Darkness begets darkness.
In the dimensionless void, where the locks of fate were locked, the eternal prisoner stood before the ancient mirror of the universe. He didn't know how long he had been trapped here. Maybe a minute. Maybe a million years. Time itself was imprisoned in this place.
To a jailer (in a voice like the dying of the stars:
"It is forbidden to be more than what you were created to be."
The prisoner (raising his head for the first time in ages:
"And who told you that you created me?"
The mirror trembled. These words were enough to shake the throne of eternity.
In the human world, at the foot of the cursed Tianluo Mountain, fourteen-year-old Fang Yi was vomiting black blood in a forgotten cave. His slender body trembled like an autumn leaf in the wind.
The woman's voice (in his head, like a warm whisper in a polar night:
"You're not sick... You're just remembering."
Fang Yi (in a hoarse voice:
"Remembering what?"
Woman's voice:
"That you broke the rules before... and you'll do it again."
He didn't know where this voice was coming from. All he knew was that this cave carved into the heart of the mountain had been calling to him in his dreams since birth.
When he touched the damp walls of the cave, memories of a million lives exploded:
He saw himself as an emperor in the time of legends, destroying kingdoms with a single word
He became a child who was burned alive because her eyes burned with a forbidden light
Turning into a monster to be used as a weapon in endless wars
Fang Yi screams as he clutches his head
"Stop! This is too much!"
The jailer appears as a moving shadow on the walls, his voice fills the cave
"This is the price of knowledge. It is forbidden to know more than we allow."
Fang Yi laughs nervously, blood still dripping from his nose
"If knowledge is painful, why did you instill in me the desire to know?"
There was a heavy silence. Even the shadow stopped moving for a moment, as if the question had struck it dead.
---
The battle that followed was neither swords nor magic. It was a battle of wills, fought with only two words:
Fang Yi screamed into the darkness, his golden and black eyes blazing
"I exist!"
The cave walls exploded. The invisible chains turned into snakes of light, then evaporated into the air like daydreams. The jailer screamed for the first time in the history of time:
The Jailer:
"No! That's impossible!"
Wang Yi emerges from the rubble, his black hair turning white strand by strand
"It's just... forbidden."
When he returned to his village of Xinlu, he found it burning.
Children are screaming, women are crying, and men are carrying axes and torches. The old priest pointed a trembling finger at him:
The priest:
"Look! It's the devil himself! He's the one who brought this curse!"
Fang Yi looks at his tiny hands, then at the flames
"I didn't do this..."
The woman's voice in his head, this time clearer
"You did. The power was inside you all along. The fire... The memories... The pain... All fuel for what you will become."
On the distant horizon, above the burning mountaintop, the one-eyed man closed his old book, The Laws of Being, and opened a new one. On its cover, in blood-red handwriting:
Experiment 100000: What if we let it be?"
Thick smoke covered the sky of Xinlu Village like a mourning robe. Fang Yi stood in the center of the main square, his two different eyes - gold and black - devouring the scene with awe.
The peasants whisper fearfully
"Look at his white hair!"
"It's the mark of the devil!"
The old priest raises his wooden cross
"We must burn him before he destroys us all!"
But Fang Yi wasn't looking at them. He was focused on the strange heat rising from his palms. He felt it for the first time - an immense power pulsing beneath his skin, like a river of lava.
The woman's voice (now clearer, as if coming from outside his head
"This is not the end... It's only the beginning."
Fang Yi suddenly raised his hands, without meaning to. An invisible shockwave erupted, sending the peasants flying through the air like autumn leaves. The flames in the village bowed as if to greet him, then suddenly extinguished.
The one-eyed man observes the scene from afar, whispering in his diary
"Interesting... He learned to control it faster than we expected."
Fang Yi looked at his trembling hands. He didn't know how he did it. All he remembered was:
The sound of an explosion in his head when he shouted "I exist"
A strange sensation as if a million threads of light connected him to everything around him
The sound of the jailer's voice screaming deep inside him before disappearing
A woman's voice suddenly appears in his body, a translucent ghost in a white dress
"Now do you understand? You're not just a human being... You are a break in the system.
Fang Yi wanted to ask who she was, but the ground began to tremble under his feet. From afar, he heard a roar as if Tianluo Mountain itself was groaning in pain.
The one-eyed man quickly closes his diary
"It's time... They are starting to come."
On the horizon, where the mountain was, a crack opened in the sky . From it, black rain poured down, and in the center of the storm, three giant shadows appeared, slowly moving towards him.
The woman's voice was urgent
"You can't face them now! Run to the Forbidden Forest
But Fang Yi didn't move. He felt something strange... A **sense of recognition of these beings.
Fang Yi whispered
"You... You were with me in prison, weren't you?"
One of the shadows let out an ear-splitting scream, while the other two started running towards him with superhuman speed.
Just as they were about to catch him, a golden light exploded from Fang Yi's chest.
The jailer's voice rang out in the sky
"Forbidden! Forbidden! Forbidden!"
Then... Time itself was interrupted
"This is not the end, just a glimpse of what's to come... The world will never be the same again."