— Dark Vapor —
Novalis District Penitentiary.
The air here recoiled from the prisoners. The shortest sentence: twenty years. The longest: death.
Officer Aveline Ward chewed the end of her pen, eyes scanning the surveillance monitors.
Everything was routine—
until a sharp hiss ripped through the air.
Screens dissolved into static. A piercing electronic screech stabbed her ears like a thousand needles.
Aveline jerked her head up.
Outside the window, above the prison, dark vapor swirled and stretched silently. Not clouds, not smoke—countless particles of darkness, writhing and churning in the sunlight.
Then, as if drawn by some will, they surged together toward one place—
The deepest bowels of the prison.
A solitary cell that had never seen the sun.
A cell holding a prisoner awaiting execution—
Eren Kai.
---
— Judgment —
Three days earlier.
"Defendant Eren Kai, found guilty of raping and brutally murdering over thirty people. Sentence: death. Transfer immediately to maximum security."
The judge's words landed like hammers. Silence swallowed the courtroom.
Eren sat expressionless, eyes still as a dried-up well—no anger, no fear. He bowed his head, as if the world had long ceased to matter.
From the victims' gallery, Lyra Veyne's fists clenched, eyes red with tears and hatred, burning him with a gaze that could tear him apart.
---
— The Bloodied Night —
Seven days earlier.
Eren Kai, a top bioengineering student at Novalis University, had earned a coveted internship at pharmaceutical giant HelixPharm. His research had even caught the attention of the CEO—Lyra Veyne.
A few nights before, in recognition of his work, Lucien Veyne—Lyra's father and family patriarch—had invited Eren to a banquet at the Veyne estate.
That night, nursing a personal heartbreak, Eren drank himself into a stupor.
He awoke at dawn, naked and sprawled across a bed. Beneath him, a terrified, hysterical Lyra.
She screamed, shoving him away, tears and rage painting him a "beast," a "monster."
Eren's mind was a fog. He had no memory of what had happened.
Then the door crashed open. Police stormed in, wrenching his arms behind his back.
Later he learned—
Over thirty Veyne family members and staff had been slaughtered. Only Lyra survived.
The surveillance footage—
clear as day—showed the killer's face.
His face.
Eren Kai.
But only he knew—
he had been framed.
The power that wiped out an entire family and manipulated all evidence moved like a colossal, unseen hand. Why him? A nobody, an orphan with no one.
Questions churned in his mind. He remained silent.
No one would believe him.
He simply waited for judgment,
as if following a story already written.
---
— Awakening —
The solitary cell was narrow as a coffin, bitterly cold, a black void that devoured light.
As Eren shifted—
Clank!
The iron shackles bit down.
Pain, sharp as lightning, shot up his arm. Warm blood welled between his fingers, dripping slowly.
He opened his mouth, as if to cry out—but only a bitter whisper escaped:
"Just a dead man walking... What's a little more pain?"
He raised his injured hand, clutching the obsidian pendant at his chest.
Granny Lucy had once said:
"You were wearing this when you came to us. I don't know where it's from."
Then—
Thrum!
A searing energy erupted from his palm. The pendant flared, lines of dark blue and silver-white leaping and weaving, coalescing into a lance-like streak—
Straight between his brows.
The world went silent.
His consciousness was pulled into a boundless void.
At the center hung a blurred, shifting pattern. He tried to focus, but its contours were elusive, as if the shape itself defied reality.
Just as he was about to give up, a black disc slowly emerged from the chaos.
A soft white halo surrounded it. Its shape recalled the Eastern Taiji symbol, yet echoed the seals of ancient Greek mystics.
Half black, half white, the disc was etched with intricate, flowing script—
Sometimes Sumerian cuneiform, sometimes Eastern oracle bone characters.
Light and shadow danced along the symbols, pulsing like a living galaxy.
Suddenly, all the runes coalesced into a single phrase:
The Lumin & Umbra Sigil.
It feeds on Sin,
And burns with Wickedness as its fuel.
Eren's pupils contracted. His throat tightened.
"The Sigil... and that blurred pattern... what are they?"
Before he could finish the thought, a storm of information burst its banks—not mere knowledge, but the wisdom of entire civilizations:
Alchemy, energy pathways, formation arrays, astral observation...
Algorithms, quantum structures, energy dynamics...
The ancient Eastern practices of cultivating inner energy flowed seamlessly into Western scientific principles.
In an instant, his mind became a living repository of cosmic-scale knowledge—no electricity, no network, yet fully accessible with a thought.
This was no cheat. This was—divinity.
He barely had time to grasp the awe.
Deep in his consciousness, the Sigil rotated, its faint light pulsing like a heartbeat.
Then—
Hiss!
From the prison's deepest shadows, the dark vapor seeped out:
Guilt, malice, disease, miasma...
Drawn like a tide, surging toward the cell.
It pierced his skin, seared his veins. Bones shook, muscles tensed—every inch of him remade.
Dawning realization struck—
This corruption was transforming into pure energy,
Fuel for him.
He tried to draw more—
Creak!
The iron door swung open.
Blinding light spilled in.
Against it, a tall, severe figure stood—
Aveline Ward,
like a fae stepping unwillingly into the midst of a miracle.