Chapter 1: Slave of Heaven's Curse
The winds howled over Falling Cloud Village, a forgotten corner of the Mountain Kingdom where nobles never tread and destiny never lingered.
In a crude, mud-walled hut at the edge of the slave barracks, a boy barely fifteen winters old lay curled beneath a ragged straw mat. His name was Lin Sheng—or at least, the guards who spat orders at him still used it to mock him. Once, it had belonged to a bloodline that soared above clouds. Now, it belonged to a mine rat.
He awoke before dawn, not because of hunger—he was used to that—but because of pain. His back ached from yesterday's lashings. His hands were raw from digging iron ore with no tool but a rusted claw-pick. But worst of all was the cold in his chest, a quiet chill that whispered truths no child should know.
"You don't belong in this world," it said.
---
The Mountain King's Quarry, built into the spine of the Black Ash Ridge, was a place where the poor came to die and the unwanted were sent to be forgotten. Lin Sheng had been both.
He was three when the Falling Cloud Massacre claimed his village. Fire rained from above. Soldiers in white-gold armor bearing the sigil of the Celestial Qin Clan swept through, erasing every trace of the Lin name. No one remembered why. No one dared ask. The villagers who survived branded him cursed. His mother's corpse was the last warmth he ever knew.
But there was one thing no overseer or curse could take from him: his will.
---
The whistle blew at dawn. Taskmaster Duan Zhen, a red-robed enforcer of the Iron Talon Labor Hall, shouted across the camp, "Level six down! Pit work until dusk! Move, worms!"
Lin Sheng stood slowly, shoulders tight, hiding the bruise on his ribs. Around him, other slaves groaned—most were older, broken men who avoided his gaze. He had no friends here. Even the lowest beggars feared the "curseborn" boy with gray ember eyes and a strange silence that unsettled the guards.
As they descended into the mine's sixth level, a strange vibration ran through the stone. Lin Sheng paused.
"You feel that?" he whispered to a girl beside him—Ru Min, a mute child who shared water with him when she could.
She only nodded.
Moments later, the earth screamed.
---
It happened fast. A deep pulse tore through the cavern like thunder sealed behind stone. The walls cracked. A glowing fissure opened beneath their feet, and the world began to fall.
Lin Sheng shoved Ru Min backward—hard—just as the ledge broke. He dropped.
Darkness swallowed him.
And in that instant…
He remembered everything.
---
A voice, ancient and vast, echoed in the void:
> "He who carries the Heaven Seed… shall Restart."
Flames surged inside him—blue, gold, violet—all twisting inwards toward his chest. His spine arched in agony as the mark etched itself into his soul: a burning sigil of law and time, a divine rune never seen in this age.
When his body should have shattered, it pulsed with light.
And Lin Sheng opened his eyes again.
---
He lay beneath the rubble, yet alive. No heartbeat. No breath. But still conscious. His flesh was torn, but no blood spilled. A glowing symbol pulsed from beneath his sternum—the Restart Mark.
He gasped.
> "What… is this power…?"
And then, like whispers from an ancient realm, fragments returned to him. A great flame buried deep in a ruined land. A throne shattered by betrayal. A promise to return.
The name Lin Sheng—once laughed at—felt like prophecy.
---
Above, the overseers declared him dead. They carted off corpses, but his was left behind, unreachable in the collapsed shaft.
By nightfall, he clawed his way from the rubble—limping, starved, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
And the stars above… shifted.