Chapter 1: The Weight of Three Lives
Death.It wasn't something I feared anymore.
After all, I had already experienced it twice.
The first time, I was just a man—an engineer obsessed with machines, weapons, and the science of destruction. My life ended in fire, consumed by the very invention I had poured my soul into. A cruel irony, though not unexpected.
The second time, I opened my eyes in a world of martial clans and ancient techniques—the Murim. The heavens themselves had toyed with me, and in their mercy—or perhaps their mockery—they granted me three wishes. With knowledge from countless worlds of sword and sorcery, the comprehension of divine runes, and the promise of another life beyond, I clawed my way to the pinnacle. They called me the Heavenly Demon, a title both feared and revered.
But titles, power, and bloodshed had their limits. That life, too, ended, as all mortal things do.
And so, here I was again.
The third life.
My first breath in this world was not as a nameless child, but as the firstborn son of the Glayder family. Nobility. Status. Wealth. Everything one could dream of, laid at my feet from birth.
But privilege was a double-edged sword. Beneath the silks and jewels, I saw the rot—the arrogance of nobles who treated lives as currency, the festering greed that eroded the kingdom of Dicathen from within.
I was reborn with purpose.I wasn't here to live quietly.I wasn't here to serve.
No.
I was here to build, to rule, and to prepare this world for the storm to come.
The Alacryans would descend. The Asuras would manipulate from the shadows. And just as in my past lives, blood would drown the soil.
But this time, things would be different.
Because this time, I was ready.
Already, I could feel it—the mana coursing through this infant body. Yet beneath it, something deeper stirred. The resonance of qi, the whispers of nature energy, the silent call of aether. Energies that most would struggle to even sense, let alone control.
I would not just bend them to my will. I would fuse them, engrave them onto my very soul through runes beyond mortal comprehension.
A new power system—mine alone.
And I would forge more than my own strength. From the gutters, the slums, the broken chains of slavery, I would gather those cast aside. Children abandoned by fate, lives deemed worthless by nobles and kings. Eight of them. Eight shadows that would become the pillars of my reign.
Together, we would tear down the old world.
Together, we would create a kingdom unshakable, a fortress against gods and monsters alike.
I was no longer just a man.No longer just a warrior.
I was the sum of three lives, the burden of countless worlds, the will of a demon cloaked in the flesh of a king.
And when the time came—when Agrona and Indrath themselves descended upon Dicathen—I would make them bleed.
This was not their story.This was mine.