The sky had cracked. That much he remembered.
One moment, Scholar Sunny was standing beneath the twilight sun, marveling at ruins older than language. The next, the sky tore open — not like thunder or storm, but like memory being ripped in half.
And from that wound in the heavens, they descended.
Figures draped in shadow, their limbs long and wrong, as if they remembered how to be human but no longer cared to pretend. Their eyes bled smoke. Their breath reeked of rust and regret.
> "He carries what they buried..."
"He should not exist here."
The Bloodborn.
They weren't just looking at him — they were hungry. Not for flesh, but for truth. For silence. For the last fragments of a world they couldn't control.
Sunny ran.
His legs were slow, like they were moving through syrup. The air was dense, each breath tasted of iron and forgotten screams. He didn't know where he was anymore. This wasn't Earth. It wasn't any world he had studied in his books. It was something between.
> "You were never meant to witness this."
The voice echoed inside his skull — not outside.
He stumbled.
One of the Bloodborn stepped forward. Its fingers curled, and a thousand screaming faces danced across its skin.
Suddenly, the world pulsed with light.
A figure descended, cloaked in something not quite cloth, not quite light. His eyes held stars — not reflections, but real ones, orbiting within.
He didn't speak. He didn't have to.
Sunny froze. The Bloodborn hissed.
> "He is not yours to consume," the being said, his voice the echo of ten thousand years.
"Wisdom does not bleed."
With a single motion, the Starborn placed a hand on Sunny's forehead.
And the world fell apart.
---
☁️ The Realm of Wisdom Silence
No ground. No sky. No sound.
Only white.
Endless, perfect white.
Sunny was floating. Or falling. Or neither. He was... suspended.
But not alone.
Voices whispered around him — past, future, present — overlapping like memories from a life he hadn't lived.
> "The Nine Realms fell..."
"Heaven betrayed them..."
"The Eight devoured the Realms..."
"Only the Dream remained."
Images flickered in the void — a lotus burning, a child with eyes of silver, a sword buried in a heart that refused to die.
> "He is the vessel..."
"He will remember when the silence shatters..."
Sunny clutched his head. It hurt. Not like pain — like awakening.
> "What am I?!" he screamed into the nothing.
And the Realm answered:
> "You are the Witness. Not the Warrior."
"But your words will awaken the world."
A crack formed in the whiteness — a single golden fracture.
And then… light.
---
🌍 Earth, Again
He awoke gasping, coughing on dust. He was back — back at the excavation site, back where it all began.
But he wasn't the same.
The wind smelled sharper. The shadows watched longer. And deep inside his soul, something ancient whispered:
> "They didn't kill you..."
"They marked you."
Sunny sat up slowly. The lotus symbol was faintly glowing on his palm.
He looked up at the night sky — and for the first time in his life, it looked back.