Chapter 1 – The Echo of the Unnameable"You feel it, don't you?"
The voice came from the void.
It did not echo through the air—there was no air. It was a whisper spoken directly to the soul, like a fingernail scraping the core of existence. Mo Han remained still, kneeling within the forgotten prison on the edge of the Real. A place where time dared not enter, where even the gods avoided looking.
Chains as dark as oblivion bound his wrists. But they were not made of iron.
They moved... they breathed. As if they were waiting.
He didn't know how many days, weeks, or centuries he had been there. All he felt was the constant pressure crushing his spirit, as though something in that place weighed heavier than gravity itself.
Until it called to him.
A tremor coursed through the chains, followed by a silent blast—a thunder within, like a bell tolling inside his skull. A black light burst from his chest. His blood burned. His body convulsed. And on the ground beneath him, arcane inscriptions began to emerge—not drawn, but revealed, like ancient scars reopening the fabric of reality.
"Curse: Heirless Throne. Level: Forbidden."
Then she appeared.
She did not arrive.
She manifested.
First came the sound of muffled weeping—like the lament of a mother forgotten by her own children. Then a figure began to emerge from the shadows of the cell. She did not walk. She did not float. She simply was—as if she had always been part of that place.
A woman.
But not a human.
Her body was wrapped in veils of black smoke. Her face obscured, but her eyes... they glowed with the gray of a dead star. And wherever she stepped, the ground refused to touch the light.
She stopped before Mo Han.
She did not bow. She did not speak. She simply looked at him.
And then, when the seal burned itself into his arm, the pain made him scream—and in that instant, she moved closer, knelt down, and whispered:
"Cursed among the cursed... You were not chosen by the gods."
"You were chosen by the Chains."
"They won't try to save you. They will try to lock you away again."
"Because you... will be feared."
Mo Han tried to respond, but his eyes rolled back. The last thing he saw was the woman's shadow dissolving into smoke, slipping back into the cracks of reality.
Then, he passed out.
But the seal remained.