---
Silence.
Ash drifted through it—not in water, not in air, but in a space where sound had never been born.
There was no light, no time, no sense of body.
Only weight.
An immeasurable pressure held him suspended, wrapped like a cocoon of ancient intent. He could not move. He could not breathe.
But somehow… he existed.
His thoughts, however, were fractured. Echoes swam through his mind—his mother's voice calling from the burning fields, the girl Lian whispering about something sleeping beneath the sea, and the last words of the shadowed figure: "It was not meant for you."
What was meant for him?
And what had he awoken?
---
Time passed. Maybe hours. Maybe years.
Eventually, sensation returned. Faint at first—like the brushing of silk across skin. Then stronger.
He felt cold.
Then pain.
The kind that settled in the marrow, that whispered of something being taken—not his life, but something deeper. Something essential.
He opened his eyes.
And saw darkness.
Yet not total.
Faintly, high above, strands of light weaved through layers of water like falling silk. He was deep beneath the ocean, entombed within a barrier of lightless stone, shaped like a temple swallowed by the abyss.
Chains—more runes than metal—bound the chamber walls, glowing with silent blue flame.
Ash floated near the center, suspended by a web of sigils inscribed midair, holding him like an insect in stasis.
He struggled. No use.
It wasn't his body that was trapped.
It was his spirit.
---
Then he felt it.
A presence.
Vast. Ancient. Watching.
Not from outside—but from within.
Ash's heartbeat slowed. Not from fear, but from something else.
Recognition.
A voice—not a sound, but a pressure—pressed into his mind.
"So… the mortal was chosen."
Ash's jaw clenched. "Who are you?"
The presence laughed. No cruelty. No warmth.
Just amusement.
"A question asked by every fool who stumbles into the dark. But you are not like the others. You were not supposed to be here… and yet you are."
Ash grit his teeth. "You're the one they sealed here… the Devourer."
The presence stilled.
Then answered.
"Devourer. Butcher. Monster. Yes. I was called many things. All true. All incomplete. I reached too far into the sky… and so they cast me into the sea."
Ash trembled, not from the pressure, but from what he felt in that voice—depth. It wasn't demonic, or even evil. Just… wrong. Like something that had seen beyond the veil of existence and come back shattered.
"Then why speak to me?" Ash asked.
The voice softened.
"Because you are also broken. You just don't know it yet."
---
The light above flickered.
Far away, something stirred in the ocean depths. A shift in pressure. A ripple through the sea that passed through stone and spirit alike.
Then the voice whispered:
"Do you know why your family died?"
Ash's eyes widened. "What?"
"You think it was chance. A raid. A mistake."
His fists clenched. "It was."
But the presence continued.
"No, child. It was not random. Your bloodline—though dormant—carried something the heavens feared. Just as I once did."
Ash's chest heaved. "You're lying."
"Am I?" The voice was calm. "Then why did a wandering cultivator 'just happen' to find you after your home burned? Why did you awaken no Qi for two years, and then suddenly—after touching my scroll—you feel it stir?"
Ash went still.
The scroll.
The dreams.
The strange warmth he sometimes felt in his veins.
"You're trying to turn me into a monster like you," Ash spat.
The presence didn't laugh this time.
"I do not create monsters. I merely show them what they already are."
---
The chamber trembled. The chains flared once, then dimmed.
The presence receded.
But before it vanished entirely, it left Ash with one final whisper:
"Remember this, Ash of Ember Hollow… the heavens do not fear the wicked. They fear the unbound."
Then silence returned.
And Ash, bound in runes beneath the sea, began to dream.
---