The throne room of the Archdevil, Malakar, was a monument to recent victory, yet the air was choked with bitter, metallic tension. The colossal, wrought-iron throne stood within a fortress carved from volcanic glass, overlooking the smoldering ruin of Valoria. Malakar himself was a study in ruined triumph.
He leaned heavily on the armrest, his demonic physiology struggling against an unnatural affliction. The divine self-annihilation spell had not killed him, but it had poisoned his essence. Black, crusting veins webbed across the emerald scales of his arm, and an agonizing shudder ran constantly through his massive frame.
"That miserable bitch..." he hissed, the sound like grinding stones.
The Archdevil, the conqueror of a continent, was crippled. No healing spell, no dark ritual, and no amount of sheer demonic power could reverse the damage Yourina had inflicted. He was dying, slowly and agonizingly, his reign already marked for a short lifespan.
Malakar had one desperate recourse. After the looting of the Grand Temple of Yourina, his legionaries had unearthed a forgotten artifact: a bound scroll of ancient, cracked leather that hummed with contradictory energies. It was a forbidden text detailing the Reincarnation of Unbound Essence.
"A reincarnation spell," he muttered, his claw tracing the complex, swirling script that felt cold even to his touch.
For many days, shielded by layers of dark magic and guarded by his most trusted lieutenants, Malakar prepared the ritual. He gave explicit, detailed instructions to his vast army, commanding them to solidify the conquest, to wipe out all vestiges of Yourina's worship, and to await his eventual, inevitable return. Finally, alone in the heart of his fortress, he began. He sealed every shred of his Archdevil power into the core of his soul, preparing it for the long, blind journey across the cosmic void.
With a thunderous, whispered incantation, the ritual was complete. Malakar's husk of a body collapsed onto the black marble floor as his soul, a searing core of crimson and shadow, was cast out, beginning its unconscious drift through time and space. He believed himself to be the master of his own return.
He was tragically, fundamentally wrong.
---
Malakar never knew that the ancient scroll was not a random relic; it was the trap.
Yourina, the Goddess of Humanity, had possessed an agonizing foresight. She had known the defense of Valoria was a near-impossible long shot. She held the line because of a promise, a rumored alliance and promised reinforcements from distant celestial powers. But the reinforcement never came. Yet, even in her isolation, she prepared a contingency.
Years before the siege, Yourina had risked divine scrutiny to recover the scroll from the ruins of Terra Soseind, a legendary, vanished realm where cosmic laws often failed. She didn't fully understand the scroll's properties, but she recognized its potential to become a nexus.
Unknown to Malakar, and everyone else, Yourina had interwoven the scroll's structure with her own divine essence. Her final, devastating self-annihilation had accomplished two goals: neutralizing the Archdevil, and activating the pre-set trap. The moment Malakar's soul was cast out, the last fragments of Yourina's dissolving essence, a brilliant, ephemeral shimmer of white light—were caught, dragged by the scroll's residual energy.
The ambush was perfect. Malakar's destructive, chaotic soul and Yourina's pure, luminous soul were both trapped and sealed within a singular, rapidly coalescing orb of turbulent, monochrome light. As this chaotic sphere was flung across the cosmos, hurtling through dimensions and epochs, the two warring consciousnesses clashed violently. Locked together, they fought a silent, timeless battle until, slowly and inevitably, they began to merge and dissolve, their divine and demonic identities fading into a state of unconscious, powerful raw energy.
---
On a small, insignificant blue planet called Earth, in a city choked by concrete and rain, Wang Bao Lu was late.
"If I miss the bus, I'll never get the accounts filed before 5," he muttered, pulling his cheap umbrella lower.
It wasn't his fault the day felt oppressive. The sky was a heavy, bruised purple, and the rain was falling with the cold persistence of a judgment. He was running, his shoes splashing water onto the curb, his mind already calculating interest rates and budget deficits. He was an accountant, small-framed, ordinary, a man whose entire identity was built on simple, powerful dedication.
He rounded a corner, his vision momentarily obscured by the torrent, when he saw it: a flash of brilliant, impossible light—black and white—tearing through the rain. It was gone instantly, an anomaly so fleeting his brain registered it as merely a headache.
Seconds later, the sound of tearing metal and a frantic, failing horn engulfed the street. A massive delivery truck, hydroplaning on the wet asphalt, lost control and skidded directly toward the curb.
Wang Bao Lu didn't have time to scream or even think of his own survival. In the fraction of a second before the impact, his entire being focused on a burning, singular grief.
Who would take care of my mother's medicine?
Is this truly the end? I still haven't bought their house!
How about my dreams? My family needs me.
His final thought wasn't a prayer or a fear of death, but an urgent, desperate surge of responsibility. And then, everything was a sickening, crushing blank.
His newly released soul, a thread of ordinary, profound human will, lifted from the wrecked body. Unaware of the physics of the cosmos, it drifted toward the lingering spectral trace of the anomaly he'd just seen. Unconsciously, Wang Bao Lu's pure, determined will reached out and touched the black-and-white orb.
In that instant, the merged, chaotic soul of the Goddess and the Archdevil, weakened by their cosmic struggle, was violently swept up by the tenacious, simple power of the accountant's pure human will. Time and space fractured around them as the human soul, utterly unaware of the gods and demons it now contained, began to involuntarily devour the infinite energies it had merged with. The ordinary soul of Wang Bao Lu became exponentially powerful as it traversed the void, an accidental cosmic predator, carrying the unconscious essences of light and shadow.
---
A thousand years later, or perhaps only a single day, time was meaningless to a wandering soul, the orb of fused energy finally stopped its cosmic drift. It settled above a small, rustic village.
Inside a simple wooden house, lit only by a guttering tallow candle, a woman named Michelle Sensuum was in the agonizing final throes of labor. Rain hammered the thatched roof, mirroring the sweat pouring down her face. She was poor, and the only help she had was a village matron.
"Push, my dear! Just one more!" the matron urged.
After an interminable struggle, the baby slid into the world. It was small, silent, and motionless.
"No... no!" Michelle Sensuum wept, her exhaustion forgotten. The matron's face confirmed the fear: the baby was dead.
Tears streaming down her face, Michelle Sensuum didn't turn to a doctor or an ancient local god. Her final, desperate prayer was to the Goddess of Humanity, a figure who had been reduced to a mere bedtime story in this remote land.
"Please, Yourina, Goddess of Mercy, help me! Please, let him live..."
As if answering the ancient plea, the turbulent, monochrome ball of fused divine, demonic, and human energy, traveling through the downpour, streaked through the window. It condensed into a whisper of light and plunged into the dead baby's body.
The infant gasped, a sudden, violent, life-affirming sound. Its tiny chest rose and fell.
Unbeknownst to the crying mother and the shocked matron, the soul of Wang Bao Lu, infused with the consciousness of the Archdevil Malakar and the essence of the Goddess Yourina, had been reincarnated. A tiny baby lay in the darkness, a single, ordinary human will now governing a body filled with the impossible power of a conquered deity and a crippled demon.
The legend of the Archdevil, and the faith of the Goddess, had just begun their final, unwitting chapter.