The pain did not come from outside.
It exploded from within.
Kairin did not fall—he was torn out of his body.
The square, the screams, the pressure of foreign runes—all of it shattered like poorly written text erased in a single stroke.
Darkness.
Then—emptiness.
He stood barefoot on a smooth, cold surface that reflected no light. No sky. No ground. Only an endless space filled with thin lines stretching in every direction, intertwining, breaking apart, and reconnecting again.
Runes.
Not tattoos.Not symbols carved into flesh.
Runes as a concept.
"…Where am I?" His voice sounded dull, as if there were no air here.
There was no answer.
But the space stirred.
The lines before him began to gather, as though pulled by an invisible hand. They formed slowly, painfully—like bones breaking and fusing together the wrong way.
A shape.
A symbol.
A spiral.
The same one that marked his palm.
And yet—infinitely more complex.
It did not glow.
It watched.
"You…" Kairin felt his throat go dry. "Are you… a rune?"
The pause stretched.
Then the space spoke.
Not with a voice.Not with sound.
With meaning—appearing fully formed inside his mind.
I am not a rune.I am what existed before them.
Kairin staggered.
"The First…?" The word escaped him.
The spiral distorted slightly.
As if smiling.
You named me the First Rune.It is convenient.It is false.
"Then what are you?" he whispered.
The lines around them accelerated.
Kairin saw scenes—fragments, flashes:
Bodies pierced by glowing needles.People screaming beneath rituals.Schools carving identical symbols, stamping them like coins.
And—
The sky.
Cold.Indifferent.Covered in laws.
I am a mistake.Or a chance.
Kairin clenched his fists.
"You killed my father."
The space froze.
The spiral broke apart—then reassembled.
No.I gave him a path.He could not endure the pain of reading.
"READING?!" Kairin shouted."He was torn apart from the inside!"
The body is paper.Runes are text.Pain is ink.
The words cut deeper than knives.
"Then why am I alive?" he rasped."Why didn't I burn?"
The spiral drifted closer.
So close he felt its weight.
Because you do not try to wear runes.You try to understand them.
Kairin froze.
"I… I just watch how they move."
Exactly.Schools carve.Sects impose.But you—read between the lines.
The space shifted.
Kairin saw himself as a child, palm burned raw.Saw the rune change shape when he cried.Fall silent when he was afraid.Pulse when anger filled him.
"You respond to me…" he said slowly."Not the other way around."
Finally.
The word felt warm.
Almost… relieved.
"Then tell me," Kairin raised his head."Why do the schools fear people like me?"
The spiral stretched, revealing depth.
Because you are the end of the system.You do not obey matrices.You can rewrite.
"Rewrite what?"
The space trembled.
Ranks.Laws.The sky.
Something shuddered in Kairin's chest.
"And you want me to do this?"
Silence.
This time—longer.
I do not want.I am not a god.I am a tool.
The spiral cracked.
Pain—real, physical—burst forth.
Kairin screamed and fell to his knees as something was burned into him anew.
But if you walk this path…You will never be the same.
"I already am not," he whispered through clenched teeth.
The rune fell silent.
Then listen carefully, Kairin Wei.Runes are not power.They are language.And you have just read your first word.
The world broke.
Kairin gasped sharply.
The square was back.
Screams.Pressing runes.Recruiters who could not understand why the air had grown heavy.
And on his palm—
The spiral had changed.
It was no longer simple.
And everyone saw it.
**CHAPTER 3.
WHEN RUNES CHOOSE**
Kairin was not the first to feel it.
The square was.
The air thickened, as if mercury had been poured into it. Runes carved into stone, walls, and cultivators' bodies lost their rhythm. Their glow shuddered, dimmed, then flickered.
"What the—" One of the recruiters from the Sect of Rewriting stepped back.
Kairin had not moved.
He simply stood there.
The spiral on his palm rotated slowly, and with each turn, the surrounding runes responded—as if pulled by invisible threads.
"HE'S RESONATING!" shouted a master in a black cloak."SUPPRESS THE MATRIX!"
Too late.
Kairin felt the words of the First Rune take root in his mind.
Runes are language.
He did not gather energy.He did not form a technique.
He placed a comma.
Something clicked in his chest—like a lock opening after years of silence.
The runes around him stopped.
Light vanished for half a heartbeat.
Then—
AN EXPLOSION.
Not of fire.Not of sound.
Of meaning.
Symbols carved into stone scattered as if erased. The sect's barrier cracked in seven places at once. Cultivators were thrown aside like dolls—not by force, but by the loss of support, as if the laws themselves had stopped holding them.
Kairin screamed.
His body could not endure it. Cracks of light spread along his arms—runes forcing their way out without permission.
"KILL HIM!" someone shrieked.
The first strike came from the side.
A master lunged with a blade of runic light—precise, lethal.
Kairin had no time to think.
The spiral on his palm snapped—
—and an empty space appeared between them.
The blade…
Vanished.
It did not deflect.Did not break.
It simply lost meaning.
The master froze, staring at his empty hand as if it had betrayed him.
"What did you do…" he whispered.
"I…" Kairin gasped."I just… removed a word."
The second strike was heavier.
A pressure sphere collapsed from above, trying to stitch Kairin back into the system. Bones cracked. Blood flooded his mouth.
The body is paper, a memory echoed.But do not let it tear.
Kairin dropped to his knees.
And for the first time, he consciously reached out to the rune.
"Help me…" he whispered."I don't want to die here."
The spiral answered with pain.
All the runes on his body ignited at once.
The ground split beneath him, as if someone had opened a page from below. A wave of emptiness swept across the square, erasing everything that was too… defined.
Barriers.Seals.Limitations.
They collapsed.
"RETREAT!" someone screamed."THAT IS NOT HUMAN!"
Kairin did not hear them.
He was already running.
His legs buckled, the world tore itself into fragments, but instinct drove him forward—toward a narrow alley where no runes remained, where old stone still remembered the time before the system.
Behind him—
Roaring.Rage.Fear.
Someone tried to pursue him by flight—and fell when the symbols beneath their feet stopped working.
Kairin burst past the edge of the square.
And vanished.
When the dust settled, silence remained.
Then one of the senior masters slowly knelt, touched the shattered stone, and whispered:
"That was… not a spell."
His fingers trembled.
"That was editing."
For a brief moment, the sky above the city darkened.
Far away,the Towers of Perun's Wrath trembled.
And in many sects that very day, old scrolls were unsealed—each bearing the same warning:
"If he appears—either kill him immediately……or you never will."
Thus, the first legend was born.