There was no light in the Abyssal Pit. There hadn't been for ten thousand years.
To the elders of the Blood Lotus Sect living in the sunlit peaks above, the Pit was a garbage disposal. It was where they threw the failures. The weak newborns with no spiritual roots. The crippled. The assassinated. They threw them into the dark to feed the slumbering god below, hoping to earn a fraction of its ancient blessing.
They didn't know the god was already dead.
More accurately, it had been digested.
A boy stood in the pitch-black cavern, his bare feet resting in a puddle of fresh, warm blood. He had no name. He had never needed one. For sixteen years, his only reality was the suffocating dark, the shrieks of dying monsters, and the cold, mechanical calculus of survival.
He looked down at the corpse at his feet.
It was a boy around his age, wearing the grey robes of an Outer Court disciple. His throat had been cleanly slit—an assassin's work—before he was tossed down the chasm to hide the evidence.
"He is weak," a voice echoed, not in the cavern, but directly inside the nameless boy's skull. The voice was heavy, ancient, and dripped with a terrifying, cosmic malice. It was the voice of the Void God, or at least, what was left of it after it willingly poured its essence into the boy's empty soul. "His meridian channels are pathetic. Like cracked glass. Why do you hesitate, Vessel? Consume him. Leave nothing but ash."
"No," the boy replied, his voice a dry, unused rasp. He didn't speak with anger or defiance. It was just a cold calculation. "If I eat him, I am still trapped down here. If I wear him, I can go up."
The boy knelt in the blood. With clinical precision, he stripped the dead disciple of his grey robes. He took the small, spatial pouch tied to the waist. Finally, he pried a smooth jade token from the corpse's stiffening fingers.
He ran his thumb over the carved characters on the jade.
Dver. Outer Court. Rank 98,412.
"Dver," the boy whispered. He tested the syllable on his tongue. It tasted like dirt. Like a stepping stone. "I am Dver."
"A fragile skin for a predator," the Void God mocked, though it hummed with dark amusement. "They will sense the Abyss inside you. The moment you step into the light, their Elder's spiritual sense will crush you like an insect."
"Then we will make ourselves small."
The nameless boy closed his eyes. Deep within his core, an infinite, terrifying expanse of suffocating gravity churned. It was the power to erase existence itself. Slowly, agonizingly, he began to cage it. He locked away the suffocating pressure of an apex predator, burying it under layers of false weakness. He intentionally fractured his own aura, mimicking the pathetic, leaky Qi of the dead boy.
He coughed, spitting up a glob of black blood as the sheer strain of holding back a god tore at his internal organs. He wiped his mouth, his face completely devoid of emotion. Perfect. Now, he didn't just look weak; he felt weak.
Dver turned toward the sheer, vertical rock wall of the pit.
He climbed.
For hours, he hauled himself up the jagged, blood-slicked stone. His muscles screamed, but his mind remained terrifyingly still. The air grew thinner, then colder, and finally, for the first time in his entire existence... he saw light.
A pale, sickly blue glow filtered through a massive iron grate at the top of the chasm.
Dver pulled himself over the final ledge, his bloody fingers gripping the cold iron bars. He was in a damp, stone corridor. The air smelled of incense and ozone.
He didn't have time to process the new world.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. Heavy. Disciplined. Cultivators.
"Enforcers," the Void God whispered, a dark hunger suddenly flaring in Dver's mind. "Three of them. Foundation Establishment realm. Let me out, Vessel. Let us eat them."
Silence, Dver commanded his passenger.
He heard the Enforcers round the corner. Two men and one woman, draped in the black and crimson robes of the Sect's lawbringers. They carried lanterns that cast harsh shadows against the stone.
"I'm telling you, I heard something by the grating," one of the men grunted, his hand resting on the hilt of a curved saber.
Dver calculated his odds. He was covered in blood. He was wearing the clothes of a boy who was supposed to be dead. If he fought, he would reveal the Void, and the entire sect would descend on him.
There was only one play.
In a fraction of a second, the cold, dead-eyed psychopath vanished.
Dver violently threw himself against the iron bars of the grate. He let out a ragged, throat-tearing scream, his eyes blowing wide with absolute, primal terror. He slumped to the floor, violently shivering, wrapping his arms around his knees like a broken, traumatized animal.
"P-please!" Dver shrieked, tears instantly welling in his eyes, perfectly mimicking the panicked hyperventilation of a coward who had just barely escaped hell. "The shadows! They ate him! Please, don't send me back down!"
The three Enforcers froze, their weapons instantly drawn.
The lead Enforcer, a tall man with a scar running through his lips, stepped forward. He leveled the tip of his saber inches from Dver's throat. His spiritual sense washed over Dver, cold and invasive.
Dver held his breath, keeping the Void caged tight. Look at me, he thought, crying outwardly while his mind remained as still as a frozen lake. Look at the pathetic trash.
The Enforcer's eyes narrowed in deep suspicion. He pressed the blade just enough to draw a bead of blood from Dver's neck.
"No one survives a fall into the Pit," the Enforcer said softly, his killing intent filling the hallway. "So tell me, little rat... what exactly crawled out?"