In a boundless void, completely devoid of light, a voice bloated through the darkness, sounding like crumbling mountain.
"Hmmm, a mortal soul? How did it get in here?"
The words rolled like thunder, it's quintessence stirred the endless darkness, ancient and raw.
As it spoke, an enormous pair of crimson eyes spawned opened, their glow pirced through gloom, pinning on translucent and fragile wasp silhouette floating in heart of the void.
The soul emitted a faint blue light, trembling in total submission as it hovered before the pair of colossal eyes.
The darkness suddenly quicked as an arid laughing erupted, the voice emerged with the darkness as the laughter erupted, wild and unrestrained as the sounds of amusement tore through the dark like a storm.
"Hahaha! Great, this is great!" The ancient voice roared with glee, each syllable shaking the void's endless dark.
"Thousands of years, my toil, my schemes—none of it wasted! A mortal soul, here? Hah! karma's finest jest perhaps!"
The crimson eyes blazed brighter, their glow swallowing shadows whole. Below them, the tiny soul flickered, its faint blue light pulsing faster, as if sensing the weight of fate. The void itself seemed to lean in, trembling with the voice's manic joy.
"Little one" it growled, rage and hope twisting into words "you can only curse your own luck and bad karma for having drifted into my prison"
"I need no permission. You will bear my legacy—whether you wish it or not. Hahaha!"
The ancient voice spoke with a mixture of rage and hope. The gigantic eyes seemingly endless and monstrous blinked shut.
A heartbeat of silence suddenly gripped the void.
Then they snapped open once more.
Then, it released a beam of light, crimson as blood lnacing toward the soul. It wrapped around the translucent blue soul like chains twisting and tightening, binding the Azure blue soul in its crimson embrace.
The crimson devoured the blue, merging, transforming. In moments, the soul blazed bright red, pulsing with a new, alien power.
The voice's laughter echoed, softer now, triumphant.
"You shall walk my path. Take my strength as well as my weakness as your own,"
The ancient voice reverberated, mixed with excitement. "I can only hope you become strong enough to bear the storm that will come your way from this point forth."
This was a gamble on its part. It had long since abandoned any hope of escaping this prison. The thought of passing on its legacy to a capable successor had only ever been a dream. Whether this mortal would be worthy was unknown. It could only hope.
A vortex suddenly sprang up next to the tiny soul. It emitted a suction force that dragged the soul in. Before long, the soul had disappeared into the vortex, leaving the dark space forever.
A golden light suddenly burst into the dark space, shedding illumination over the once-shadowed realm, causing it to shake intensely. Golden cracks began to appear in the emptiness.
"Hahaha, you already lost, at least I would no be the last blood lord" were the last words uttered by the ancient voice before it disappeared into specks of blood-colored motes.
---
The Lower Regions, Lower Three Heavens…
The morning sun had illuminated the landscape. The cold air howled through the surroundings, scattering stray snowflakes into the air and creating swirls of miniature, ghastly torrents that echoed through the hushed silence—leaving the stench of death in its wake.
Winter was nearing its end, and the once-soft ground, buried beneath meters of ice and snow, had begun to thaw—fully revealing the half-buried bodies underneath.
Their blood had long since seeped into the snow, staining it a deep crimson that contrasted with the pristine white. A small village lay in ruins.
The crimson ichor of men, women, and children—whose bodies were barely intact, limbs torn from limbs.
Then, something unnatural began to take place.
The blood, once thickened by the cold and frozen in patches, began to move, pooling around a single body among the heap.
As if possessing a mind of its own, the blood flowed continuously around the body of what appeared to be a woman.
Moments later, the seemingly dried body gradually regained life.
The ichor crawled over her, drawn by an unseen force, wrapping around her in a living, shifting cocoon of blood. Slowly, impossibly, the deep gash in her throat began to close—knitting itself back together as if time had reversed. The dried corpse, lifeless just moments ago, stirred within its crimson prison.
And then—she breathed.
--
The village lay silent, a graveyard under the frost. Corpses littered the earth, frozen solid, their faces twisted in silent screams. Five men in flowing white robes picked their way through the carnage, steps slow and deliberate, as if the dead might stir at a misstep.
"Seems like the work of a demon Adept." said the eldest, his voice low, eyes scanning the devastation. His jade medallion, etched with the sigil of the Golden Order, glinted faintly in the pale dawn.
Their movements were slow and deliberate, careful not to step on any of the corpses. At this moment, the dead bodies seemed to have frozen solid.
"Who would dare?" one of the men uttered, his face bewildered. The Golden Order had long since outlawed any soul-devouring arts or any other practices that placed mortal lives in peril.
It was due to this that the Golden Order had become one of the strongest—if not the strongest—forces in the Lower Three Heavens.
They often hunted down demonic Adepts and brought them to justice. As a result, many talented individuals flocked to join their ranks each year.
"Over here!" one of the men shouted, drawing the attention of the others.
The cold winds never ceased. Each step left a deep imprint in the snow as the white-robed men moved through the corpses and ruins.
"What is it?" This time, the speaker was undoubtedly the leader. He appeared to be in his late forties, with a buzz cut and short beard. His tone carried a hint of authority. The others stood a few paces behind, heads slightly lowered as if afraid to meet his gaze.
"There's someone here," the man replied, pointing at a lone figure kneeling in the snow.
The leader signaled for the others to stay behind before making his way toward the figure. As he approached, he slowly removed his outer garment and cloaked the sobbing person with it.
It was a crimson-haired woman, dressed in tattered clothes that had frozen solid from the blood that once stained them. Even the icy winds weren't strong enough to move the now-rigid fabric.
In front of the woman were two dead bodies—one was a man, the other a little girl, no older than five.