The world was not born from light, nor from darkness.
It was born from a line.
A single, endless line that coiled through the void and pulsed with colorless radiance. It stretched across the nothingness like a brushstroke drawn by a hand that never trembled, weaving paths, spirals, and infinite intersections. That line came to be called the Great Circuit—the first and only meridian from which all power flowed.
From it, the realms unfolded.
Mountains rose where the line coiled tightly; seas poured into the gaps it left behind; fire blazed from sparks it shed when it bent too far. And where the line thickened into luminous knots, life was born. Creatures—first simple, then mythical, then divine. Dragons, phoenixes, serpents of endless length—all guardians of the Great Circuit's fragments.
And at the very end of the line, the last knot split into countless strands. Those strands pierced the bodies of men and women. From that day, all mortals carried within them a reflection of the world's origin: Circuits.
A Circuit was no simple vein of blood. It was a living meridian—a pathway etched into flesh and soul that linked the body to the Great Circuit itself.
Some people bore only one. A flicker, a thin thread running down their arm, allowing them to ignite sparks, heal wounds, or swing a blade with inhuman sharpness.
Others had many, entire networks of power branching through them, granting dominion over storms, shadow, or the march of time itself.
A Circuit's location determined its gift:
Hand circuits forged warriors who could channel flame, steel, or lightning into every strike. Heart circuits awakened elemental bursts, breathing out ice or magma with each beat. Leg circuits bent speed and gravity, letting men run faster than sound or leap between clouds. Eye circuits—rarest of all—were whispered as curses. For they gave vision not meant for mortals: the ability to paralyze foes with a glance, to conjure illusions indistinguishable from truth, or to silence life itself.
Most awakened their circuits in adolescence. Some clans trained from childhood to refine their meridians, binding bloodlines to elements or domains. Power defined status, and families without strong circuits were trampled beneath those who had them.
Among such families was the Kurogane Clan, a house of steel and shadow, respected for their martial strength and feared for their ruthless politics. Every child of their blood was expected to awaken circuits befitting the clan's name. Some had blades sprouting from their very bones. Others summoned barriers that could turn aside an army's charge.
But one child… did not.
Arata Kurogane was the disappointment. Born with sealed circuits—or so it was said—he was deemed a background existence, overshadowed by siblings who could cleave through boulders before they reached adulthood.
By his twelfth year, his name had already been erased from whispers of succession. By his fifteenth, servants no longer bowed when he passed. His own kin mocked him as a "shadow without light."
And perhaps that was what made him the perfect vessel.
On another world, far from the Great Circuit, lived a young man of the same name.
Arata Kurogane, twenty years of age. A university dropout. A cynic who found people dull, hypocritical, and unbearably loud. He preferred silence, books, and the fictions that played out in his head. Imagination was his only true hobby.
He was, in his own words, a side character to reality.
The day of his death was unremarkable. A car horn, blinding headlights, the screech of metal. Then the silence of the void. But as his consciousness unraveled, something pulled at him—a thread. A single, endless line, beckoning him to step across.
And when he opened his eyes again, he was lying in a cold bed within the Kurogane estate, gasping in a body that was not his own. Memories—half his, half foreign—flooded his mind. He saw the boy's past: the humiliation, the scorn, the whispered pity.
A weakling. A failure. A shadow.
Yet when he raised his hand, when he thought to himself "I want light," a small sphere of illumination bloomed in his palm.
His lips curled into a quiet smile.
The Soul-Circuit: Imagination Made Real
What Arata discovered that day defied every law of circuits. His body carried something no scholar had written of, no elder had ever spoken of—a soul-circuit.
It was not bound to flesh or bone. It was not etched in eye, heart, or limb. It dwelled within the very essence of his spirit.
The rules were simple:
Anything he imagined, anything he truly believed, would manifest. The only limit was logic. He could not summon an ocean in the desert without water to feed it, but he could bend gravity sideways because gravity already existed. With each use, his imagination grew sharper, clearer, more dangerous.
It was, in essence, the fragment of the Creator's own Circuit.
And as if fate conspired to cloak his power, his vessel's left eye also bore a dormant meridian—a circuit feared by kings and coveted by assassins. When awakened, it would:
Stage One: Paralyze all life within one hundred meters. Stage Two: Inflict visions of death and crushing intent until enemies broke. Final Stage: Stop the heart with a glance.
A shadow without light? No.
A shadow that consumed all light.
When Arata—now bound to this world—rose from that bed, he did not curse fate for dragging him here. He did not mourn his old life, nor cry for the friends and family he left behind.
He laughed.
Softly, at first. Then louder, until servants outside his chamber whispered of madness.
Because to him, this was perfect.
In his old world, he was just another forgettable face. Here, he had been given a body already dismissed, already erased from importance. Nobody expected anything from him. Nobody would watch him too closely.
He was free to imagine. Free to build. Free to become stronger, day by day, without ever stepping into the spotlight.
Let heroes clash for fame. Let villains burn for vengeance. He would watch from the shadows, shaping reality with a thought, striking down fools with a glance.
And when the world finally noticed the truth, it would already be too late.
For the strongest existence was not the one bathed in light.
It was the one that lurked behind it.
"Perfect," Arata whispered to the silence. "The strongest background character… that's who I'll be."