In a modern world—just another evening in a famous, bustling city.
From a distance, the skyline glowed. Towering buildings shimmered with lights as people hurried through their routines. Cars moved like veins of steel across the wide roads. On the sidewalks, crowds passed each other, lost in their own worlds, unaware of the story quietly unfolding above them.
High above, on the rooftop of one of the tallest towers, a man stood still—unmoving, silent, as if time dared not touch him.
He wore a black coat, tailored and clean. His presence was calm but strangely distant, almost unreal. His sharp features were striking, but it was his eyes—blue as frozen stars—that made him seem like someone carved from another existence. His black hair fluttered in the cold wind, strands dancing like silk threads caught in the twilight breeze.
He looked down at the city with an unreadable expression.
So much noise… yet it all felt hollow.
He closed his eyes. The wind grew stronger at this height, but he didn't move. Instead, something stirred within him—deep, buried memories clawing their way to the surface.
"I don't belong here," he thought, breathing out quietly.
This world wasn't his. Not truly. He had arrived here ten years ago—reborn, or rather, *cast down* into this realm after dying in a war that tore across stars.
"Astral Void Domain…" the name echoed in his mind like a scar. "That last battle…"
The memories came in flashes: a blood-red sky, vast worlds trembling, a flame that consumed all reason—and countless enemies who had come together to end him.
"They feared my Voidless Flame…" he murmured, his voice low, steady.
"And they had good reason." He wasn't being arrogant. He remembered the way entire factions had collapsed under the weight of his ascension. The way even ancient existences trembled at the name he bore.
But power comes at a price.
"Even my own blood turned on me," he whispered, his jaw tightening. That part still hurt more than he wanted to admit.
They didn't betray him because he was evil.
They betrayed him because they couldn't control him.
And so, they hunted him—killed him.
And he woke up here.
Now he was just a man with a decent job in a corporate office. A good salary. A new name: Riven Veyliss. No cultivation. No sect. Just routine and repetition.
"Ten years," he thought. "Ten years pretending to be ordinary."
He had buried his past. Or at least tried to. But deep inside, it never truly left him.
But suddenly… he felt something wrong.
A sharp chill ran down his spine. The hair on his neck stood on end.
Someone was behind him. He didn't hear footsteps. No door opened. But the air—something had changed.
Slowly, cautiously, he turned around.
And froze. A girl stood there.
She looked around his age, maybe younger, with long white hair that glowed faintly in the rooftop light. Her face was breathtaking—too perfect for this world, too still. Her eyes, pale and deep, looked at him not with surprise… but recognition.
His breath caught. "No… It can't be…"
His lips parted, disbelief crashing through the calm he had worked so hard to build.
"Impossible... How are you in this world?" His voice was quiet, but sharp with emotion—shock, confusion… and something else. Hope?
But before she could answer—or before he could ask anything more—
The world fractured.
Reality behind him cracked open like shattered glass. A jagged rift in space yawned wide, wind howling through it as if the universe itself had exhaled.
He barely had time to move. The force pulled him backward, into the rupture. His body stiffened, instincts roaring to resist—but it was too late.
"No. Not again...!" His hand reached toward the girl, but she didn't move.
Instead, she just watched with a strange softness in her expression.
"We'll meet again," she said gently, her voice like a whisper carried by the wind—soft, certain, almost like a promise.
In her eyes, a quiet affection flickered—tender, unspoken… as if she had waited lifetimes just to see him again.
Then she vanished into the darkness. And the rooftop fell silent.
The wind blew past. The lights below never stopped glowing. The world kept turning.
But Riven Veyliss was already gone, swallowed by the rift, unable to hear her final words.
And far beyond the veil of space, the long-lost ascension of the crownless monarch had quietly begun.