Prologue: Echoes in the Void
In the beginning, there was no light.
Only the endless churn of chaos , a vast, formless sea where concepts were born and devoured in the same breath. Time had no meaning. Space was a suggestion. Existence itself was a fleeting scream swallowed by silence.
From this primal nothingness, something stirred.
Not a god. Not a devil.
Something older.
It had no name at first, for names are chains, and it refused all chains. It drifted through the chaos, tasting madness like wine, wearing insanity as a cloak. Worlds rose and crumbled at its passing. Stars bled. Galaxies wept crimson tears.
In one such dying cosmos, it found a cradle of flesh , a boy on the verge of death, his soul fraying into the void. The child's eyes, even in agony, burned with a spark that amused the ancient thing.
Beautiful, it thought. Fragile. Perfect.
It poured itself into the vessel, not all, for no mortal frame could contain its entirety, but enough. Enough to dream. Enough to wait.
The fusion was cataclysmic.
Heavens cracked. The firmament bled scarlet. Across a thousand realms, beasts howled and clawed at their own flesh. Seers fell to their knees, weeping blood as they glimpsed a truth too vast for sanity.
In the world called Avalonia, a woman named Dora gave birth beneath that blood-red sky.
The child did not cry.
He opened his eyes, crimson as fresh-spilled sin, and laughed.
A laugh that echoed not through the room, but through the void itself.
The ancient thing settled deep within the boy's shattered soul, curling up like a dragon in its hoard.
Sleep, little one, it whispered to the fragile human spark. I will keep watch. When the time comes… we will play.
Sixteen years passed in the blink of an eternal eye.
The boy grew beautiful and broken, trapped in silence, body ruined by the very power that sustained it. The world called him mad. The Void Territory hid him away in shame and fear.
But the thing inside waited patiently.
It had waited eons before. It could wait a few more mortal heartbeats.
Now, beneath another blood-red sky, the silence breaks.
The child opens his eyes once more.
And the ancient laughter rises again.
"Oh… this is going to be so much fun."