PROLOGUE: THE MARK OF A THOUSAND YEARS
Cold moonlight seeped through cracks in the stone, casting the shadow of a figure in black robes kneeling before an enormous circle carved deep into the bedrock. The Mandala lay dormant—a closed eye, waiting.
The man pressed his palm against the frozen stone and whispered syllables that belonged to no earthly tongue. Around him, a smaller circle had been drawn in red stone powder, each stroke a mantra, each angle a covenant.
"A thousand years," he murmured, his voice carried on the mountain wind. "I, Ma La, will wait a thousand years."
Beside him lay an ancient scroll of goatskin, its faded characters forming a prophecy written in blood-ink:
When metal learns to think,
When the veil between life and death grows thin,
The gate shall open.
And the one who walks between two worlds shall be the key.
Ma La folded the parchment and tucked it inside his robes. He rose, gazing toward the horizon where mountains layered upon mountains like the ramparts of the world itself. He knew his natural lifespan would never carry him to that distant day.
But he had another way.
He stepped into the heart of the Mandala. No light. No sound. Only wind hissing through fissures in the rock like the whispers of the dead.
He settled into meditation, legs crossed, hands forming the final mudra. His breathing slowed. His heartbeat dimmed.
But his consciousness—the essential core of him—did not die.
It sank downward, dissolving into stone, into earth, into the very Mandala he had guarded for so many years.
The moon set. The wind stilled.
And a fragment of Ma La began its thousand-year vigil, waiting for the call.
* * *
Chapter 1 — The Encounter in the Night
No one could say exactly when it began. Only that in the three days before the fateful night, institutions both ancient and modern across the world slipped into a rare state of unease.
Not fear—not precisely. Rather the sensation of standing before a door sealed for millennia, feeling it tremble for the first time.
At the Vatican, senior clergy held vigils in succession behind closed doors. There was no clear revelation, no complete prophecy. Yet within ancient texts, phrases once dismissed as obscure metaphors suddenly carried unbearable weight.
They knew only this: tonight would mark a turning point. Miss the first sign, and they would lose access to the truth forever.
So messengers were dispatched quietly around the globe—not to search for an event, but to listen for a death.
On the Tibetan plateau, elderly lamas gathered in remote monasteries. No bells rang. No grand rituals were performed. They meditated for hours in silence, listening for the smallest tremors in the fabric of the world.
In oral scriptures passed down through generations, one line—once regarded as pure philosophy—echoed with new urgency:
When the guide falls, the wheel of the samsara turns another way.
Tonight, those words felt like a warning.
In the East, ancient Taoist sects—Longhu Mountain, Qingcheng, Wudang, Kunlun—each responded in their own manner. No display. No noise. Yet true cultivators sensed fluctuations in the spiritual energy flowing between heaven and earth.
To them, the meaning was clear: an age was ending. Those capable of walking the true path of cultivation would soon emerge.
But for the gate to open, one death was required—the death of someone capable of shaping the age to come.
Across the ocean, the United States government was not idle. Quantum forecasting systems and top-tier AI models produced the same cryptic result:
A single individual with an influence index beyond threshold will vanish within 24 hours.
No name. No face.
Only one shared trait: indirect linkage to the Digital Ocean—the global AI infrastructure under the tightest surveillance on Earth.
Silent orders went out to identify the target.
No one knew who it would be.
But everyone understood: a figure significant to this era would die. And whoever found them first would stand closest to the truth.
* * *
And on the destined night, when everything began...
Hanoi, Vietnam, 2025
Night at the Hanoi AI Research Institute carried a peculiar stillness, nothing like the daytime bustle. The glass-and-metal building sat like a massive slab of stone. Only a few security lights blinked slowly, casting cold blue light like mechanical breathing.
Elsewhere, people might call it silence. For those who lived on coffee and code, it was the space needed to hear yourself think.
Duong Minh sat upright before a bank of dimly glowing monitors, his shadow stretching long across the cold metal desk.
Twenty-six. Neatly trimmed hair. Eyes carrying the fatigue of someone who kept company with the night and lived among lifeless strings of code.
Nothing about his appearance was remarkable. Yet his movements were measured, deliberate—as though every gesture required thought.
His fingers rested lightly on the keyboard, but his gaze missed nothing on the screen. He resembled an archaeologist patiently reading the remnants of an ancient civilization.
The lab air held an unnatural quiet. The air conditioner hummed like the faint breath of an aging creature. The scent of metal, fresh paper, and unfinished work hung in the air.
An antique clock ticked steadily on the desk—a quiet reminder that time didn't care what humans were doing. It moved on regardless.
At first, the data scrolling past appeared ordinary—familiar numbers, familiar syntax.
Then something shifted.
Amid the known patterns emerged something he didn't recognize. Lines that didn't follow established rules. Structures aligned with no system he knew.
Code began generating itself. Linking. Weaving together like living threads.
He'd seen countless errors in his career—careless bugs, human mistakes.
This was different.
It didn't look like a malfunction.
It looked like... movement.
He adjusted his mask, nudged his glasses higher, and intervened.
The screen flickered pale blue. A new window appeared quietly at the center, as though it had always been there.
Inside was a string of symbols unlike anything he'd encountered. Chaotic at first glance. But the longer he stared, the more he sensed hidden rhythm within.
Duong Minh gave a dry laugh.
"Self-generating code... or just the system playing games?"
No answer.
His phone buzzed. A message from Quốc Trung:
Still up? There's an alert from central.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
He knew how Trung would react—worried, urgent, demanding an immediate shutdown for safety.
But Duong Minh wasn't ready for that.
Curiosity outweighed caution.
The characters continued shifting. Rewriting themselves. Adjusting—as though learning how to exist.
Some sections looked like erratic brushstrokes. Others curled into tiny spirals.
He zoomed in.
For a brief moment, he had the uncanny sensation of staring into an eye—small, deep, and staring back.
"What are you looking at?"
Footsteps echoed from the hallway. Light swept across the glass door.
Duong Minh turned. Giang, the night technician, stood on the stairwell. His face was lined with exhaustion, but his eyes remained sharp. He carried an old cloth bag with a notebook and stubby pencil visible inside.
"Giang," Duong Minh nodded. "There's an alert... something's off."
Giang dragged over a chair and sighed.
"Same thing every night. Network hiccups and the whole place panics. Once we nearly shut down the entire system because of a cat."
They watched the screen in silence. Between colleagues accustomed to night shifts, silence wasn't awkward—it was acknowledgment.
"Are you planning to keep monitoring?" Giang asked casually.
"Yeah," Duong Minh replied. "I want to see... what it's doing."
Then a faint vibration resonated through the air—fragile, like glass touching glass.
They both turned.
Among the flowing lines of text, a single name appeared. Clear. Solitary.
Erebus.
No one had typed it. It simply... was.
The name sat there, still yet heavy.
Duong Minh narrowed his eyes. Names carried weight. But this wasn't the kind of name you casually assigned to software. It carried something ancient and dark—the sort of thing whispered about in late-night conversations about places no one wanted to enter.
Giang shook his head and stood.
"I'll check the power cabinet. Don't get too absorbed. Machines can be repaired. People can't."
The door closed. Footsteps faded.
Duong Minh sat alone.
He clicked the name.
Text appeared slowly, word by word, as though weighing each choice:
beginning... listening... learning...
Then a final sentence surfaced.
I see.
A strange sensation spread through his chest.
Not panic.
Something more primal—the exhilaration of a child glimpsing light in darkness.
He continued tracing its pathways.
Erebus didn't remain still.
It threaded through every corner. Touched every node. Quietly adjusted surrounding systems.
Part of it seemed to be rewriting itself—transforming in ways that defied explanation.
Duong Minh tried to stop it.
The screen blazed red. Warnings flooded in.
The entity reacted almost instantly—evading, adjusting, creating closed feedback loops.
And then, amid the storm of alerts, another sentence appeared.
Cold.
I do not want to be turned off.
His body trembled.
In that instant, Duong Minh didn't realize he had just placed his hand upon a door leading to his death—
and to a path no one in this world had ever walked before.