In the bright glow of her apartment screen, Julia scrolled through the final chapters of Lord of the Mysteries for what must've been the third time that year. Outside, a gentle rain tapped against the windowpane like ghostly fingers, and the city below was nothing more than a sea of shadows and headlights.
She closed the tab with a sigh, the bittersweet ending lingering in her chest.
"Why can't life be that grand?" she muttered, rubbing her temples. "I'd take being a Beyonder over this rat race any day."
A lonely laugh escaped her. Twenty-four, working a dull job in IT support, and living vicariously through characters dancing through apocalypses and divine pathways. Julia's world was dull gray. Not even the thunderstorm brewing outside could stir her heart anymore.
That was, until the thunder cracked louder than it ever should have.
Her ceiling glowed.
Julia turned her head—and then, pain. Sharp, jarring pain. A deafening screech echoed in her skull like glass shattering. The last thing she saw was the screen flickering violently as a blinding golden light engulfed everything.
She gasped.
Air? No... not air. It was like being underwater, but not wet. A void made of thoughts and pressure.
And she wasn't alone.
In front of her, floating above an unfathomable sea—waves of shifting silver and chaotic stars—a figure battled something she could not comprehend.
Julia knew that golden hair, the balance of god and man. He looked as if he was some mortal man wearing the clothes of a church's priest.
The description in the book he had read 3 times can never be forgotten by her.
She was in front of the King of angels- Adam.
She shouldn't have been there.
The being Adam fought—no, resisted—was like a crack in reality, a fissure bleeding wrongness. Tentacles of shadow, eyes that blinked in reverse, thoughts that weren't thoughts at all. It whispered things Julia couldn't hear, yet she understood them.
It felt as if she was using his three dimensional mind to comprehend something four dimensional.
Something ancient, something that should never have touched the normal Earth.
And yet, here it was, dragging its corruption through the veil, bypassing the fragile barrier between dimensions.
The being turned—or perhaps only noticed her by accident.
And then Adam looked at her too.
Perhaps at that moment Julia recalled his earlier wish to live life as Beyonder
She regretted it, No matter how much she hated his life on earth , she will be atleast alive.
However there is no medicine for regret in this world.
Perhaps there is a great being who had responded to Julia's wishes and sent her to the world of Lord of Mysteries.
The great being didn't take into account, that this place is very dangerous.
What happened next was like a foregone conclusion. Julia's mortal soul could not bear the gaze of Adam and the outer deity.
Time collapsed.
Julia's soul disintegrated.
Nothing.
Julia felt nothing
No light. No pain. No sound.
Just the endless dark.
Julia floated in it, for how long, she didn't know. She had no form, no thoughts except... one.
Something was inside her.
A seed of power, a sliver of knowledge that hadn't been there before. Something left behind by that gaze—Adam's or the being's, she didn't know.
She should have been gone, erased, undone,but she still exists somehow.
In the pitch black, something cracked.
Like glass or a shell.
A narrow path split the void.
Light, not blinding, but soft, like the opening of a dream.
she drifted into it, unable to resist.
And behind her... the void sighed.
In the distance, eyes opened.
It was vast and feminine with size beyond concept.
Each iris spun like galaxies caught in a dance of fate.
They blinked slowly, and the darkness around them warped into something else which was alive.
A voice, more emotion than sound, echoed across everything.
"…inevitable."
Doulou Continent
Five Years Later...
The temple halls were silent.
Rain clattered against spirit-glass windows as the dusk bled into night, but inside the lavish bedroom of the Holy Daughter, no candles were lit. Just a girl curled in bed, unmoving, her golden hair fanned out like a sun extinguished.
Qian Renxue had not spoken since morning.
A healer had come and gone, leaving behind bitter-smelling tonics and a fresh bandage wrapped tightly around her small forehead.
The bruise underneath pulsed dully, a reminder of what had happened.
No servants talked about it aloud. No priest dared speak her name with pity.
But they all knew.
Bibi Dong.
The present Saint of Spirit Hall as well her mother.
They said the Saint hadn't meant to push the child so hard.
They said Qian Renxue had only wanted to hold her hand, to tell her something she'd drawn.
They said the Saint's hand lashed out faster than anyone could stop.
And they said the child had fallen headfirst onto marble.
Now, Renxue stared at the ceiling through wide, blank eyes.
The pain in her skull wasn't the problem.
It was the other pain—the deeper one. The kind that doesn't leave bruises.
The kind that feels like your soul is bleeding.
She didn't know why it hurt so much. She barely knew her mother. They rarely spoke. And when they did, it was cold.
But today had been different.
Today… it had felt like something in her had cracked.
Not just her head.
Something deeper.
Something older.
The wind blew through the half-open balcony doors, and for a moment, the candlelight in the far corner flickered.
Qian Renxue didn't see the flame.
She saw stars.
A sea of them—roiling, burning, screaming without sound.
She gasped and clutched her blanket as pressure built behind her eyes.
Memories surged—wrong memories which were not hers
It was of a person named Julia. A name she didn't know, yet one that rang within her like a lost song.
Then, the light—blinding, holy, deadly.
Adam,
and
A crack in reality and thing beyond sanity.
Probably an outer diety.
Her hands trembled.
She sat up with effort, the room spinning slightly. The voice of a five-year-old escaped her lips, fragile and hoarse:
"...I died…"
She didn't know how she remembered.
She didn't know why she remembered now.
But the pieces clicked into place with terrifying clarity.
It was not reincarnation, neither it was transmigration.
It was Fusion.
The Julia that had once drifted through stories now lived again—inside the girl fated to burn the world.
Outside, thunder rumbled across the endless heavens.
To fate. destiny, and power.
Powerful beings cast over their gaze spanning across realities, to find what or who was responsible for this.
They used their unimaginable powers, but were unable to find anything.
Renxue pressed her hands to her temples as a cold sweat broke across her brow.
"I'm not… her," she whispered. "I'm not…"
But even as she denied it, she was.
Both of them.
The golden child of Spirit Hall.
And the girl who once dreamed of being more.
And now, everything was changing.
The door creaked open behind her.
An old priest peeked in, worried eyes hidden behind gold-rimmed spectacles.
"My lady… it's late. Do you need something?"
Qian Renxue turned to him slowly, her expression calm, eerily calm for a child.
"No," she said. Her voice was soft but steady. "I'm fine."
The priest bowed and closed the door.
Only when the room was silent again did Renxue whisper to the shadows:
"Adam… what did you leave behind in me?"