The world was shrouded in fog.
There was a gray, strangling miasma that extended interminably, a thicket so dense that it suffocated all perception. Sight and sound, even the very pulsation of being—everything was choked under its pressure. Here light was forbidden. There was mere gloom.
And in this location, hidden away from god or man, an ancient machine stirred. Quiet, timeless, it whirled eternally. Countless spirits, as ghosts upon a zephyr, flowed into its arms. Separately, each was stripped of memory and of mass, washed clean of the hurts of their former lives. And then, as sparks carried on the wind, they were scattered on the great wheel of renewal.
This was the innermost secret of reincarnation. The Cycle.
A truth older than the very heavens themselves.
And at its heart, a man waited to die.
He sat cross-legged, wearing gray robes, a tenuous energy barrier shuddering about him. His body blackened, hair to toe, poisoned beyond all semblance. What had begun as an insidious disease had now ravaged him completely; his veins, bones, even the feeble radiance of his meridians were sullied pitch-dark.
But his face was peaceful. Expressionless, as if carved from cold stone.
His eyes fell upon the gilt cycle before him. What others would never perceive in ten thousand lifetimes, he saw in peaceful reflection. Souls floating through the mist like strips of ash, the purifying light that erased their tracks, the great gates that called to them onward into lives to be lived. It was beautiful, in a cruel, unforgiving way.
And so he waited. For his existence to exhaust itself. For the relentless force of the cycle to overtake him.
Time went by here without significance.
In the shard of the reincarnation, moments distorted and coalesced together. He had no idea if a breath had passed, or an eon. The only thing he remembered was the mad dash with the treasure clutched to his breast, the pursuit of enemies whose names he would not accord the courtesy of remembrance, and his final desperate leap into this world.
The shard had claimed him the instant he crossed its edge. A flow like the hold of a god had taken everything in, stripping all possibility of fleeing. He had not even attempted to resist.
To come in was to accept that there was no going back.
So he had chosen silence. Rather than ending up in the hands of those bastards, he would dig his own grave here, right at the heart of reincarnation. Dying away with this endless sight to behold… there were no more horrible fates.
He closed his eyes. Essence glowed softly within him, flickering like a candle with only a brief remainder of life. In a moment, it would be out, and he would fade into the stream like them.
But then. the quiet was broken.
His eyes opened wide.
It was feeble to begin with, barely perceptible—like the quiver of a leaf falling onto still water. But in this never-fading location, even a hushed disruption was a thunderclap.
The air itself shifted. The miasma trembled.
He glared. For the first time in eternities, his senses stirred from their slumber. His sight improved, cutting through the murk.
And he beheld it.
A soul.
It drifted along the edge of one of the cycle's gates, borne on the tide of cleansing. But unlike the countless he had seen—souls thin and colorless, dispersing to creamy vapor—this one resisted.
Its form was blue. Glowing. Glassy, as if it had been carved from water so pure that it reflected light. While other souls quietly melted away into nothing, this one blazed in defiance of its fate.
It struck the current, and the fog bent around it. With each upswelling of resistance, the miasma trembled, casting splinters of light into emptiness.
The man's heart began to move. His eyes flashed into pinpoints.
If he possessed a hair on his head, it would have stood upright.
"A soul… with nature unbroken?"
The words were harsh, as if ripped from the bottom of incredulity.
The cycle was irreversible. Immutable. No soul could outrun its grasp. It was heaven's law, earth's own. Immortals, even those who had once ruled all the stars, stood exposed before its wave.
And yet—under his eye—one shattered it.
He was unable to avert his eyes.
The radiance of the soul blinded, such as moonlight danced on silent waters. Each motion deliberate, intentional, unlike the futile drifting of all else. It struggled against the tide, its crystalline structure unbreakable.
The purging force rushed around it, trying to take it apart. But the more it forced, the more intensely shone the soul's blue light, splitting into countless streams which cut through the haze.
The man's breath was stuck in his throat.
In all his billion years of existence, he had thought himself invulnerable to shock. He had fought wars that shattered worlds. He had seen sects blaze and perish like fireflies in a storm. He had seen gods topple, to be buried under the dunes of eternity.
But this…
This flipped everything upside down.
"A soul that defies reincarnation…," he whispered, trembling. "Such an entity does not exist."
The fog convulsed wildly now, no longer able to hide the conflict of the anomaly. Every heartbeat shook the shard, every clash of the soul and the flow boomed like thunder in stillness.
And for the first time since approaching this crypt, the man's visage changed from resolute calm to something else entirely.
Wonder.
Fear.
And. a spark of passion.
What kind of being had created such a soul? What kind of fate awaited one who carried their essence on the cycle of rebirth itself?
Black and hollow, his eyes burned bright fire. His sparks of existence, nearly extinguished, glowed faintly.
His death may not be so quiet after all.
The blue soul burned hotter, its crystalline energy burning bright against the law of the cycle. A ….
This soul… will turn everything on its head.