Dying would have been infinitely better than enduring a year of this hellish torture, Morca thought bitterly. Why do I even exist, when all this wretched world has to offer me is suffering far beyond mortal limits? Where exactly did things go so horribly wrong? How did the caring, gentle father I knew turn out to be the tyrant head of a powerful lineage—and the very architect of my downfall? He didn't give a single damn about the consequences I would have to endure when he violently shattered the Sin Purging Ceremony of his own son.
Morca grieved deeply, a toxic sense of betrayal festering within his chest ever since he learned that it was Claudius who had halted his awakening. In that dark moment of realization, a far more unsettling truth had taken root: his life had never truly been his own to decide.
First, he was abducted from the train without his consent. Then, he was forced into a terrifying ceremony he knew absolutely nothing about. And finally, his own father had severed that process midway without a shred of hesitation.
Every major turning point of his existence had been dictated entirely by the whims of others.
That realization had carved a permanent, suffocating shadow within his soul. Morca now found it deeply difficult to trust those around him, a quiet, defensive paranoia anchoring itself deep inside his psyche. He even feared that his mother—the singular, remaining source of warmth in his isolating life—might be no exception.
One day... she, too, might suddenly decide my fate.
To keep himself from completely slipping into madness, he had immersed himself in brutal physical exercise, practicing traditional art styles under his mother's watchful guidance, and obsessively pursuing answers to life's greater equations. And tonight, he had been caught in the gears of one such pursuit.
What was the true cause? And what the hell were those dreams about? It felt like the exact same nightmare... yet completely different. I was only brooding over the alignment of the stars before I slipped into that strange, terrifying vision.
Slowly, his racing heartbeat began to de-escalate. His fractured mind settled. Like cold ink bleeding back onto a blank canvas, the memories of what had just transpired before his slumber crept back into his conscious thoughts.
It had started strangely enough with a simple, academic hypothesis.
Earlier in the evening, after training in his newly acquired painting techniques, Morca had made his way up the winding path to the cliff edge to watch the twilight. Lying back against the earth, he had removed his eyepatch to gaze up at the sky—staring at the impossible, hued moon he could never grow tired of.
It had been his only true childhood companion.
Since his earliest youth, there had only ever been two things in the entire world that he found himself instinctively drawn toward.
The first was undoubtedly his breathtakingly beautiful mother.
The second was that impossible, fluctuating moon. Yet, whenever he looked upon that celestial body, he felt a polarizing surge of deep connection and total detachment—as though the moon perfectly reflected his existence, yet utterly rejected him all the same.
"Tonight, the moon's brighter than it's ever been," he had murmured to the empty air. "What could be causing it?"
And then, his highly analytical mind had wandered into deeper waters.
Back in school, the teacher taught us that all things are constructed from mass and matter—built from invisible, rigid lattices of atoms that form blazing stars. Within each individual atom lies a dense nucleus of protons and neutrons, orbited by a cloud of electrons. Atoms form molecules. Molecules give rise to organic life. That is what the scientists claim.
But what if that wasn't the true foundation of reality? What if our entire physical universe is merely a cheap, artificial imitation?
The night sky of Evoslon seemed to unfold directly inside his brain. There was the world beneath his boots.
The multi-hued moon above. The burning stars. And beyond them, perhaps other hidden realms, perhaps entirely different universes.
Do those distant dimensions follow the same atomic structure? Or do they obey cosmic truths far beyond human naming? What is the true nature of the Evoslon system? What lay beneath the Primal Source that cultivators so greedily seek to refine? What is the literal essence of death, of the night, and of the voids existing far beyond the reach of light?
He couldn't help but look at the solar systems he had read about in ancient texts: nine planets orbiting a central sun—a macro-structure that perfectly echoed the micro-shape of a single atom, with planets acting as electrons and the sun serving as the nucleus.
Could a solar system itself be nothing more than a single atom trapped within the body of something unimaginably larger? If so... what were galaxies? What were universes?
And then, there was the darkness—dark matter, the unseen, silent web binding the stars together. What if even that emptiness possessed a molecular shape, or a biological geometry?
In a strikingly similar sense, Evoslon possessed its own reflection of this cosmic pattern: a singular world, orbited by eight... or perhaps more... spectral moons.
With those grand thoughts had come an agonizing ache for answers. But instead of clarity, a wave of profound, disorienting confusion had seized Morca. He hadn't been sure whether he was dreaming or simply sinking into a thought too vast for a mortal shell of flesh and bone to contain.
The very edges of the physical cliffside had begun to waver—And then... he had seen them. Three distinct, vivid scenes.The first: a disembodied awareness of himself, drifting through an untracked stretch of time within a dark expanse that gradually transformed into a chaotic sea of shifting, oily colors—a canvas engineered for a cosmic slaughter, an experience gained the exact moment before he was beheaded by those baby-crying monsters on the cliffside.
The second: a cataclysmic battlefield completely drowned in liquid crimson, where the rain fell like blood, and a lone, tattered figure stood defiant against the absolute will of the heavens.
The third: a colossal, radiant star, burning beyond measure, with nine smaller stars trapped in a perfect, endless orbit around its blinding light....
"Was that... still the same dream?" Morca whispered, his voice trembling as he sat on the grass. "A holy revelation? Or a phantom echo I simply can't grasp? An awareness witnessing a cosmic blockade... a warrior opposing the heavens upon a field of blood and rain... and nine stars circling a blazing sun?"
Unlike his previous episodes, where those identical scenes would instantly blur and dissolve into a lingering mental fog the second he opened his eyes, this time, they remained terrifyingly vivid. They were sharp, unyielding, and burned into his mind.
And yet... Deep within, he knew the truth.
I was actually there.
It wasn't mere mortal instinct guiding that terrifying certainty. But no matter how hard he tried to lock down the memories, the finest, most crucial details always slipped away like water the moment he returned to his waking body.
"Forget it," he muttered, his voice barely a ripple against the vast night. "Maybe it was just a bad dream, as always... or my mind wandering too far into things it shouldn't touch."
He forced himself to his feet, walking slowly to the very edge of the precipice. He drew in a massive, ragged breath of air, letting it spill slowly from his lungs. The atmosphere here was crisp, entirely free from the heavy, mechanical scents of industry or the distant smoke of the Mainland's great fires. Only the cool, ancient, and untouched breath of the Mystrasia Regions of Evoslon filled his chest, grounding him.
His gaze dropped to the small object clutched tightly in his right hand: a small, uniquely crafted eyepatch made from a dark, black metal scale. It was worn completely smooth with time, its twin silken strings swaying faintly in the mountain wind.
"If only I could toss you into the deepest sea," he whispered to the metal piece, his knuckles tightening. "Watch you sink into the abyss and vanish forever. Maybe then... I could finally breathe like a normal human being."
But fate had long since decided otherwise.
This scale—this lifelong patch—was no mere trinket. It was Morca's shadow, an unwanted, permanent companion. It was a constant, heavy reminder of a left eye that could never be left bare without triggering devastating consequences.
Even now, he could vividly picture the horrified faces of the lineage servants, the way they had instinctively recoiled in disgust when his left eye was first revealed to the household. To them, it wasn't a biological trait. It was a mark of absolute evil. A demonic brand.
It was a physical trauma response that had permanently manifested the exact moment his father sabotaged his awakening.
With a slow, practiced motion born of a year's worth of isolation, he slid the black scale eyepatch over his head, tightening the strings until it sat snug and secure across the abyssal black orb of his left eye. It was a familiar, heavy weight. It was never a comfort—never that—but rather a constant, grinding reminder of his failure.
Even with the patch concealing the anomaly, the cruel whispers of the lineage had managed to follow him all the way into this exile valley for a year now:
The blind bastard.
The anomaly born without a lineage flaw.
The broken disaster wrecker.
The permanent stain of the Sherman Lineage.
At one point in his life, those words had been razor-sharp, cutting deep into his self-esteem. Now, they were nothing more than dulled, useless blades that could no longer cut.
Or so he desperately tried to believe.
A bitter, mocking smile curved his lips. "If only I could one day tear down a wild monster with these bare hands. Let those arrogant bastards back at the main estate finally know..."
He lifted his chin high, his lone, blood-red crimson eye sweeping across the jagged mountain peaks, the limitless sea of the green forest, and the endless, star-pierced cosmos above.
"...Let them all know that I am Morca Sherman Nihility, son of the previous Sherman head—the great Claudius!"
The final word... froze the blood in his veins.
No. Not Claudius.
Nihility!
The name hadn't come from his memories. It wasn't his registered name.
He stood there on the edge of the cliff, completely unmoving, the foreign word echoing through the hollow chambers of his mind like the slow, ominous toll of a distant, iron bell.
Nihility...Had my own consciousness secretly named me this so long ago, even before my peers did? Had my own bleeding heart decided exactly what I was, while my lips only now found the strength to speak it aloud to the cosmos?
"Hehe... hahahaha."
A dry, hollow laugh escaped his cracked lips—a sound that carried no amusement, sounding more like a rattle than laughter at all.
So that's why their mockery never actually stung me. My own mind had already agreed with their insults..
Only now, staring out into the abyss, did Morca realize that those cruel whispers hadn't been an external force at all—they had been shadowed deep within his own thoughts all along.
The hollow amusement quickly bled out, replaced by a suffocating, heavy weight.
What exactly am I becoming? Morca asked himself, staring blankly into the abyss.
A son without power. A name without meaning. A fleeting presence that could vanish tomorrow, and Evoslon wouldn't even stir to notice my absence.
The dark, existential thought wrapped tightly around his chest like a frozen iron chain.
As if responding directly to his unspoken questions, the long shadow stretching out behind him beneath the hued moonlight suddenly writhed. It twisted unnaturally against the grass—stretching and contorting like a living creature trying to break free from the earth—before abruptly snapping back into stillness, as if nothing had ever happened.
And then—It happened.
The crisp night air directly in front of his face began to shimmer. It wasn't the fluid, wavy distortion caused by intense heat, but rather a violent, jagged ripple across the very fabric of glass.
Out of absolute nothingness, a black, glowing interface screen snapped into existence, hanging suspended in the night air. Its sharp edges bled a faint, erratic digital static, as though reality itself had been aggressively torn open and badly stitched back together by an unseen hand.
Morca froze. His breath halted mid-inhale, his lungs locking up.
The mysterious screen flickered violently, glitching and pulsing with an unsteady, dangerous rhythm, as if it were highly uncertain whether it even belonged within this dimension.
Then, unfamiliar, brilliant silver glyphs began to rapidly materialize across the black surface. The foreign words sparked to life:
[INFINITY NIHILITY… INITIATED]
[DESCENDANT IDENTITY VERIFIED… AWAITING SYNCHRONIZATION]
[REGISTERING DESCENDANT: MORCA SHERMAN NIHILITY]
[NIHILITY DESCENDANT… SYNCHRONIZATION PAUSED]
[PRIOR PREREQUISITES UNMET: ?? / ??]
The entire world around Morca instantly plummeted into an eerie, suffocating silence. The rustling of the forest leaves stopped. The wind died. Even the ambient energy of the golden-azure primal source froze in mid-drift.