Ascendance and Ash

In the dying husk of a once-great empire, where humanity clings to survival under the pale light of an ancient artificial moon, you are nothing more than another forgotten soul scraping by in the Wastes. Poor, nameless, and abandoned, you're sent to undergo the brutal Echo Rite—a test that may turn you into a Practitioner, a human-machine hybrid empowered by eco, capable of battling the horrors that stalk the land. If you survive, you earn a future. If you fail, you vanish like so many before you. But you want more than survival. You want to know why your father, the powerful Practitioner Wiesen Froix, left you to rot and sent you to die. You want to carve a name for yourself, to fight back against the decay, to find meaning in a world drowning in dread. Armed with only a crude balloter—a shifting, multifunctional weapon—you begin a long, dangerous journey through Urchin’s Wastes, braving nightmarish anomalies, ruined settlements, and the growing threat of the Eldritch. As you rise through the ranks of cultivation, face rival Practitioners in deadly tournaments, and uncover long-buried secrets in the Great Cities, you’ll have to choose: follow the broken path of the past… or burn a new one through the dark. Even if you can’t save everyone—you’ll fight to save something.