Kaelan moves his octopus legs through the ocean of void energy.
He tastes the dark like salt and drags his scaled limbs through currents of nothing.
Since rebirth, he has swum these depths for two thousand years without finding so much as a ripple worth feeding on.
The void is cradle and abyss, endless and patient, and Kaelan grows small inside its patience.
Boredom gnaws at him sharply than hunger.
He thinks of ending his life, and the thought feels like a clean cut across all his years.
He cannot choose.
On Earth, he wandered and hungered for power and dreamed of outliving time.
Now he is both powerful and immortal, and the dream tastes thin.
So he does not kill himself.
Instead, he wonders if strength can still be increased.
Perhaps with greater strength, he might find something in the void besides silence.
But absorbing void energy does nothing.
His body is saturated, unchanging.
According to the knowledge etched into him at birth, a void monster grows in three ways.
First, by devouring other void monsters.
Second, by devouring worlds.
Third, by finding their own path in the infinite dark.
The void is endless, and countless ways to grow must exist.
So he keeps swimming, patience grinding into centuries.
A hundred years later, light flickers at the edge of his sight.
Kaelan halts, rubbing the edges of his eyes with a scaled tentacle, half-believing it a trick of weariness.
But the glow remains, steady, unmoving.
Not an illusion.
He surges forward, pushing against the thick current of void energy.
The light swells, larger with each stroke of his limbs.
After some time, the shape resolves—a bubble, radiant and fragile, floating in the dark.
A world.
Kaelan circles it, senses brushing its barrier.
The aura is faint, gentle, not overwhelming.
Relief ripples through him.
It is a small world.
The strongest living beings inside reach only the fourth stage—one level beneath him.
He trails a tentacle across the smooth wall of the barrier, feeling its trembling resistance.
His limbs coil and uncoil, restless.
Should he devour it?
Or should he take another path?
He lingers, staring at the glowing sphere, unsure.
After more than two thousand years, he has come across this world.
Destroying it so quickly would be a waste.
Who knows when he will find another?
So, before devouring it, he decides to have some fun.
Perhaps he might even find another path to grow stronger inside this place.
He studies the crystal barrier.
His body cannot pass through whole.
A void monster is not truly matter, not truly energy, not truly soul, but a fusion of all three.
Even a single cell is Kaelan, just as much as his complete body.
It makes no difference.
He must open a gap and send only a part of himself.
He pulls back into the void ocean, gathers power into one tentacle, and swings it like a sword.
The strike lands.
The crystal barrier trembles, and the world shakes.
Inside, islands float along the inner rim of the sphere.
At the centre stand palaces of white stone, home of the Asharn Protoss, rulers of this world.
Their islands quake as the barrier groans above them.
Every Protoss rushes out, gazing upward.
A tear splits the sky.
And through it, they see an eye—vast, scaled, unblinking.
Their hearts freeze in fear.
Then the barrier seals.
The eye vanishes.
Relief sweeps over them, and they turn back.
One notices the truth.
A massive tentacle has already slipped inside.
As it falls downward, Kaelan feels the world's will searching for him.
If he remains in his true form, he will be exposed.
That cannot happen.
He must camouflage his breath.
The best way is to seize the body of a living creature, to bury his aura beneath the scent of this world.
An eyeball grows at the tip of the tentacle.
The limb shrinks and shrinks until only the eye remains, drifting down like a black seed.
Through it, Kaelan sees a crow with sharp glints in its eyes flying toward him.
Come and eat me, he thinks.
The world's will presses closer, scrutinising his presence.
Thunderclouds churn above, lightning flashing as if to strike.
The will has narrowed his location, but not yet locked him.
Luck tilts his way.
The crow darts forward and swallows the eyeball whole.
At once, Kaelan's breath vanishes, hidden under the bird's natural aura.
The thunderclouds disperse.
The world's gaze recedes.
Inside the crow's belly, Kaelan does not wait.
Spikes sprout from the tiny fragment, fine as strands of hair, piercing into the crow's flesh.
The bird shudders, feeling only faint discomfort, and keeps flying.
Cell by cell, Kaelan transforms the crow's body into his own.
In five minutes, every thread of its being is replaced.
The crow's consciousness fades, extinguished like a candle.
Kaelan opens the crow's eyes as his own.
Wings spread wide.
He glides down and lands on the branch of a tree, at last inside the world.
Sitting on the branch, he releases his spirit to perceive the land beneath him.
His goal is clear—to grow stronger, break the world's barrier, and return to merge with his true body waiting outside.
He probes for energy, and the world responds.
A raging current flows through its air and soil, thick with life.
He pulls the energy particles into his borrowed body, only to feel them sear his cells apart before slipping away.
Ordinary flesh cannot hold them.
His spirit spreads wider.
He sees how grasses, vines, and towering trees drink deeply from the current.
Plants can absorb, but beasts like him cannot.
So he must draw strength through the plants.
He spreads his wings and rises above the canopy.
The wind rattles through black feathers as his spirit stretches outward, searching.
Below him, countless trees whisper with light, but he hunts for one brimming with more than the rest.
When hunger stirs, he hunts small beasts.
His spirit snags them with ease, lulling them into unconsciousness before talons strike.
Cell by cell, he digests them perfectly, drawing every thread of strength from their flesh.
Energy from food feeds his body, filling each cell with quiet growth.
A month passes.
Though no energy plants appear, his body changes.
Cells swell with stored power until they begin releasing bioenergy of their own.
He gathers it in his belly, compressing it as he feeds.
Loose threads of cotton-hard energy refine into steel strands.
Each cycle strengthens him.
Size doubles.
Claws sharpen.
Wings broaden.
By the seventh month, he finally finds what he seeks.
A flower blooms in the forest clearing, red as blood, its leaves and petals shaped like blades.
Energy swirls around it in waves, thick and heavy.
But it is guarded.
A python, thick-bodied and twenty-five feet long, coils around the stem.
Its scales glint like forged iron as it hisses at the intruder gliding down.
Kaelan does not back away.
Instead, his talons spread, black gleam catching the light, and he dives straight at the serpent.
The battle ends quickly.
As Kaelan dives, his spirit lashes out, weaving confusion into the python's mind.
Its eyes glaze, body hesitating for a breath too long.
That single moment is enough.
Black talons hook into its skull, and with a savage pull, he rips the head clean from its body.
The serpent collapses, twitching once before falling still.
Strength surges through him.
By burning the bioenergy he has gathered within, Kaelan can double his power for short bursts.
It is a dangerous method, but against prey like this, it turns the fight into slaughter.
He folds his wings and lands beside the fallen guardian, blood soaking into the soil.
The red flower sways in the aftermath, its blade-shaped petals glowing faintly with energy.
At last, Kaelan stands before the first true treasure of this world.
Kaelan opens his beak and gulps down the flower in a single motion.
The sharp petals slash faintly against his throat, but he swallows them whole until the stem itself slides into his belly.
At once, waves of power surge inside him, thrashing like a storm trapped in a cage.
He guides the energy carefully, pulling it toward the reservoir of bioenergy he has been refining for months.
Before the flower is fully consumed, he feels his body straining, almost bursting with fullness.
So he begins to compress.
The raw flood twists into threads, pressed tighter and tighter, until the raging power begins to obey.
Bit by bit, the flower vanishes, its essence unravelling and flowing into him.
When the last shred dissolves, the gathered energy releases refined strength into his cells.
They transform instantly.
Feathers shimmer with a metallic sheen.
Beak and claws harden like forged steel.
His eyes burn with sharper clarity, piercing deeper into the world's layers.
This time, he does not grow larger.
Instead, every cell condenses, becoming denser, stronger.
The crow's body is no longer just flesh—it is an evolving vessel for void will.
He spreads his wings and takes flight again, the forest shivering beneath his passage.
Days become years as he hunts beasts, devours plants rich with energy, compresses, refines, and repeats the cycle without rest.
His body sharpens into a perfect weapon, every part tuned toward survival and growth.
Five years pass in this endless rhythm.
At last, Kaelan halts mid-flight.
He feels it—his vessel has reached its peak.
The crow's mortal cells can evolve no further.
The limit of this form has come.