In the beginning, there was silence.Not the quiet of peace, but the silence that follows destruction.The kind of silence that stretches beyond time, after stars fall and gods forget.
Before the worlds, before the heavens and the hells, there was a flicker.A breath of warmth.A single ember, floating alone in the void.Not flame, not light, not thought — just the memory of fire.
From that ember, something awoke.
It did not roar. It did not cry.It burned.Slow, steady, defiant.
And with it came a figure.
He drifted in the darkness between realities, shrouded in a pale fire that gave no heat. His eyes held no reflection, only depth — the kind of depth where galaxies drowned and never returned. Time moved differently around him. Space bent like paper in his wake.
He was not born here.
He had climbed.Fallen.Risen again.
He had been a child, once. Alone. Dirty hands, empty belly. A heart too young to carry pain, yet carrying it anyway. His mother died screaming, crushed beneath the careless battle of cultivators who never knew her name. And the boy, Kahel, remembered.
He remembered every breath since.
Now he stood in the void between all things, where even gods dare not linger.
And the flame still burned.
He had no title, but stars whispered his name.He had no sect, but entire realms bowed to his will.He sought no throne, but kings and immortals feared the echo of his path.
This was no divine inheritance. No fate foretold.His power came not from destiny, but from refusal — the refusal to be small.To be broken. To be forgotten.
And so the void watched as Kahel raised his hand.
A single petal of ash drifted from his palm, disappearing into the sea of stars.
Far below, in a forgotten world named Valmont, a child stirred in his sleep. He did not know what had passed through him. Only that, when he woke, the sky seemed heavier. The air, thinner. The silence, deeper.
The ember had fallen.
And with it, the first step on a path no one could unmake.
The path of the boy who would become the flame.