The first thing he remembered was the cold.
Not the gentle cold of winter winds or sleeping stone, but a cold with teeth—sharp, deliberate, biting into him as if it were alive.
He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a sky that did not belong to any world.
Ink-black clouds drifted across a ceiling of raw nothingness. Stars blinked like dying embers, their light swallowed by the surrounding dark. The ground beneath him was a thin sheet of broken mirrors, each shard reflecting a distorted version of him: a gaunt boy, barely fifteen, pale as bone and covered in dried blood.
Names rose from memory like bruises.
Xue Yao.
The last scion of a fallen house.
The one they called Calamity Remnant.
The child who was hunted not because of what he had done—but because of what he carried in his soul.
He sat up.
Pain roared across his body in waves. His ribs protested, his right arm hung limp, and his stomach felt like someone had carved runes into it with dull metal. He tasted ash and copper.
He remembered why.
The auction hall.
The betrayal.
The elders who smiled while slipping the knife.
The talisman exploding beneath his feet.
The sensation of falling…
Falling…
And then—
A voice like flint dragging across stone:
"You should have died."
Xue Yao stiffened.
The ground shivered. The shards rearranged themselves into a spiraling pattern, opening like an eye. From the pupil of darkness, a figure stepped out—blurred, tall, shape-shifting like smoke struggling to decide on a form.
It had no face.
Only a mouth carved into the dark.
A mouth that smiled.
"But you didn't."
"Where am I?" Xue Yao rasped. His voice was thin, scraping against the cold. "Who are you?"
"Where?" the entity echoed. "A place between breaths. A seam in reality. A pocket carved from defiance."
"And you?"
"A witness. A record. A parasite. A mirror."
The smile widened.
"But you may call me Abyss."
Xue Yao tried to stand, but the ground buckled—shards shifting like liquid glass.
Abyss continued, voice low and rhythmically calm:
"Your ancestors stole something from me long ago. Something small, something insignificant—to them. But precious to me."
The boy clenched his jaw. "The Abyssal Shard…"
"Yes."
A ripple of amusement.
"The thing sealed into your soul the moment your mother pushed her dying hands against your chest."
Xue Yao's breath caught.
His mother's face—bloodied, frantic, whispering apologies as she forced the black crystal into him—flashed through his mind. The Shard had burned like a brand ever since.
"Your clan paid for that theft," Abyss said. "But you… you are persistent. You cling to existence like a stubborn tick."
Xue Yao raised his chin. "If you want it back, take it."
"Oh, I will."
The darkness flickered hungrily.
"But not now."
Xue Yao blinked, stunned.
Abyss took a step closer, shadows twisting into the shape of a humanoid silhouette—tall, slender, infinitely still.
"In the mortal world, powers are constrained by laws. Great ones are shackled. Gods slumber. Monsters hide in mortals' skin."
It leaned closer.
"I cannot simply take from you while bound by those laws."
"Then why bring me here?" Xue Yao whispered.
"To offer a bargain."
The ground froze.
Even the shards stopped trembling.
Abyss extended a hand—if that limb of shifting shadow could be called one.
"You want to live. Not survive. Live. To hunt those who hunted you. To destroy those who destroyed you. To rise beyond the reach of mortals, cultivators, clans, sects, and even heavens."
A pause.
"And I want to feed."
Xue Yao stared at that hand.
"What kind of bargain?"
Abyss's grin folded like a blade.
"A contract of consumption."
Clouds spun downward like black funnels. The starless sky closed in. The world contracted, bending around the being like reality trying to avoid touching it.
"I will give you a path," Abyss whispered.
"A power system long erased by heavens."
"A cultivation of devouring."
"A route no sane will tread."
"And in return…"
Shards snapped upward, surrounding Xue Yao like jagged teeth.
"…you will open a path for me in your world."
Xue Yao should have hesitated. Should have panicked. Should have thought of consequences.
He didn't.
He thought of the auction hall drenched in his blood.
He thought of his clan's screams.
He thought of the last elder smiling as the talisman detonated.
He thought of the sword that pierced his father's throat.
He thought of the sick relief on everyone's faces when they believed the "Calamity Remnant" was finally dead.
He would burn their houses.
He would bury their names.
He would dig up their ancestors and kill them again.
He would consume them until the world forgot they existed.
Xue Yao reached toward the offered hand.
"My answer is—"
Abyss did not wait for him to finish.
The world shattered.
A river of black fire erupted from the creature's palm and tore through Xue Yao's soul. It wasn't pain—it was annihilation wrapped in euphoria. His bones screamed. His veins ignited. His consciousness fractured into a thousand reflections on the mirror-ground.
The Abyss laughed, delighted and dreadful.
"Then rise, little remnant. Rise as the Devourer."
Reality inverted.
A technique burned into his mind—its lines sharp, elegant, impossible:
Abyssal Root Sutra — First Principle: Consume to Grow. Devour to Become.
His heart beat once.
Twice.
The world blinked.
He gasped.
And found himself lying in the ruins of the auction hall, the talisman smoke still rising, the world unaware he had ever stopped breathing.
The Shard pulsed under his sternum like a second heart.
A whisper crawled from inside him, smooth and cold:
"We begin, Xue Yao."
He rose.
Alive.
Changed.
Hungry.
Every corpse in the hall twitched.
The fallen cultivators' spiritual remnants—lingering, weak, scattered—drifted toward him like dust drawn to a storm.
And Xue Yao saw.
He only needed to open his hand.
He did.
Black fire crawled down his fingers, soft and eager.
The remnants trembled.
And they came to him.
Screaming without sound.
And he consumed them.