The room was absurdly extravagant, almost like it had been designed by someone with too much power, too much wealth, and absolutely no sense of restraint. Every corner was stuffed with items that screamed opulence and conquest.
A phoenix's shimmering skin, something most would worship or lock away in sacred vaults, was tossed carelessly on the floor, used as a doormat, dirt smudging its appearance. Near the window, a solid gold paperweight sat on a pile of scrolls, molded from the melted crowns of eleven fallen monarchs.
It was a room worthy of an emperor—or at least someone the world believed to be one.
At the center of the room, on a massive bed draped in silk sheets, lay a man. He was fairly handsome, with long gray hair, pale skin, and blue eyes that stared blankly at the wooden ceiling.
His face was emotionless, marked by deep, dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he could drop dead at any moment.
He was, by all appearances, still relatively young. A man who should have decades of life left. His face was sharp and symmetrical, the kind that artists would obsess over and nobles would envy.
Long strands of silver gray hair spread across the pillows like spilled ink. His shiny pale skin now looked ghostly pale, almost translucent in the soft light. His chest rose and fell, but only just. His breathing was shallow, almost reluctant.
Blue eyes, dull and bloodshot, stared blankly at the wooden ceiling overhead, not moving, not blinking. Deep, sunken circles darkened the skin beneath those eyes like bruises from a sleepless lifetime.
He looked like someone who had already died a little on the inside.
No, scratch that. He looked like a man who had just finished binge watching every single episode of One Piece in one night. The thousand episode gauntlet had claimed many lives, and judging by his face, his soul hadn't made it through intact.
Yes. All of One Piece. In a single cursed sitting.
'I really was a fool', he thought, not for the first time. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling with Carved tiny golden runes, barely noticeable unless one looked closely. They shimmered faintly, reacting to the low glow of the glowing Candle Lamps.
"सम्राट् अमरः भवतु"
"願皇帝長生不老"
"Είθε ο αυτοκράτορας να γίνει αθάνατος"
Three different languages. Three Different scripts. But all carried the same message. 'May the emperor become immortal'
A single, unchanging wish Which flows into every inch of his body, The thing for which he had let go of everything he held dear. Immortality. The one dream he refused to let go of.
He had thrown away decades of his life chasing it.
And now, lying here, cold, alone, and hollow, he finally saw what it had cost him.
Eleven kingdoms of the known world had bowed to him. His armies crushed rebellions before they could rise. His name inspired either fear or worship, depending on who you asked.
But none of that mattered now.
He had never won the heart of the one woman who had seen the man beneath the title. The only person who ever looked at him not with awe or fear, but with genuine love.
He had commanded loyalty from thousands, but couldn't save the one friend who had stood beside him before the world knew his name.
He had sacrificed everything, people, memories, his own humanity, all for the promise of eternal life. And only now, as the edges of his vision began to darken and cold crept into his limbs, did he understand the truth he had spent his entire life trying to deny.
"This really is the end, huh," the emperor muttered inwardly, his gaze still fixed on the wooden ceiling above. He wasn't just staring aimlessly—his eyes were locked on the faintly glowing runes he had once ordered to be carved with the hope that they will always remind him of his goal whenever he tries to sleep under this roof—and of the fact that one more day was wasted and immortality was not gained
That one day, those ancient letters etched in divine languages would save him from the inevitable. He used to believe in them. Used to believe they held some kind of power.
But now, even that hope felt distant. Silly, almost.
His body was giving up on him, and he could feel it with every breath. He slowly closed his eyes, one after the other because even keeping them open had become a struggle. It wasn't just tiredness.
It was exhaustion so deep it felt like his soul was dragging him down into the mattress. Whatever illness had infected him months ago had been feasting on him ever since, slowly, methodically hollowing him out from the inside.
And yet, even with his eyes shut, even with the darkness pressing in from all sides, something stirred behind the veil of death closing in on him.
He could still see her.
Not in a dream, not in a hallucination. Just her—so clear, so real. As if time had folded in on itself and brought her back to him.
'You're still as beautiful as the first day I saw you,' he thought, and for the first time in what felt like years, something genuine moved across his face.
A smile.
It wasn't forced or regal. It wasn't a grin crafted for diplomats or subjects. It was something small and personal—an expression born from the memory of something real. If anyone had been there to see it, they would have known instantly that it wasn't fake.
They would have seen the softness in his expression, the faint pull at the corners of his mouth, and known this wasn't the smile of an emperor—it was the smile of a man who had once truly loved.
It was the kind of smile that you could get lost in.
The kind that didn't need words.
Just looking at it... it pulled you in.
And for a brief, flickering moment, the emperor who had ruled over the known world no longer looked like a king facing death.
He looked like a man who had remembered what it meant to be love something.
"My beloved..." he whispered, the words barely audible, slipping out like a final breath rather than something spoken. His throat was dry, his voice thin and strained, as if even forming that single phrase had taken everything he had left.
He wanted to say more—he really did—but his body refused to cooperate. His limbs were numb, completely unresponsive, and his chest felt heavy, like someone had piled stones onto it. Even breathing had become a conscious effort.
All he could do now was clutch at the silk sheets beneath him with what little strength remained in his fingers, as if anchoring himself to the world just long enough to finish what he wanted to say.
He tried.
He tried again.
And after a few more labored breaths, he finally forced the word out.
"Immortality."
That was it.
His last word.
His last thought.
Even as his vision was swallowed whole by darkness, even as every sensation faded and his body went still, that word echoed in the hollow space between life and death. It lingered there like an obsession, a prayer, a curse.
You might think he was seeing a woman in those final moments. Maybe a long-lost love. Or perhaps the image of a loyal friend—someone who had once stood by him, shoulder to shoulder, before all the wars and thrones and madness.
But no.
Not him.
Not anymore.
By this point, he had gone too far down the rabbit hole. He wasn't thinking of people. He wasn't clinging to memories of someone warm or real.
What he saw... what he truly saw even with his eyes shut and his soul fading...
Was her.
Immortality.
He had personified it.
He had imagined it into being—turned it into a concept so twisted and vivid in his mind that it became something else entirely. A figure. A presence. A goddess made of longing, obsession, and delusion.
To him, Immortality wasn't just an idea. She was a lover. A temptress. A cruel mistress who never once loved him back.
And still, he worshiped her to his final breath.
Madness?
Yeah, maybe.
But that's exactly what he was.
The Mad Emperor.
A man who conquered the known world just to chase a fantasy... and died holding hands with it.
...…
Meanwhile, on the other side of time—
Thousands of years into the future, something happened. Something small, almost insignificant at first glance. But this event… this one quiet, strange moment, would go on to become quite a journey.
In a dim, cold room that looked more like a prison cell than a place to rest, a boy lay on what could barely be called a bed. It was just a few old rice bags, stacked and arranged like a mattress, dusty and worn down from years of use.
The stone walls were damp and cracked, and the only window was just a tiny slit near the ceiling, barely wide enough for sunlight to slip through. The air was heavy, the kind that clings to your skin and makes every breath feel like a chore.
The boy looked around twelve years old, face pale and flushed with fever. Sweat clung to his forehead, and his breathing was shallow—uneven. His hands twitched slightly at his sides like they were still trying to hold onto something, anything.
And then, slowly… his eyes opened.
Red and swollen with heat and pain, his eyelids peeled back to reveal a pair of tired, glassy eyes. But the moment they adjusted to the dim light and took in the unfamiliar surroundings, those eyes widened with shock—pure, unfiltered shock.
Because it wasn't the boy anymore.
The original soul of this child had already died—burned out by fever and neglect. What now occupied this frail body wasn't the boy at all.
It was someone else.
It was the soul of the Mad Emperor himself.
The tyrant who had once ruled the known world in pursuit of a single, obsessive dream. The man whose final word before death had been "Immortality."
Tian Shang.
'What the hell...?' Tian Shang blinked, his thoughts racing as he stared at the cracked ceiling above. The unfamiliar texture of the rice bags beneath him, the soreness in his tiny limbs, the faint ache in his gut—all of it felt real, and wrong. Very wrong.
'I died. I know I did. I was on that bed… back in my palace… my body was failing. So how the hell am I—'
And then, something interrupted his thoughts.
A sound. A voice. Loud. Mechanical. Ringing directly inside his skull, like someone had screamed into both ears at once.
{DING! The Bloodline of the Arch Angel has activated!}
{The Arch Angel has successfully been revived!}
[A/N: Okay, so this is my first time writing a fic, and I'm not sure if my writing is any good. Let me know in the comments if it's passable—honest feedback is welcome! Also, if you have any suggestions for the story, drop them below. I'd love to interact with you all and make this fic a interesting experience for all of us 😊
By the way, this chapter was more of a prologue and ended up way shorter than I planned—don't worry, future chapters will be beefier (around 4k-5k words each) ]