Out of nowhere, a golden light streaked across the sky like a shooting star, illuminating the darkened hills. Moments later, rain crashed down— harsh and relentless, as if heaven itself unleashed its fury.
Thunder cracked the night sky over jagged ancient stones. Dr. Eiran Voss, a 27-year-old foreign archeologist and reluctant junior guardian of forgotten relics from the outer hall at Soul Vault Antiquities, trudged through the mud with his teammates in the storm-swept hills of 2006.
He is lean and wiry from years of fieldwork, his sharp features hidden beneath damp, tousled dark hair and steamed aviator glasses. A battered fedora pulled low over his brow, he wore a weathered leather jacket over a mud-streaked button-up, cargo pants tucked into scuffed boots, and a satchel slung across his chest bulging with notebooks and relic fragments.
Their flashlights carved trembling paths through the deluge as they searched desperately for shelter. Ahead loomed a towering tree, a dark sentinel with branches swaying violently.
Gasping for breath, hearts pounding, they sprinted toward it.
Suddenly, a thick mist erupted from the ground like a living shroud, swallowing the world in swirling white. Shouts faded into eerie silence...
Voss slid against the rough bark and collapsed beneath its heavy, sheltering boughs as the tempest raged overhead. He panted, wiping rainwater from his face.
Then he looked around...
No trace of his teammates.
A cold spike of fear pierced him. Darkness had always been his greatest weakness, and tonight it swallowed him whole. His breaths swallowed, chest tightening.
A prickling sensation crawled down his spine as if eyes bored into his back.
A jolt shot through him like a burst of electricity. He whirled, stumbled, and dropped to his knees as the flashlight rolled away, its beam slicing uselessly across the wet ground.
Shivering, he crawled through the mud, fingers scrambling until he reclaimed it.
Hands shaking, he swept the light across the shadows beneath the tree.
Something was there...
Mustering his last threads of courage, Voss forced himself to stand. Legs trembling, he took a step... then another...
He whispered a shaky chant to fight his fear.
"Bù pà hēi... Zhēn de bù pà..."
Not afraid of the dark... Really not afraid...
He reached the shadows, heart pounding.
His expression twisted–shock bleeding into raw terror. Hesitantly, he brushed aside the torn fabric of gold and silver cloth.
A baby.
"...A baby?" The words escaped in a broken whisper with a look of shock.
His heart slammed against his ribs. These isolated hills held no sign of human life for miles. He glanced around wildly, flashlight sweeping the darkness.
Nothing...
Only rain.
He looked back at the infant, cradled against the tree roots. Her face was pale and unnaturally still. For a terrifying moment, he thought, she was dead.
"No... no..." he murmured, reaching out despite himself.
The instant his fingers brushed her cold cheek, her eyes snapped open.
Voss jolted back with a sharp breath, nearly losing his balance. Relief washed over him, "Thank God. Alive."
Instinct kicked in, he scooped her up, pulling her close and draping his battered leather jacket over her tiny, shivering form to shield her from the downpour.
But before he could steady himself, his gaze drifted behind the spot where he'd found her.
Slowly he swung the flashlight. "What... What was that?"
At first glance, it resembled stone. But no stone radiated warmth like this. Cantaloupe-sized, it rested silently in the mud, steam curling faintly from its crimson-black shell despite the storm's chill. Veins of gold traced unfamiliar patterns, the air above it shimmering like heat from a hidden spring.
Startled, Voss froze. Deep down, he knew what came next— that familiar pull he'd been carrying since childhood. Relics whispered their buried histories through his fingertips. Visions crashed in like forbidden memories: joyful echoes of lost laughter, sorrowful tales of vanished lives, long-hidden mischievous secrets, and deadly shadows of forgotten wrath, marking him as the guardian he never chose.
Compelled, he touched the egg.
As his fingers met the warm shell, vivid scenes flashed through his mind in a frantic blur.
[A woman's gaze, soft with timeless love... "Travel the universe... just us..."
Lips trembling, "Goodbye, my demon." Soul shattering into golden fragments. A bloody tear falling. A beating heart-core in clawed hands. A man on his knees, screaming, eyes bleeding. A demon's roar– its true form erupted. Darkness cracking mountains, withering trees, birds plummeting, beasts fleeing. The moon turned blood-red. Chaos...]
Suddenly, a power backlash slammed into Voss like lightning. He gasped, wrenching his hand away. The visions shattered, slipping from memory into thin air.
He touched the egg again, but nothing happened.
"Their origin... I have to uncover it, whatever the cost."
Jaw clenched, he decided to take them back.
The rain had stopped, leaving a dripping silence.
Voss slipped the massive egg into a small, unremarkable-looking sachet that he kept in his satchel. A relic pouch that swallowed is the size of nothing at all. Cradling the infant normally in his arms.
Thunder's echo faded as he trudged toward the main site...
As Voss neared the main site, lights flickered through the post-storm gloom.
Suddenly, some voices in slow whispers cut through the silence, once he never expected to hear...
Voss hides at the corner of the wall and watches them secretly...
There stood his leader, Master Liang in simple traditional Chinese clothing: a practical tangzhuang jacket and loose trousers in muted gray silk, modern yet echoing ancient ways. In his hands, he clutched a strand of polished wooden beads, fingers sliding over them rhythmically as if in silent prayer.
Beside him loomed a stranger... Voss had never seen. Tall and imposing in a black overcoat that swept to his knees, paired with long boots. Long gray hair framed his shadowed face, a tight ponytail knotted high, the rest falling Free in wild waves that obscured his features in the dim light, rendering him a hazy silhouette.
They hadn't noticed him yet. Voss froze, straining to listen.
"Don't let anyone with powers wander the human realm," the stranger commanded, his voice deep as the sea and laced with unchallenged authority like ice over fire.
Master Liang bowed his head slightly, "Yes, My Lord!"
Voss's mind blanked at the overheard words.
"Trap them... or kill them."
The man spoke again, his voice sharp enough to pierce any enemy...