They say a story is the woven thread of human fate — a river of joy and sorrow winding through the ages, both real and imagined.
So I once believed, as I sat before my desk, the scent of ink faint in the air, the lamplight trembling over stacks of unfinished manuscripts. Behind me stood a bookshelf heavy with my "creations" — worlds half-born, dreams half-forgotten. Each book began with promise, yet none found its end.
And before me lay another — a tale nearing its last page, not the ending of its story, but perhaps the ending of mine.
"I am so tired," I murmured, rubbing my weary eyes as the night bled into silence. My gaze drifted to the window — to the shadowed city beyond — and something inside me broke. Memories I had long buried rose unbidden, washing over me like cold rain. Tears welled, followed by laughter — brittle, hollow, threaded with despair. I laughed until my chest ached, then crumbled into quiet sobs, unable to recall a single memory untouched by pain.
My trembling hand reached for my phone. The contact list was nearly empty, yet one number still glowed faintly: Mother.
My thumb hovered. Tap… dialing…
A video call.
brr…
"Hello… Jack."
That voice — gentle yet distant — tore through the years like a blade. I gasped.
"Jack? Did something happen?" she asked, her tone poised, guarded. I said nothing. I just listened.
"Is that Jack?" another voice called from behind her — deeper, familiar, long-forgotten.
Father.
It was the first time I had heard his voice since I ran away.
In the world I came from, my parents were elites — politicians who stood above the crowd. Their world was gilded with power, and I was born beneath its crushing weight. Every moment was sculpted by expectation, until I could no longer hear my own voice.
At sixteen, I fled — carrying with me a scholarship, a small bag, and a mind fraying at the edges. I smiled for years afterward, hiding the cracks that spidered across my heart.
Only one thing remained true to me: I wrote. Stories no one finished, dreams that never ended. Each manuscript a fragment of myself — my fears, my longing, my fading hopes.
"End the call," my father's voice cut in, sharp as frost. "I have a meeting tomorrow."
I swallowed hard. "Mother… Father…" My voice shook like a candle in the wind.
"What is it, Jack?" my mother sighed.
"I've transferred everything I have to the youngest's account… All my winnings… the competitions… everything. Please… get her the dress she wanted — the pink one with the ribbons. The toys, the teddies… just—" My voice faltered into sobs.
"Jack, wait—"
I ended the call.
The phone slipped from my fingers. My sobs grew, rising and falling until sound itself fractured into silence.
Then — darkness.
*…. *
"Soul Fusion — the convergence of two spirits into one essence. For such unity to succeed, both must share fragments of fate — a mirrored desire, a wound, or a dream.
When two consciousnesses merge, the weaker fades, and the stronger becomes divine."
When Jack awoke, he stood amidst an endless void — no ground beneath, no stars above. Only the whisper of eternity and a single shimmering lake in the distance.
"Where… am I?"
He walked, though he could not feel his feet touch earth. As he neared the lake, a figure awaited him upon its edge — white hair glistening like falling snow, skin pale as moonlight, robes flowing like mist.
"Who are you?" Jack asked.
"Ān Shí Hú," the figure replied, tilting his head slightly. "The name I gave myself. And you?"
"Jack."
"A strange name," Ān murmured. "No surname?"
Jack smiled bitterly. "I don't deserve one."
Ān gazed into the lake, where stars shimmered faintly beneath its surface. "This is an illusory space. I've been here… for two thousand years."
They sat together beside the lake — two strangers of distant worlds, sharing lives shaped by sorrow. One had died countless times upon the battlefield of gods; the other had perished slowly, unseen, beneath the weight of expectation.
"I can't believe you endured that," Jack whispered.
Ān chuckled softly. "Endured? I devoured my own kin once. It was survival… though I sometimes wonder if monsters like me deserve to live."
Jack smiled through tears. "I could never eat my siblings. They'd taste too bitter."
Both laughed — the kind of laugh that breaks hearts, not heals them.
"But there was one who gave me reason to live," Jack said quietly.
"Oh?" Ān tilted his head.
"My little sister… three years old. She was my light. I just hope… she forgets me."
Ān reached out, gently brushing Jack's tears away. "You're the first I've spoken to in centuries," he murmured.
"Same," Jack replied.
At that moment, a crescent mark shimmered upon their foreheads — one pale silver, the other violet.
"What is this?" Jack gasped.
Ān smiled faintly. "Ah… it seems I was cultivating just before you arrived."
Jack frowned. "But I wasn't—"
Ān laughed.
They stepped into the lake together. The water glowed beneath their feet, shifting from silver to amethyst. As they reached its center, their bodies dissolved into twin orbs of light — one white, one violet.
The orbs danced, collided, and fused.
Ripples spread across the lake, birthing sparks that became lightning, lightning that became petals, petals that unfurled into a vast lotus of light. The air trembled as the lotus bloomed, each petal fading from soft lilac to the deepest indigo.
Above, the heavens split — a dark eclipse forming in the sky.
From the heart of the lotus, a new being was born.
A body of starry void draped in flowing white silk, bound with golden armor. Hair cascaded like silver rivers, fading to violet at the tips. Fox ears crowned its head; eighteen radiant tails unfurled like celestial wings. Its eyes opened — twin crescents of divine amethyst.
A Third Primordial being was born
Far away, in the barren plains of the void realm — an army marched beneath the shadow of twin peaks, their banners marked by the sigil of a black lotus. The wind howled; snow bit their armor.
"Lord Zhì Fēng, the formation weakens!" a commander cried.
"It has been two millennia since our master's imprisonment," another replied gravely.
The demon lord Zhì Fēng raised his eyes to the eclipse above. "The seal forged by the flesh of the Demon God and the Celestial King… It fades."
Beside him, Ruì Yīng, his companion beast, whispered, "The crescent… it glows again."
Then — the heavens stirred.
The mountains quaked, the sky cracked, and lotus flowers of light rose from the snows — each petal breathing moonlight, each bloom birthing butterflies of violet flame.
"Master…" Ruì Yīng whispered, trembling.
A rift of light tore through the heavens.
A storm of divine power burst forth — circles of ancient runes and seals rotating through the void, spiraling around a single column of light that reached beyond the stars.
Then, silence.
Time froze. Dust hung midair.
And within that silence…
The sound of strings — delicate, harmonious — echoed across worlds.
Upon the fractured plane of heaven and earth, a figure sat in silent meditation.
His legs were crossed upon a throne of black stone, the very air around him trembling as though wary of his breath.
He was robed in flowing black silk, its surface rippling like a shadowed sea beneath starlight. Subtle silver threads wove through the garment — patterns that shimmered faintly, forming shapes of serpents and lotuses that vanished when looked at too long. The collar was trimmed with dark fur, soft as nightfall, whispering faintly in the wind.
A sheer, dome-shaped veil of pitch-black mist draped down from his crown, concealing his features entirely save for the faint gleam of hair at the top — strands long and white, cascading past his waist like falling moonlight. Toward their ends, the color bled into a dark, spectral violet — as if the void itself had brushed its fingers through his tresses.
Behind him, the air rippled.
An immense sigil blazed into being — a halo vast as the heavens themselves.
It was a symbol wrought of calamity and divinity: an eight-pointed star, twisted and sharp, enclosed within a circle of arcane fangs. Each line pulsed with violet fire, each rune thrummed with forbidden rhythm.
His skin — what little could be seen from beneath his sleeves — was smooth and cold as carved jade, so pale it bordered on translucent. And within his hands rested a qin of nightsteel and bone, strings that shimmered faintly with starfire.
For a time, all was still.
Then, his eyes opened.
What emerged from beneath the veil were not mortal eyes — but slits of pure amethyst flame, vertical pupils glimmering like the edge of a blade drawn between worlds. The moment sight met existence, heaven shuddered.
He plucked a single string.
The sound was not music — it was creation and destruction intertwined.
With that note, the ground split open, and a blinding pillar of light surged forth, pure and white, swallowing shadow and sky alike. Layer upon layer of glowing seals and rotating sigils encircled the column — ancient formations of celestial script long erased from mortal memory.
Each ring turned in perfect harmony, their movement echoing like the ticking of divine mechanisms.
Then came the aftermath — the breath of ruin.
The barren lands crumbled. The horizon was devoured by a storm of light. The world itself screamed as balance was undone.
And at the center of that devastation, the veiled figure continued to play — calm, unbothered — each note birthing stars, each vibration tearing through the heavens.
Part II
Amidst the storm of shattered earth and wailing winds, Zhi Feng's form twisted and lengthened, bones groaning as scales of silver-black unfurled across his body. His transformation was a tempest in itself — divine energy roaring through the heavens as the ground split beneath his coils.
The once-man had become a serpent vast enough to blot out the sky — a celestial snake-dragon whose scales shimmered like steel beneath the pallid light. His crimson eyes burned with feral brilliance, and when he opened his maw, the cry that tore from him silenced thunder itself. Jagged fangs glistened, each one large enough to impale a man whole. The air warped around him, suffused with the scent of lightning and ancient qi.
Rising above the chaos, Zhi Feng's colossal body coiled upward through clouds streaked with rain and light, spiraling toward a lone figure standing unmoved upon the shattered plain. That figure, robed in flowing white, sat serenely with a Qing, a zither of jade and spirit wood, resting upon their lap. Each plucked string spilled waves of harmony that parted the storm like ripples upon heaven's sea.
Encircling the figure in an endless coil, Zhi Feng's body wove through the mist like a living mountain. His vast head lowered, eyes dimming from rage to reverence as his voice entered the other's mind — deep, reverent, trembling with emotion.
"Master," he called, his words not of tongue but of soul.
The figure did not look up. Fingers continued to dance across the strings, and from the Qing rose a melody both mournful and divine — a song that stilled the chaos, taming even the dragon's storm-born heart.