The night was not merely dark; it was heavy.
The clouds had vanished, yet a suffocating gloom pressed down upon the world, as if an invisible, primordial hand were squeezing the very sky. Below, a skeletal horse-carriage groaned along a jagged, unpaved path. The rhythmic creak of wooden wheels cutting through dry soil was the only sound in an oppressive silence.
The forest loomed on either side—monstrous, black trees with twisted branches that shivered in the wind, whispering secrets only the darkness understood.
Inside the carriage sat a father and his ten-year-old son.
Their clothes were little more than rags, stained with the filth of labor and the salt of sweat. They were peasants, dressed in coarse, patched fabric that smelled of dust and desperation. The boy's face was gaunt, his cheeks hollowed by hunger, yet his eyes still held a flickering, innocent light.
The boy looked at his father, his voice a fragile thread in the dark.
"Father… we're finally going home to Chi Village, right?"
A ghost of a smile haunted the father's weary face. His beard was a tangled mess, his jaw tight, and deep, abyssal shadows hung beneath his eyes. But as he looked at his son, the hardness cracked.
"Yes, son," he whispered. "We are leaving Shang Capital behind. It has been too long… too long since we saw your mother."
The boy's lips curved into a wide smile. The light in his eyes intensified.
"Mother will be so surprised... I'm so happy to be going back to her."
The father didn't answer. He simply watched the boy. For a fleeting second, peace settled in his gaze, only to be instantly buried under a mountain of unspoken dread. They were returning from the capital with meager earnings tied in small pouches at their waists—the price of a year's worth of slavery.
Suddenly, the boy spoke again, his voice surging with a newfound fire.
"Father… when I grow up, I'm going to become an Echo Master!"
There was a stubbornness in his tone, a refusal to be crushed.
"Then we won't have to live like slaves anymore. We'll be able to eat two meals every day without worry!"
The father's eyes stilled. He looked at the hope burning in his son's chest and felt a cold stone settle in his stomach. In this world, dreaming was easy. But living those dreams? That was a curse few survived.
Then—the forest began to scream.
It started as a low, guttural vibration, then escalated into a cacophony of snarls and shrieks. Something massive was tearing through the undergrowth.
The father's face turned to stone. His eyes narrowed into slits as he grabbed the boy, pulling him into his chest.
"Quiet," he hissed, his voice cold and commanding.
But the sounds only grew louder. This wasn't the sound of an animal. It was something... unnatural. An anomaly. Both father and son huddled together, their bodies trembling with a primal terror that defied logic. The driver's face turned ashen as he tightened the reins.
"Gods preserve us..." he whispered.
The boy's gaze drifted upward. His brow furrowed in confusion.
"Father... look. The moon. It's turned red."
The father's pupils constricted. He shielded the boy with his own body as they stared at the sky. The moon was no longer silver; it was a bloated, hemorrhaging orb of Blood-Red. Slowly, an ink-black shadow began to crawl across its surface. The carriage, roofless and exposed, felt like a sacrificial altar under that crimson eye.
The air turned glacial. The forest, which had been alive with sound, suddenly fell dead silent. This was not the silence of peace. It was the silence of a grave.
A shadow moved in the dark. A colossal silhouette emerged from between the trees. Two glowing red eyes pierced the gloom—eyes devoid of emotion, filled only with an infinite, primordial hunger.
The father and son froze. Not even a whimper escaped their throats. A massive, clawed limb extended from the darkness. The moment the father saw it, he stood, placing himself between his son and the abyss. His eyes were wide with terror, but beneath it lay a savage, desperate resolve to protect his blood.
It didn't matter.
The claw descended. A single, agonizing strike.
The sound of rending meat. The sickening snap of splintering bone.
And then... सब खत्म (Everything ended).
Their bodies were reduced to tattered remnants upon the cold earth. Blood, flesh, and entrails mingled with the dry soil, vanishing into the dirt. A horrific shriek echoed through the forest—so terrifying that every living creature fled in a panic.
That night, the forest swallowed another story.
LI VILLAGE
Inside a crumbling, dilapidated hut, a woman's scream of agony tore through the night.
"Han Mei... pull yourself together!" an older woman shouted, her voice strained.
Han Mei's face was a mask of pale suffering. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair a matted mess, and her lips were cracked and dry. Her body was drenched in sweat as she writhed on the threadbare bed, her fingers clawing at the straw mattress as if trying to strangle the pain itself. The air in the hut was thick with the pungent, bitter smell of medicinal herbs.
Then, one final, gut-wrenching scream erupted from Han Mei's lungs.
Silence followed. Total, heavy silence.
A moment later, the thin cry of a newborn broke the stillness.
"Congratulations, Han Mei... you have given birth to a Sultan."
Han Mei looked at her child with eyes that had already seen too much of the world's cruelty. The infant was pale pink, mottled with blue. A white, viscous substance coated his skin. He was weak—yet his cry was sharp, piercing the very walls of the hut.
Fate is a cruel playwright.
That night, two events occurred. A Blood Moon Eclipse devoured the sky... and He arrived.
FIVE YEARS LATER
Han Mei held her son, her eyes filled with a weary, desperate love.
"My king... you've grown so much. I didn't even realize how time flew."
"Han Mei!"
A voice cut through her reverie. It was Su Wan'er, her friend, whose face had been carved by the harshness of experience.
"Did the Young Master give us our pay today?" Han Mei asked, her voice hopeful.
Su Wan'er let out a short, bitter laugh.
"You don't know, Han Mei? Today, the Young Master forced himself on a village girl. Her father dared to scold him for it, so the Master is in a foul mood. When Lin Hao went to ask for the wages... the Master had him given fifty lashes."
Han Mei fell silent. Her face hardened, but the agony in her eyes was unmistakable.
"What can we do?" Su Wan'er whispered. "We are just slaves. This is our life. We are nothing but tools for the powerful... because we have no background. No power."
Han Mei looked at her son. A sudden, fierce light ignited in her gaze.
"No. My son will be different. I know it."
Out in the fields, rows of broken people worked under the scorching sun. Their bodies were skeletal, their hands calloused, their clothes hanging in shreds. Suddenly, a guard's voice cracked like a whip.
"You two slaves! What do you think you're doing?!"
His eyes were chips of ice. He saw the child in Han Mei's arms and his face twisted in disgust. He swung his whip, the leather biting deep into Han Mei's back.
"This is a place of labor! Not a nursery!"
Han Mei's body buckled from the pain. Vivid red welts rose on her skin. Su Wan'er immediately threw herself at the guard's feet, clutching his boots.
"Master... have mercy. It was a mistake... let her go..."
Su Wan'er feigned tears, but in her eyes lay a hidden calculation. She signaled for Han Mei to leave. Swallowing her screams, Han Mei turned and fled.
On the road back, a group of drunken youths were harassing the village girls. Their laughter was a foul, oily sound. One of them stumbled toward Han Mei.
"How are you going to raise a fatherless brat alone? Why don't you make me his father for a night?"
The others roared with laughter. Han Mei said nothing. Her eyes remained fixed on her son, who lay shivering in her arms, consumed by a fever. She had brought him to the fields because there was no one left to watch over him.
The boy opened his eyes slightly. In that half-conscious gaze, there was no fear—only a cold, burning disdain for the world around him.
TEN YEARS LATER
The rain was a torrential downpour. A scrawny, hollow-cheeked boy burst into an Alchemy Hall. He was soaked to the bone, his hair plastered to his forehead. His clothes were rags, and his body was so thin it looked as if the wind might snap him.
He stepped inside and opened his clenched fist, revealing a few measly copper coins.
"Doctor... please. Save my mother..."
The doctor glanced at the coins, his eyes as cold and indifferent as the stone floor.
"This is not enough."
The boy collapsed to his knees.
"Please... I have no one but my mother..." his voice broke, a raw sound of pure despair.
The nurse looked down at him with utter contempt.
"This is an Alchemy Hall, not a charity. Your crying is disturbing the customers. Get out."
The boy didn't move. He grabbed her feet, discarding every shred of his self-respect, rubbing his forehead against the muddy floor. The people in the hall looked at him as if he were a piece of filth, a beggar not worth their notice. No one saw his pain. No one felt his agony.
The nurse barked for a guard.
The guard looked at the boy's tattered rags with a visceral disgust, as if he were touching garbage. He grabbed the boy by the collar and threw him out into the freezing rain.
The boy lay in the mud, his eyes turning a feral, bloodshot red from the tears. He dragged himself back to the hut. Inside, Han Mei lay on the bed. Her face was a sickly yellow, her lips tinged blue. Her breathing was a shallow, rattling sound.
The boy crawled to her side. Han Mei reached out with a trembling hand, touching his face. Her voice was a pained whisper, yet it carried a weight that shook the very foundation of the boy's soul.
"In this world... without money and power... you cannot live." She coughed, blood flecking her lips. "But... without money and power... you cannot even die with dignity."
The boy gripped her hand.
"I don't know how you will survive without me," she whispered, her voice fading into the abyss. "But promise me... when you finally die, you will die as the most powerful man in existence. So powerful... that even Death must ask your permission to take you."
"Promise me, son. Remember your mother's words."
The boy pressed her hand against his cheek, his lips trembling.
"Become great... Ayan..."
Her fingers went limp.
Su Wan'er stood in the corner, her face carved by the cruelty of time. She spoke in a low, heavy voice.
The silence inside the hut was so absolute that even the wind outside seemed afraid to enter. The mud walls were damp with rot, and the leaking roof dripped water onto the floor, each 'plink' a hammer blow to the silence.
In the center of the hut lay the body of a woman. Her face was peaceful—abnormally so, as if she had finally stopped arguing with death.
Beside her, the boy knelt.
His clothes were a tragedy of holes and hanging threads. Dust, mud, and dried tears coated his skin. He stared at his mother's body, then his hands, then back at her. He looked as if he expected everything to change the next time he blinked.
"Mother..."
His voice shattered. He crawled forward, clutching her sleeve. The fabric was cold. Terrifyingly cold.
"Wake up..."
The plea dissolved into a sob. For a moment, it felt as if time itself had stopped. Then, his entire frame began to convulse.
"No... it can't be..."
The tears that fell were no longer just water; they were fragments of his soul—broken, terrified, and utterly helpless. He buried his face in her chest and wailed, a raw, primal sound of loss. His small hands tried to grip her, as if he could physically hold back the tide of death.
But the hut's silence was his only answer.
Outside, the wind howled. Inside, the screams of a broken child echoed. His world had ended right there, on a cold, merciless floor—a place where there were no answers, and no way back.
Married at 14. A mother at 15. Claimed by death at 30. Her entire life had been a cycle of slavery and insults.
She left nothing behind for her son.
Nothing, except her final words.
Han Mei had shown him the destination. But the path? The path, Ayan would have to carve through the world with his own two hands.