Chapter 1 — The Weight of Paths
What is a path?
Many would say it is the true way—the correct direction carved by those who came before, a road that promises greatness at its end. They speak of it with certainty, as though walking long enough will turn effort into destiny, but a path reveals itself only when it is walked.
On the road toward greatness, some discover the truth of the world. They see its cruelty, its imbalance, its quiet unfairness—how suffering is not an accident but a constant, shaped by desire, power, and indifference.
Seeing this, they choose sympathy. They mourn for the weak, stand beside the broken, and convince themselves that righteousness is the answer. They walk a path of compassion, believing that bearing the pain of others gives meaning to existence.
Others see the same truth and feel something different. They refuse to be ordinary. They refuse to drown alongside the masses. To them, suffering is proof of weakness, and equality is a lie told to keep people in chains. So they rebel—against fate, against Heaven, against the very order of the world—seeking to rise above it all, to be special, to be untouched.
Yet neither path speaks to me.
I do not seek greatness defined by others, nor do I kneel before righteousness born from pity, I do not wish to escape suffering by rebelling against it, nor do I find comfort in standing apart from the world and calling it freedom.
Because I have learned something else.
Everything is governed by paths.
Fate follows one. Power walks another. Even suffering is guided, measured, distributed. Heaven favors some and abandons others, not by justice, but by design. The weak inherit despair. The strong inherit chains, disguised as destiny.
To walk a path already laid is to accept its end.
And I refuse.
I will not follow what has been written nor submit to what has been permitted.
If all things are governed by paths, then I will do what none before me dared to do.
I will forge my own, A path not granted by Heaven.
Not inherited from the past.
Not stolen from another's corpse.
A path without submission.
Without imitation.
Without an end.
While all others walk toward conclusions chosen for them,
my ascension shall not cease.
Eternal Ascension shall remain.