Pilot

A forgotten darkness falls upon a barren, scorched supercontinent. With the water and wind it brings, this darkness wraps itself around the whole world, and a seed that appears at the heart of the continent sprouts the very instant the first raindrop in tens of thousands of years falls upon it; with supernatural speed the sprouts grow layer upon layer into a sapling, and then into a magnificent “Tree of Life.”

The Tree’s enormous roots¹These roots are the support that holds the whole surface of the world together; through the magic of the Tree of Life, they have spread across the entire earth in such a way that they can never be destroyed. This is why the world is named Radix (root) terra (world)., unable to fit within the earth, split the ground and burst forth, and the mysterious power scattered from these roots turns everything around them into meadows and forests. This power envelops the whole world, but the world is not ready for such pressure. The power spreading from the roots splits the supercontinent into six separate pieces with a tremendous earthquake; the earth screams, the seas overflow, the sky begins to roar. As the continent breaks apart, the roots torn away are transformed by the hunger they suffer and scatter in clusters across the divided continents; these creatures are called the “Guardian Beasts.” They guard the lands they migrate to with an animal instinct, yet they keep away only what they see as a threat. The group that gathers in “Kuvsar” in the west are huge, muscular wolves that will come to be called “Kırpus.” Those that migrate east to “Birin” are ten-legged horses that will come to be called “Tar.” Those that go north to “Nibiru” are formless beings with no name at all. What remains is a small piece of land in the far east whose very existence is unknown, and “Abundan” in the middle, home to the Tree of Life. In Abundan, golems that can grow nearly as tall as the Tree of Life itself make it their purpose to protect the tree from every possible threat. This rain, which lasts a hundred years, leads to an event that will be carved into history as “the Beginning of the Catastrophe,” and to the inevitable apocalypse it brings with it. As the endless rain draws to a close, a blinding light forms at the top of the Tree of Life, followed by a thunderclap that makes even the golem, the most fearsome of beasts, shudder. The golem, looking at the hot being moving at the top of the tree, is terrified of it when its hand turns to ash the moment it reaches out; yet its instinct to protect the tree overcomes its fear, and it attacks the fire, a fire that casts a shadow, with its whole being. The other golems follow and come to its aid, but the flame begins to fly toward Nibiru with incredible speed, paying the golems no mind; the golems are so focused on the fire that they fail to notice the fire’s shadow³How powerful can a shadow be? If it is the shadow of one of the mightiest beings, it is not something to be ignored. blending into the darkness and vanishing. Taking the form of a ball of flame, it falls into the heart of Nibiru, and there it creates an explosion three times the size of the Tree of Life; the beasts and animals of Nibiru turn to ash before they understand what is happening, the ground cracks, and Nibiru begins to break apart from its edges. The fire’s own peculiar magic fuses with the roots in Nibiru, splits the earth and rises into the sky as a sphere; slowly, with dark red and bright red vein-like lines, this sphere begins to take shape and turn into a monster never seen before. The name of this monster is “Urfen.” As Urfen takes form, the seas of Nibiru begin to boil, and the fish in them rise to the surface. The heat that builds up reaches the coasts of the other continents as a scorching blaze, and every living thing there slowly burns. The fire takes on a face and approaches Urfen; as it tries to control it, Urfen hurls it with its thorned tail to the nameless land in the far east. Urfen’s screams are heard throughout all the realms. Flaming veins, like the roots of the Tree of Life, begin to spread from beneath Nibiru, but after a while they stop; Urfen falls silent and sinks into a deep sleep in the pit where it was born. The flame, flung to another land, is now very weak; it too withdraws into seclusion and rests as a small flame in the enormous cave it has made in that land. With its roots, the Tree of Life revives the scorched coastal lands, but every revival like this shortens its life, and with each passing day, one more leaf falls from the tree…

Abundan and the other coastal lands facing Nibiru turn into forests, while Nibiru comes to have an ecosystem of its own, made of ash and fire. A hundred years after these events, humans²Humans are not the only conscious race in the world. Besides them there are the “Vamirs,” who worship the Tree of Life and overflow with magical power; the winged “Root Fairies,” who live in the roots of the Tree of Life underground and hold Radixterra together as one; the wild “Maid” people, who rule the southern sea; and the members of the Order of Fire, who were once human but have been transformed by years of malevolent magic. appear; they build their own settlements and cultures, and they farm the land. From among these people rise two who will change the fate of the world: one, a curious wanderer; the other, a brave warrior. We will speak of them as two sages: “the Tree Sage” and “the Fire Sage.” On the continent of Abundan, in an ordinary village, there lives a warrior who grows stronger as he grows older and burns with the desire to become someone even mightier. Through rumors he hears among the people, the warrior learns that whoever kills the guardian of the Tree of Life will gain tremendous power. Hearing this, he takes up his sword and shield and sets out, ignoring the warnings of others. He mounts his horse and rides on; along the way he stops in different villages, eats their food and stays in their homes. In every home that takes him in, his hosts ask him about his journey, and whoever the young warrior tells his purpose to, the answer is always that it is a foolish idea and that he should not go through with it. The warrior is not the kind of man to turn back from a goal he has set his mind on because of a few strangers’ words; heeding no one, he thanks them for their help and goes on his way. At last, on the horizon, the majestic tree appears like a newly blooming flower. Growing larger with every second, the tree now looks so vast that however far he tilts his head back, he cannot see its top. The warrior is spellbound by the tree’s beauty, but before long a huge golem appears before him; this is the very moment he has been waiting for. Still, the great heap of wood standing before him, covered in roots and vines, with dark purple and blue light spilling from within, does strike some fear into him. Yet the warrior, who puts his purpose before his own life, immediately reaches for his sword. He fights the golem with all his strength: first he severs the purple tendons where its legs join, then does the same to its arms. The golem strikes the warrior’s arm with the sharp spikes on its hand and tears it off, but since it does not take the arm holding the sword, it seals its own fate. Fallen to the ground, the golem waits the way a condemned man waits for his executioner. Just as the warrior leaps into the air to bring his full weight down and cut off the golem’s head, the golem lets out a deafening cry, and from the ground rises another golem, ten or twenty times the size of the one he has been fighting. The warrior is horror-struck; even the first golem had seemed terrifying. With every cell of his body he accepts that there are beings beyond imagination, and he realizes how small the golem he was fighting truly was, and that even so, he has lost his left arm to it. With the flick of a single finger, the colossal golem slams him against the Tree of Life like a fly. Now he has neither arms nor legs; hardly a bone in his body remains unbroken. Seeing the golem coming at him, in agony, he bites down on the sword beside him and tries to hurl it at the golem. Knowing his end has come, the warrior rests his head against the tree and closes his eyes. Branches emerging from the trunk draw the warrior inside, and there the tree fills him with the knowledge of everything that has ever existed and ever will. His body cannot bear it and shatters; the tree replaces his shattered body, all but his head, with its own enchanted wood, and the warrior becomes a bald figure with a body of wood, glowing deep-blue eyes and a beard of gold. He lives within the trunk of the tree and begins to guide every being in need of help, and the people begin to call him the Tree Sage.

Our other sage is a wanderer born on the continent of Kuvur; his only goal and his only joy is to travel the world he does not know, to explore its every corner and to learn. On this road, which he set out upon barefoot, he meets different cultures, eats different foods and learns about history. In the second year of his journey, he reaches the land in the far east and finds a strange cave there. He goes in and begins to explore, and is disappointed to find nothing but an empty cave; but deep inside, he notices a small glimmer. When he goes to it, he discovers a tiny fire burning on top of a stone. He finds it strange: how could it be burning without any wood or kindling to feed it? He leans in to take a closer look, and his long hair catches fire. The fire awakens and suddenly flares up; growing larger and larger, with the hunger of centuries it attacks the first source of power it has found, and the wanderer, screaming, is pulled into the flames. Feeling the heat spread through his whole body, starting from his fingertips, as every tear he sheds evaporates instantly and his body turns to ash, he tells himself that he does not want to die, that there is still so much he wants to discover; he refuses to die and watches his body slowly turn to ash. As he faces this horrifying pain, the fire is surprised to see that the man, more than half of whose body has turned to ash, still has not died; thinking it can make use of this, it whispers to the wanderer in the voice of a man with a burning throat: “WHAT DO YOU SAY TO LIVING FOR ME?” The wanderer, who would do anything to live, accepts, and his ashen body takes shape; with fiery veins running from his neck up to beneath his chin and a body made of ash, he gains the knowledge of everything that has ever existed and ever will. Though glad to be alive, the wanderer is enraged at knowing everything and comes to the brink of losing his mind; the fire seizes on this, manipulates the sage and has him found a cult. Finding suitable people and bringing them into the cult, the sage manipulates its members, teaches them fire magic with his knowledge, and uses them to lull the fire to sleep and to feed it. This cult becomes known as “the Order of Fire,” and its members address the sage as “the Fire Sage.” As for the sage, he is determined to feed the fire until the day it awakens with all its power, and to unleash his fury upon the whole world.

The birth of the Tree Sage is accepted as the beginning of the common calendar, and the years are counted from it. In the year 1024 of this era, a boy named Sinal, born on an island never mentioned in any book, an island whose very existence is unknown, falls into the grip of a destiny full of heavy responsibilities; yet, strengthened by his great love, the desire to learn, he will strive to travel all of Radixterra and become the one who saves it from the inevitable catastrophe.