The Etherfall
In the deepest bowels of Dai Long’s Tier 0 —a place where dampness clung to the walls and light dared not linger—there lived a boy named “Khanh”.
Fourteen years old, gaunt, his skin tinged bronze from the cold mist, Khanh had eyes like “two pools of ink”, dark enough to drown secrets. He slept in an orphanage, yet even the other children shunned him. They called him “the mad boy” —for when he was young, Khanh claimed to “see ghosts” drifting through the alleys. Years of ridicule taught him silence. Now, he buried his visions deep, moving through Tier 0 like a shadow.
Then, on a “dull, ashen afternoon”, as Khanh hauled sacks for a scrap shop, a **bent old man leaning on a cane** hobbled toward him. The stranger studied him, then whispered:
“Child… can you see it too? The threads… like wisps of silk… swirling around the laborers?”
Khanh froze. Those words “pierced the lockbox of his soul”.
The old man introduced himself as “Ly”. Without another question, he led Khanh to a cramped room at the alley’s end. Over steaming tea, Ly’s gaze seemed to “flay Khanh’s mind open”.
“I know… what you are.” A pause. “And your life… ends today.”
Khanh felt it—“the turning point”.
This meeting would drag him into “Dai Long’s hidden underbelly”, where the “silken threads” were but the first clue to a truth “a thousand times darker”.
