The Forbidden Land — a festering graveyard of ancient sects, ruins lost to time, and beasts untouched by reason.
As Luan fled from a King-Level Beast — a jagged-fanged Void Devourer Tiger — he tumbled down a hidden ravine, bones shattered, skin torn, blood painting the stones.
There, amidst death and moss, something pulsed.
A black flame danced silently above a glowing seed, suspended mid-air like a god's whisper.
Luan, barely conscious, crawled — drawn to it. As his fingers brushed the seed, a torrent of dark energy surged through him. His sea of consciousness exploded, flinging his mind inward.
There, in a vast darkness, he sensed a monstrous aura, ancient and suffocating. Cracks began to tear through his very consciousness.
From within the flame, a silhouetted figure emerged. Medium hair, draped in tattered robes, floating motionless with eyes closed — a fragment, a shadow of something impossibly vast.
Luan passed out.