Absolute silence.
No time, no space, no life.
As if existence itself had stopped in a single unfinished breath.
Darkness swallowed everything; even the echo of thought vanished.
Then suddenly—
The void split open with an explosion of crimson light, like blood burning in the shadows.
From that light, a giant eye emerged…
An eye beyond human description.
Its sclera was a deep abyss of living flesh, within which primitive symbols flickered and vanished.
Its pupil expanded endlessly, and in its depth, Ashen saw something move — as if it contained the entire universe, or as if the universe itself was merely a dot within it.
His whole being trembled at the first glance. He felt the blood in his veins freeze, then burst all at once.
His heartbeat became an echo of a strange sound that pierced his soul before it reached his ears.
> "Survivor of flesh and ash…"
"You have reached what none dare to approach."
The voice was cold, vast—without anger, without mercy—only an absolute presence that crushed everything else.
The Eye of the Heavenly Dao — a name Ashen had never heard, yet somehow knew, as if it were carved into his blood.
The eye widened further, releasing waves of symbolic energy that shook the void itself.
Each pulse carried the taste of death, rewriting the essence of existence.
Around Ashen, the world changed—the darkness tore apart, turning into a liquid void, then into an endless field of nothingness.
Before his feet, a bloody staircase began to form.
It pulsed like a heart, and each step bled slowly, the blood dripping with an echo as it fell into the nothingness below.
The air was thick with the scent of iron and burned flesh, heavy as if filled with crushed souls.
Ashen looked upward—
Ten steps only.
But above them, a massive phrase was carved into the void itself, written in living blood before his eyes:
> "A Thousand Years of Pain"
The letters twisted and moved as if alive, blood flowing from them endlessly, trying to reach down to him.
The voice of the Heavenly Dao echoed again, closer this time, speaking directly inside his skull:
> "Ten steps before you, and each one is a century of hell."
"Every step will break a part of your body, your soul, and what you call your self."
"Climb, if you still believe you are alive… or die before you begin."
"Will you survive, or lose yourself beneath the weight of time and pure agony?"
Ashen's breath froze.
Inside his heart rose a wave of desolate silence, and his thoughts began to fade, as if being pulled out of him.
He felt his being drawn toward the staircase—not by fear, but by a strange, tempting call.
A faint voice seeped from the depths of his blood—not the Dao's, but something older, darker, primal:
> "This is not a trial to survive… but one to erase you."
The air around him grew heavier, and every particle of his body trembled.
Unseen voices began whispering from the void—human and monstrous together—crying, laughing, screaming.
Shapeless spirits, born from countless souls that had failed to climb before him.
Ashen took a step forward.
The blood beneath him ignited like boiling ground.
The moment his foot touched the first step, something inside him tore apart—
Reality itself trembled.
A silent scream rose from his core, unheard by anyone, yet it ripped him from within.
> "The first step… the beginning of pain."
The voice of the Heavenly Dao whispered with a coldness beyond description, as if everything followed an eternal law that cared nothing for the weak.
Ashen raised his head toward the summit. Blood flowed from his eyes, yet he smiled.
It was a meaningless smile—half defiance, half madness.
> "A thousand years of pain?"
He muttered in a cracked voice, as if the words themselves bled.
"Then let's begin…"
And so began a journey that could not be measured by time, only by pain reborn with every moment.
Above, the celestial eye half-closed, as though observing an entertaining experiment.
As for Ashen, he took his first step onto the Stair of Blood—toward a trial from which no one ever returns the same.