I stand atop a mountain that shouldn't exist.
Not stone. Not earth.
Corpses.
Billions of them, stacked so high the curvature of the planet
bends beneath their weight. Blood flows like rivers—no, like
oceans—drowning continents that once had names, now forgotten
in the red.
The sky above me isn't sky anymore.
It's a battlefield.
Realities collide like continents of glass, shattering into cascading fragments that rain down as dying stars. Universes tear at each other's throats—cosmic entities the size of galaxies locked in wars that erase dimensions with every blow.
I watched a god die.
Or... that's what I was thinking.
I'd never seen a god before, but I think that's what they were.
Its body—vast enough to eclipse suns—crumbles into nothing,
devoured by something darker, something hungrier, something
that turns toward me next.
I don't run.
I raise my hand.
The thing that was a god ceases to exist.
Around me, the war rages. Primordial forces—concepts given
flesh—clash in violence that rewrites the laws of physics with
every impact. Existence itself screams.
And I...
I feel nothing.
My left eye burns yellow, seeing truths that shatter lesser
minds. My right eye—brown, human, almost laughably ordinary—
sees only the corpses beneath my feet.
Corpses I put there.
Blood drips from my hands. Not demon blood. Not human blood.
The blood of realities.
I look down at the mountain of the dead—at the billions who
fell because I existed, because I chose, because I couldn't
stop.
This is my story.
But this...
...is not where it began.
What is a homeland? Is it blood? Friends? The city? Or is it merely an illusion we cling to?
Every morning, I wake and face the partially cracked mirror fixed near my closet—searching for myself. But all I ever see is… nothingness.
I am not what I want to be. I cannot become what I want to be.
Not because I haven't tried. But because I am unable.
My friends used to call me Donny—back when I had friends. Now, no one calls me anything. Except the old man, who truly loves to annoy me by dragging out my strange, full name: Don Valdruun.
My father is the only person who was there when I first opened my eyes. As for my mother? I know nothing. Is she alive? Dead? The old man doesn't talk much about her—he prefers playing the role of the wise sage, though he's just a vegetable vendor. Quick to anger, quick to ramble.
Yet somehow, everyone loves him. No one hates that foolish old man—not the beggars, not the merchants, not even the King and Queen of this continent, the Magenda Continent.
I still don't know the reason behind the name. I've never been allowed to study the history of the Magenda Royal Family or how they came to rule an entire continent that makes up 60% of this planet—Sovret.
Because whenever I ask, the old man waves me off: "You're my son. Why bother learning? You'll own everything in the end. And the end, boy, is inevitable."
Over time, I grew used to this kind of talk. The old man rarely speaks to me, but when he does, he becomes utterly unhinged. I trust him—I do—but his words are like tossing a stone into water and expecting it to float.
Every week, the Royal Family's guards visit our stall, accompanied by the two princes, to request the old man's goods.
But when they look at me, I see nothing. No hatred. No warmth. Just… emptiness. Except for a flicker—a glimpse of fear—that vanishes the instant our eyes meet, as if they were afraid of me, then instantly forgot why.
And this is part of the strangeness of Alfred City, the Royal Capital of the Magenda Continent.
But the strangeness becomes a curse when you realize the King himself must be mad.
Because one day, I asked the old man: "Why does the Royal Capital share your name?"
And he replied—loudly, in the middle of the crowded market for everyone to hear—"Because it is an honor for them, boy!"
And nothing happened.
No guards arrested him. No crowd silenced him. Everyone… everyone… acted as though they hadn't heard a word.
The market carried on. Vendors shouted. Coins clinked. As if the old man had said nothing at all.
Even then, I admitted the truth: this world I live in is insane.
Life continued this way until I turned eleven.
Finally, I was strong enough. Finally, I could learn magic.
I trained. And trained. And trained. But I could never touch The Source—that damned wellspring of power—because there is a restriction placed on my body by the Royal Family's sorceresses.
The reason?
My cursed red hair.
They believe my mother was a demon. Or that I was tainted by demon blood while still in her womb.
And the demons of this world truly love their mothers—because they eat them when they're born.
Demons are forbidden from The Source. They cannot wield magic naturally. So they kidnap human women, implanting demon seeds and blood within them.
When the child is born, it devours its paralyzed mother—and then, only then, can it access The Source.
Mutants. They're all mutants.
Now everyone thinks I'm one of them. But they haven't killed me.
Because of the old man.
I don't know what he did—what hold he has over them—but no one seems able to refuse his requests.
He's weak. Ancient. I've never seen him do anything remotely important. His life is a loop: the market in the suburbs for work, then home to drink himself to sleep, then repeat.
I've never seen him practice magic, duel, or even care about anything meaningful.
A boring, pathetic old man.
But the days pass.
And the night before my twelfth birthday, I sit alone in my room, staring into that broken mirror once more.
This night, everything changed.
"Hahahahaha… Hahahaha…"
Laughter echoed across the entire planet.
Deep. Ancient. Hungry.
"Hahaha… Finally…"
A voice—not from the mirror, not from outside—but from within.
"I see you