The pain came before the memory.
It was not sharp, nor sudden. It was the dull, familiar ache of existence itself, an ache Alpha had carried across lives like a shadow stitched to his soul. His consciousness surfaced from darkness, dragged upward by a pressure that weighed from every direction, as though the world itself were exhaling him into being.
He opened his eyes.
Gray.
A low sky stretched overhead, heavy with unmoving clouds. The land beneath him was barren stone, cracked like dried flesh. No grass. No wind. No sound.
The Cycle had begun again.
Alpha lay still for a long moment, not because he lacked strength, but because he had learned caution. In his early lives, his first thousand, perhaps—he would leap to his feet, test his limbs, and roar at the heavens. Rage had once been his constant companion.
Now, rage was a tool he kept sheathed.
He slowly sat up and examined his hands. Young. Uncalloused. No scars. A fresh vessel.
"Life… ninety-nine thousand, four hundred and seventy-two," he murmured.
There was no one to hear him. There never was.
This world, this world, was always the same at the beginning. A dead land at the edge of existence, neither fully real nor entirely illusion. A threshold. A womb. A grave.
Alpha closed his eyes and turned inward.
The cultivation base was as expected: Body Refinement, First Layer. Weak. Pathetic. Barely enough to crush a stone. The same starting point imposed by the Cycle, no matter what heights he had once reached.
But something was different.
At first, he thought it was imagination, a residue of hope, the most dangerous poison of all. Yet as he focused, he felt it again.
A tremor.
Deep within his soul, beyond meridians and dantian, something vast stirred. Not energy. Not qi.
Law.
Alpha's breath slowed.
In previous lives, the Laws of Heaven were walls—distant, cold, and immutable. He had studied them, fought them, and stolen fragments of them through blood and enlightenment. He had grasped Sword Law, Death Law, even a sliver of Time.
But this… this was different.
This was not a law he had comprehended. It was a law that had noticed him.
A faint crack appeared in the darkness of his inner sea, like a fracture in glass. From within that crack seeped a warmth so subtle it was almost nonexistent.
Creation.
Not the grand, omnipotent Creation sung of in myths. Not yet. This was a seed fragile, incomplete, and barely awake.
Alpha's fingers trembled.
Across tens of thousands of lives, he had searched for a way out. Ascension failed. Destruction failed. Rebellion failed. Even submission had failed. The Cycle always corrected itself, dragging him back to the beginning like a bead on a broken abacus.
But Creation… Creation was not a weapon against the Cycle.
It was outside it.
"Is this pity," Alpha whispered, "or mockery?"
The heavens did not answer.
As if responding to his awareness, the cracked stone beneath him shuddered. A thin line split the ground, and from it rose a faint glow—soft, white, and almost gentle. It illuminated the barren land for several meters around him.
Alpha stood.
For the first time in countless lives, the starting ground had changed.
In past cycles, this place was dead beyond recovery. No matter what he tried, nothing grew here. It was a symbol—an unspoken declaration that beginnings were fixed.
Now, from the crack in the stone, a single green shoot emerged.
Small. Crooked. Alive.
Alpha stared at it, expression unreadable. He knelt slowly and extended a finger, stopping just short of touching the sprout. He could feel it an echo of the warmth inside his soul resonating with the fragile life before him.
Creation responding to Creation.
A laugh escaped his throat. It was quiet, rough, and unused. He had forgotten what genuine amusement felt like.
"So the rules can be broken," he said softly.
The sky rumbled.
For the first time since the Cycle began, the world reacted against him.
The clouds churned, and an unseen pressure descended, pressing on his shoulders. It was not an attack yet but a warning. A correction attempting to form.
Alpha straightened his back and withdrew his hand from the sprout.
"Not yet," he said calmly. "I remember what happens when I move too fast."
The pressure receded, though the sky remained restless. He looked once more at the fragile shoot, then turned his gaze forward. In the distance, beyond the gray horizon, faint silhouettes began to form.
Mountains. Rivers. Civilization.
The true world was assembling itself.
This life would proceed as the others had: sects, empires, and geniuses blessed by heaven. Struggle. Slaughter. Ascension.
But Alpha already knew the truth.
This time, cultivation alone was not the path. Nor was law comprehension in isolation.
This time, he would create.
Create methods Heaven had never sanctioned. Create paths that could not be erased. Create a self that did not belong to the Cycle.
Alpha took his first step forward, leaving the sprout behind—alive, growing, and defying the barren land.
Behind him, unseen by Heaven, the crack in his soul widened ever so slightly. And somewhere beyond the veil of existence, something ancient shifted in its sleep.