman again, but also because he wants to see what Eden looks like. The pictures and sketches and descriptions aren’t enough. He needs more. He needs to see it with his own eyes.

It feels a little greedy, but the torch is long lit, and he’ll do nothing to quench it.

And now that he can read, he truly devours the thick book for the first time. He reads the words that he once couldn’t, and it breathes even more life into the pictures and sketches drawn all throughout the book. How the Islands remain afloat, the biology of the Beasts, powerful Magics he’d never heard of, Civilisations no one else knows.

He finds himself fascinated. He finds himself obsessed.

Is this what his Maman felt when she first read about Eden? This almost animal-like hunger to know more—just thinking about Eden makes his heart pump.

Is this why she left, all those years ago?

He thinks he can understand his Maman a little better now.

But in the end, it doesn’t change anything. He knows now. Eden, the land where the gods are born—a Haven said to exist at the Southern Edge of the World. A place for the lost and the forgotten, it is said that all that was separated will become whole once more.

For the first time in years, he finally knows what to do.

He needs to grow. He needs to get enough Exp for his Record to be Calibrated by the gods. He needs to curry their blessing, and when he finally manages that,

He needs to Search for Eden.