The first thing Astreon felt was not pain.
It was weight.
As if his soul were being dragged into a bottomless pit — slow, heavy, inevitable. The temple around him seemed darker. The shadows had grown while he slept. And even with his eyes open, he felt trapped in a place where time had forgotten how to move forward.
He tried to move his fingers.
They responded. But slowly. As if his body was no longer entirely his.
He stood up with difficulty, groaning through clenched teeth.
"This... this can't be normal..."
He reached for the pendant. Still warm. Still pulsing.
A shiver ran down his spine. His chest hurt — not like something was cutting him from the outside, but from within, where feelings have no name. As if something ancient was being torn out… or implanted.
He felt tears burning his eyes. He hadn't cried since he was ten.
"Why... me...?"
He inhaled slowly. The air seemed thicker.
And then he saw it.
Light. Not from the sun. Not from the temple.
But from himself.
Thin golden lines crossed his forearms, glowing beneath his skin like cracks in living porcelain. They pulsed in silence, as if following their own rhythm. As if his flesh were trying to hold back something... trying to escape.
This isn't me. This was never me.
But something inside replied: You always were.
The walls began to tremble. A deep sound, like a thousand voices whispering in a language he understood... yet had never learned.
He shut his eyes. A single second was enough.
The ground vanished.
He saw flashes:
— A man with eyes like his, bleeding inside and smiling.
— A girl surrounded by golden flowers, being pulled by a river flowing upward.
— A battle between faceless figures, fighting in silence under a fractured sky.
Images. Feelings. Memories that were not his — but hurt as if they were.
He dropped to his knees, gasping.
What is this? Why am I seeing all this?
Stronger than the vision was the sensation: an infinite loneliness. As if he had lived a thousand lives alone, without knowing.
And deep within it all... a presence. Not hostile. But... aware. Quiet. Like someone who awakens after a long sleep and decides, for the first time, to open their eyes.
She said nothing. But Astreon understood:
You are what remains when time fails.
He screamed, at last.
Not loudly. Not like a hero.
But like a boy who had never been seen — and suddenly, was seen too much.
The pain did not cease after the scream.
It merely changed form.
Astreon collapsed to his side, fists pressed against his chest. He gasped like someone who had just come up from underwater. But it wasn't lack of air — it was lack of meaning. Of edge. Of ground. He no longer knew where he began or ended.
The temple was still, but inside him everything spun.
Am I still myself…? That voice… was it inside me or watching me from the outside?
He shut his eyes tightly, trying to block out what he had seen. But the images returned. Not as memories — but as cracks. Doors opening to places he had already been, yet never truly lived. And every time he tried to breathe, he felt... pulled. As if parts of him were scattered elsewhere. In other moments.
Or in other versions of himself.
"You found me… again."
The words echoed, fractured, like drops falling into the depths of a well he had always feared to look into.
He sat up slowly, body trembling.
He looked at his hands.
The golden markings were gone.
The pendant was cold.
But inside him... something remained lit. Quiet. Watching.
What if I wasn't made to awaken anything? What if I was made to carry what was left of what should never have existed?
The doubt hurt more than any wound. There was no anger. No courage.
Only a void — ancient, dense, now filled with echoes.
For a moment, he wanted to smash the stone. Throw it against the wall. Bury it. Scream again.
But his fingers wouldn't let go.
Because, even confused, even lost, for the first time he felt that something saw him. Did not fear him. Did not avoid him. Simply saw him.
Maybe being noticed is worse than being ignored.
But... I couldn't go back to being forgotten.
He leaned again against the damp wall. Heavy eyelids. A mind sinking into a strange daze — not quite sleep, but not waking either.
Images still danced behind his eyes. Fragments. Echoes. Possibilities.
He saw himself in an arena, covered in black flames.
He saw himself falling from an endless tower.
He saw himself… smiling with eyes that were not his.
Astreon let out a breath.
Or perhaps a lament.
I don't understand what I am. But something... has begun.
The pendant's light faded completely.
And then, silence embraced him once more.
This time, heavier. Deeper.
Like invisible arms... pulling him away.
And Astreon slept.
Not in peace.
But like someone needing to escape themselves — even if just for a few hours.
Far from the ruined temple.
Far beyond the forgotten forests and the villages tucked between mountains — rose Ser'kai Thal, the City of the Serrated Sky. Three colossal peaks formed its pillars: the Dragon's Teeth. Between them, suspended stairways, carved towers, and meditation platforms clung to the stone like ribs of living rock. The city breathed power, tradition... and secrets.
There reigned the Sect of the Serrated Dragon, home to the Convergents — hybrid cultivators who bore both the flame of physical energy and the mist of the soul. Preparations were reaching a boil. Exactly one year remained until the legendary Celestial Fold Tournament, where the continent's most powerful clans would clash for the right to touch the Sanctuary of the Eternal Springs.
But not all trained for glory.
Because beneath everything — beneath the Temple of the Two Skies, below the Hall of the Vortex Forge, and even the pavilion of fused runes — lay the Silent Catacombs.
Only one descended there. And only on moonless nights.
His name was Master Harun. The last living member of the generation that sealed it.
The stairway was damp. Alive with moisture and barely buried time. His torch flickered more from memory than from wind.
At the end of the corridor, chained in ancestral runes, sat the prisoner.
Black hair, long like forgotten roots. Face hidden, body motionless. Only the chains breathed — slow, silent, with symbols that seemed to think.
Harun placed the plate on the floor.
"Three centuries, and I still wait for the day you'll curse me," he said without humor. "Because silence, sometimes, hurts more than heresy."
No reply.
The old man turned away, weary. Took two steps.
Then he heard it.
A crack.
Not from the plate. Nor the stones.
From the chains.
He spun, startled.
The figure had moved. Slowly. Like one rising from an ocean of ages.
The head tilted. Strands of hair fell aside, revealing an eye.
Scarlet. Alive. Ancient.
The prisoner smiled.
Crooked. Far too wide. Unhurried.
Harun froze.
And then, a voice — hoarse, multiplied, as if echoing from hundreds of dead throats:
"The cycle…"
(pause)
"…has given way."
Runes flickered. The chains trembled.
"The chains of that forgotten era... are about to break.
Tragedy.
Chaos.
He… will return."
Harun stumbled back.
"N-No… This isn't possible…"
"I… no longer need to live," whispered the prisoner, lifting his face.
His eyes pierced him. Not with hatred. But with utter acceptance. As if his very existence had fulfilled its purpose.
Harun tried to run to him. To reach the cell. Stop him.
But he was too slow.
The prisoner moved first.
He bit his own tongue with inhuman force. A sharp crack. A dark surge.
He collapsed, smiling.
His lips still moved, breathless:
"I… will be… your first seed."
Silence.
The chains... vibrated.
But now, from the inside out.
And then, far away… somewhere in the world… something heard.