[TIMELINE: 2,000 YEARS AGO]
[LOCATION: THE CELESTIAL PEAK — IMPERIAL CAPITAL]
The sky didn't just break. It shattered.
The red clouds above the Imperial Palace were ripped open by invisible claws, revealing the darkness beyond.
It started as a trickle. Black, oily liquid dripping from the wound in the heavens. Then it became a waterfall. Then an ocean.
The Hell Army.
Millions of them. Feral ghosts with mouths wide enough to swallow horses whole. Bone-constructs stitched together from the corpses of forgotten wars. Demons with skin like wet ash and eyes like burning coal.
They poured into the capital—a tsunami of screaming hunger.
The Golden Hall of the Dragon Emperor—now missing its roof—sat at the epicenter.
The Emperor, crushed against his throne by Ren's gravity, let out a wet, gurgling laugh. His bones were powder, but his madness remained intact.
"They're here!" he wheezed, blood bubbling from his lips. "My army! My salvation! Eat him! EAT HIM!"
The Patriarchs of the Eight Traitor Families scrambled away from Ren, faces pale with terror.
"We're saved," the Zhang Patriarch whispered, watching the black tide descend. "The Yamas have brought the Legion."
The ten Yamas—the Kings of Hell—struggled against the invisible pressure pinning them to the floor. The central Yama grinned, exposing rows of shark-like teeth.
"You possess strong Authority, Shaman," the Yama rumbled. "But Authority has limits. Can you suppress ten million souls at once? Can you Audit the entire ocean?"
Ren didn't answer. He didn't look at the sky. He looked at his Bone Brush.
The bristles were dry. The golden blood he'd spat earlier had been used up.
"You ask the wrong question," Ren murmured.
The black tide hit the palace.
CRASH.
The sound was deafening. The sheer weight of millions of demons collapsed the outer walls. The flood of monsters rushed into the throne room, a chaotic avalanche of claws and teeth, burying the lone figure in black robes.
Ren disappeared instantly under a mountain of writhing darkness.
The Emperor laughed. The Eight Families cheered. The Yamas roared in triumph.
Then the mountain stopped moving.
Glug.
A sound echoed from the center of the pile. It sounded like a drain opening.
Glug. Glug.
The demons at the bottom started to scream. But it wasn't a scream of attack. It was a scream of dissolution.
Their bodies lost cohesion. Skin melted. Bones liquefied. They turned into black liquid. Into Ink.
The mountain of monsters began to shrink, sucked rapidly toward the center.
"What's happening?" the Zhang Patriarch screamed. "Why are they... melting?"
A hand burst from the pile of dying demons. It held the Bone Brush. The bristles were no longer dry. They dripped with thick, black, high-quality ink.
Ren Wu stood up. He hadn't been crushed. He'd been refilling.
"You brought me ingredients," Ren said, his voice cutting through the chaos. "How thoughtful."
Ren slashed the brush through the air. He didn't write a character this time. He painted a circle.
[BOUNDARY: THE CAGE]
A line of black ink exploded outward, expanding until it encompassed the entire Imperial City. The exits vanished. The space warped. The "Sky" was replaced by a ceiling of solid, impenetrable ink.
Ren looked at the millions of demons still pouring from the rift. He looked at the terrified Traitor Families. He looked at the Ten Yamas.
"I'm not locked in here with you," Ren said, dipping his brush into the screaming face of a melting demon.
"You're locked in here with The Auditor."
[THE STRUGGLE]
The Hell Army panicked. They tried to flee, but the Cage held them. Ren moved like a dancer, harvesting them by the thousands.
But the Kings of Hell were not mindless beasts.
"STOP FEEDING HIM!"
The roar came from the Central Yama, King Yan.
He slammed his fists into the ground. Green fire erupted, vaporizing the smaller demons instantly. The other nine Yamas followed suit. They slaughtered their own army.
In seconds, the "Ink Source" was gone. The floor was empty.
Ren stood alone. The Bone Brush was dry.
"Clever," Ren admitted.
"Your ink is gone, Shaman," King Yan growled. He grew to fifty feet tall, his skin turning to iron. A massive axe materialized in his hands, wreathed in necrotic fire. "Now you fight us with your own blood."
The ten Yamas moved as one.
Chains of green fire erupted from the floor. SNAP.
Ren's left arm was pinned. Then his right leg. Then his throat.
He fell to one knee. The sheer pressure cracked the stone beneath him.
"Die!"
The Second Yama drove a spear of necrotic energy through Ren's shoulder.
Squelch.
Ren coughed up a mouthful of gold blood. His vision blurred. The pain was absolute—a cold fire burning through his meridians.
The Emperor cheered from his broken throne. "Kill him! Tear him apart!"
King Yan raised the giant axe. It was a blow meant to split the continent.
"You were a nuisance, Shaman," the Yama gloated. "But you are mortal. And mortals bleed."
Ren looked at the spear sticking out of his shoulder. He looked at the dry brush lying inches from his hand.
He didn't panic. He started to laugh. It was a wet, raspy sound.
"You're right," Ren whispered. "Mortals bleed."
He ripped his arm free from the chains—tearing his own flesh in the process.
He grabbed the brush.
He jammed the bristles into his own open shoulder wound.
"But my blood is heavier than your iron."
[BLOOD ART: SOVEREIGN AUTHORITY]
BOOM.
Ren didn't just paint. He exploded with power.
The blood-ink on the brush glowed with a blinding golden light. It was ten times denser than the demon-ink.
Ren swung the brush upward.
He didn't dodge the giant axe. He met it.
CLANG.
The brush—reinforced with Sovereign Blood—didn't break. The axe shattered.
King Yan stumbled back, staring at the fragments of his divine weapon. "Impossible..."
Ren stood up. He was bleeding from a dozen wounds. His left arm hung uselessly at his side. But his eyes were burning.
"Now," Ren rasped, dipping the brush into his wound again. "Let's negotiate."
[THE ASSET SEIZURE]
Ren lunged.
He landed on King Yan's chest. He reached out and grabbed the Crown of Bone sitting on the Yama's head.
[DECREE: ASSET SEIZURE]
RIP.
Ren didn't just take the hat. He tore the Concept of Kingship out of the demon's soul.
The Yama screamed—a sound that shattered glass across the city. His fifty-foot iron body shrank. His divine aura evaporated. The "King" dissolved, leaving behind a terrified, translucent spirit.
A Ghost Judge.
Ren threw the Bone Crown to the floor and crushed it under his boot.
"Next," Ren said.
The other nine Yamas froze. They saw their brother—a being who'd ruled for eons—reduced to a shivering slave in seconds.
Fear. True, primal fear. It wasn't the fear of death. It was the fear of demotion.
"Attack him together!" the Second Yama screamed. "He's bleeding out! He can't strip us all!"
They rushed him. Nine Gods against one wounded Shaman.
It was a blur of violence.
Ren moved through them like a calligraphy stroke. He took hits. A claw raked his chest. A club shattered his ribs. But for every wound he took, he took a Crown.
He grabbed the Second Yama by the throat. [SEIZE]. Crown ripped. Soul stripped.
He kicked the Third Yama in the knee. [LIQUIDATE]. Leg shattered. Spirit bound.
He caught the Fourth and Fifth Yamas by their horns and smashed their heads together. [MERGER]. Identities crushed. Wills broken.
One by one, the Kings of Hell fell. One by one, they were stripped of their names, their titles, and their power.
[THE SILENCE]
The sun began to set. But the sky was still blocked by the black bars of the Cage.
The Imperial Palace was a ruin. The Eight Families were gone—eaten down to the bone during the chaos. The Emperor was dead—buried under the rubble of his own throne.
Ren stood in the center of the devastation.
He was barely standing.
His black robes were shredded. He was missing chunks of flesh. He leaned heavily on the Bone Brush, using it like a crutch. His golden blood pooled around his feet.
In front of him, kneeling in a perfect semicircle, were ten translucent figures. They wore tattered robes. Their heads were bowed. They held chains in their hands—chains that connected directly to Ren's soul.
The Ghost Judges. Formerly the Ten Kings of Hell. Now, eternal clerks for the Auditor.
Ren wheezed, spitting out a clot of blood.
He walked to the First Judge. He wrote a single character on the spirit's forehead.
[WORK]
Then the Second. [WORK]. Then the Third.
He bound them. Not for a year. Not for a century. For eternity.
"The Harvest is complete," Ren whispered.
He looked up at the Cage he'd painted. He wiped the blood from his eyes. He raised his shaking hand to dismiss the barrier.
But the barrier didn't dissolve. It broke.
From the outside.
CRACK.
A beam of pure, silent white light pierced the center of the Cage. It wasn't demonic energy. It wasn't human Qi. It was something else. Something colder. Something absolute.
The clouds parted. The Red Sky vanished. Revealing a Giant White Eye looking down from the Heavens.
It had no pupil. It had no emotion. It was the gaze of the System. The gaze of the Natural Order.
Ren looked up at the Eye. He felt his broken bones creak. The pressure was a thousand times heavier than the Hell Army.
This wasn't an invasion. This was a Correction.
Ren didn't smile. He didn't look away. He simply tightened his grip on the Bone Brush.
He was half-dead. He was out of ink. But he didn't kneel.
He raised the brush toward the Heavens, pointed directly at the Eye of God.
"So the Architect finally arrives," Ren rasped.
The White Eye didn't blink. A pillar of light—wide enough to swallow the city—began to descend.
[TO BE CONTINUED IN SIDE STORY 3: THE FALL]