At the farthest end of the Azuervon Galaxy Cluster, in the Surun Galaxy at the edge, lay a planet called Lunara. Though called a planet, Lunara's scale dwarfed imagination — one of its smaller continents alone could eclipse the full diameter of what lesser worlds might consider a small planet. The Voss Clan ruled one such "relatively small" continent: the Crimson Veil. Their influence extended only to this landmass and its immediate surroundings — a modest domain amid the vast planetary empires that dotted Lunara. The clan was far from supreme; they were a small, resilient group, often overshadowed by greater powers on other continents, their survival hinging on cunning alliances, quiet vigilance, and the unyielding pursuit of their ancestral path.
The Crimson Veil was soaked in blood — not literally, yet the air itself carried the heavy, metallic tang of iron and life spilled long ago. Crimson mist clung low to the ground in the mornings, rivers and even the sea around the continent ran a shade deeper red, and even the leaves of the ancient Bloodheart Trees — towering behemoths whose canopies blotted out swathes of sky — bore veins that pulsed like living arteries. This was no curse, but the natural manifestation of the Voss Clan's ancestral Dao of Blood. Generations of pursuing this path had reshaped the land itself, turning the continent into a perfect crucible for those who sought to comprehend blood, vitality, sacrifice, and dominion through crimson essence.
Because of this, the Dao of Blood was unusually easy to grasp here. Young cultivators who might struggle for decades elsewhere could touch its threshold in years. Power came swiftly — substantial enhancements in strength, regeneration, and life-stealing techniques that made Voss disciples respected, and sometimes feared, within their limited sphere, if not beyond. Many clansmen and even common folk of the continent followed this path, drawn by the promise of rapid ascent. Yet the price was etched into the land itself: an ever-present aura of primal hunger and quiet violence that whispered constantly at the back of every mind, a reminder that the Dao of Blood gave generously — but never for free.
On this day, the entire Crimson Veil buzzed with anticipation.
Inside the Voss Clan's ancestral estate — a fortress city carved from a single mountain of Blood Crystal that towered hundreds of thousands of kilometers into the scarlet sky, its highest peaks lost in perpetual crimson clouds that never fully parted — preparations for the birth of the Patriarch's son had reached fever pitch. Every corridor hummed with hurried footsteps. Every gate stood double-manned. The air itself seemed to hold its breath, thick with the particular tension of people waiting for something they could feel approaching but could not yet name.
Servants hurried through corridors lit by floating orbs of condensed blood Qi that cast warm arterial light across ancient walls etched with the victories of generations past. Elders in blood-embroidered robes stood watch at every gate, their stern gazes sweeping the grounds with the practiced calm of those who had seen enough of the world to know that calm was rarely what it appeared. Outside the estate walls, the streets of the clan's capital were lined with warriors and commoners alike, all gazing toward the central birthing pavilion with a mixture of reverence and barely restrained curiosity. Crimson banners fluttered in a wind that carried the faint scent of iron and distant storms.
Patriarch Arcturus Voss paced the outer hall of the pavilion with barely contained tension, his heavy footsteps tracing the same path over and over across the polished blood-crystal floor. A sturdy figure at the Core Formation realm, his presence alone made the blood mist outside thicken slightly — as if the land itself was nervous on his behalf. His wife, Lady Seraphina, a cultivator of the Dao of Blood Vitality renowned for her gentle yet unbreakable resolve, was deep in labor within. Every sound from behind those closed doors tightened something in his chest that no amount of cultivation had ever managed to fortify.
Then, without any warning, the world changed.
It began with a sudden, absolute blankness.
For exactly ten seconds, every soul on the continent — cultivator and mortal alike — felt as though existence itself had paused. Thoughts ceased. Emotions vanished. Even the ever-present hum of blood Qi fell silent, as if the very heartbeat of the Crimson Veil had simply stopped. It was not darkness, not emptiness, but a complete void of sensation — as if the continent had been quietly erased from reality and just as quietly returned, and no one could be entirely sure that what came back was the same as what had left.
When awareness returned, no one outside the Voss Clan remembered it clearly. The memory slipped away like water through fingers, forgotten within days as though it had never occurred. But the clan elders — those whose bloodline ties ran deepest — retained a faint echo of that terrifying absence, a chill at the edge of memory that no amount of reasoning could fully dispel.
Before anyone could process the strangeness, the sky ignited — across the entirety of Lunara.
Even though it was midday in some regions and midnight in others, with Lunara's binary suns blazing overhead or hidden below distant horizons, countless stars suddenly became visible — dotting the heavens like diamonds scattered across a vast dark carpet, burning bright and fierce where moments before there had been nothing but daylight or empty night. Every star in the visible universe pulsed in perfect unison, their light flaring brighter with each shared heartbeat as though the cosmos itself had been roused from sleep and was straining forward to witness something. The suns shone a notch fiercer, their combined rays turning the Crimson Veil's morning mist into a shimmering sea of glowing scarlet that rippled and danced as far as the eye could see.
This celestial symphony lasted tens of minutes.
People stopped what they were doing. Markets fell silent. Training grounds emptied. Warriors mid-spar stood apart from each other, heads tilted back, weapons forgotten at their sides. Even the beasts of the deep forests went quiet, pressing themselves low against the earth as though bowing to something they instinctively understood and feared.
Then came the third phenomenon.
A wave of pure, primal destruction rolled across the planet.
It was not fire, nor lightning, nor any physical force that the body could brace against or the mind could prepare for. It was the concept of annihilation made manifest — an overwhelming pressure that bypassed flesh entirely and struck something deeper, something that had no name but knew, in the marrow of its knowing, that it was being touched by absolute ruin. Hearts stuttered. Knees buckled. Ancient trees shed their leaves in sudden torrents as though shedding armor before an enemy too vast to fight. Spirit beasts howled and burrowed deep, clawing at the earth with frantic desperation. Cultivators clutched their chests as their Daos trembled at the roots, feeling the unmistakable touch of something that could unmake everything they had built.
A lingering despair settled afterward, heavy as chains — making even the strongest warriors question their path for fleeting, terrible moments.
Yet despair did not reign for long.
As suddenly as it arrived, the destructive aura vanished — replaced by its opposite, a radiant force that swept across the whole planet like a tide coming in after the storm.
Destiny.
A profound sense of glory and hope flooded Lunara all at once. The air lightened. Mists swirled into beautiful, fleeting patterns — soaring dragons, blooming lotuses, shapes that dissolved before they could be fully named. Every person felt, for one brief and brilliant instant, that greatness was not only possible but inevitable. That something had shifted in the order of things. That a new era, vast and unknowable and magnificent, had quietly begun.
Unseen and unfelt by all, a ripple traveled outward from Lunara — threading through the Surun Galaxy and the Azuervon Galaxy Cluster, crossing vast stretches of void, until it brushed the very edges of the universe itself. A silent signal. A marker pressed into the fabric of existence for fates yet to unfold, for eyes not yet opened, for hands not yet raised.
In the Crimson estate of the Voss Clan, from the birthing pavilion, a baby's cry rang out.
Clear. Powerful. Cutting through the heavy, charged air like a blade finding its mark — resonating deeply with the lingering echoes of glory that still hummed across Lunara, and carrying within it, to those who listened closely enough, the faintest promise of an era of chaos yet to come.
Kairos Voss, son of Patriarch Arcturus and Lady Seraphina, had been born.