Le Wei stood in the center of chaos.
Blood soaked the earth like spilled ink. Smoke coiled in the sky, thick with screams. All around him, people ran, cried, fell. The dying clutched at invisible wounds; the living looked for mercy that wouldn't come.
It was carnage. Brutal. Unnatural.
He looked down.
His hands stained with crimson liquid. Coated. Dripping. Not his blood.
Theirs.
"Le Wei!" a girl's voice screamed.
He turned.
She stood just beyond reach, her face blurred like a memory half-forgotten, eyes shining with tears.
"Stop!"
"Don't, Le Wei!"
Voices. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Shouting, whispering, crying out from places unseen.
They clashed and overlapped, unfamiliar yet terrifyingly intimate, like echoes of another life.
Then....
Silence.
Everything unraveled into gray. Then black.
A void.
From the dark came a voice that cracked the stillness like thunder.
"Crimson Heir."
It was not spoken, it was summoned. Ancient. Foreboding.
Another voice followed. This one lower, rasping, as if spoken through the throat of something that had never been human.
"Welcome."
Shapes emerged from the shadow. Massive and imposing.
And then, light shimmered across their bodies.
A dragon first, its scales deep blue laced with black veins of lightning, wings like torn thunderclouds. Its eyes, twin maelstroms, blinked with ancient fury.
Then a white tiger, pristine fur streaked with silver flame, each step shaking the ground with restrained power. Its breath steamed like smoke.
A wolf wreathed in flickering fire, muscles taut beneath an ember hide, eyes smoldering with wild hunger.
A fox, born of frost, sleek and glacial, its tail split into seven shimmering blades of ice, voice a whisper of blizzards long dead.
A serpent so large it coiled through the heavens, yellow and pale as dying suns, its skin patterned with runes that shifted like living scars.
Then came more.
A Wraith Lion..its mane swirling like torn silk in a breeze that didn't blow. Shadowed smoke formed its body, eyes twin wells of hollow blue flame. It made no sound, but the air around it twisted with grief and ruin. Its breath froze time; its stare froze the soul.
And above them all, wings spread wide, hovered a large, mystical bird. Feathers of polished obsidian and starlight shimmered across its enormous body. Its eyes, piercing gold held wisdom older than worlds. As it circled, the sky cracked behind it, as if its very presence split reality. Each beat of its wings hummed with forgotten prophecies.
Le Wei stood among them like a candle before storms.
Suddenly, they moved.
Not just circling. They were testing.
The dragon coiled low, its massive head lowering until its snout nearly touched Le Wei's chest. Hot, electric breath crackled across his skin, making the hairs on his arms stand up.
"Still fragile," the dragon said, voice a deep hum laced with thunder. "Yet chosen."
The white tiger prowled behind him, tail flicking. It sniffed once, then growled. "I smell weakness."
The flaming wolf bounded forward, flames dancing from its paws. It growled low in its throat, then suddenly snapped its jaws just inches from Le Wei's face. He flinched.
"Fear," the wolf laughed, its voice like embers crackling. "Good. Let it burn into strength."
Le Wei stumbled back into the frost fox's icy breath. The beast's seven tails curved around him like a cage.
"So cold," he whispered, his lips trembling.
"You've forgotten us," the fox said, voice smooth as silk on snow. "But we remember you."
Then came the Wraith Lion. It emerged from nothingness, rising like smoke from Le Wei's shadow. Its breath brought the weight of tombs, its mane twining around his legs like ghostly tendrils.
"You once commanded the dead," it whispered.
"I.....what?" Le Wei backed away, shaking.
"You wore their silence like armor," the lion murmured. "But now you shiver like prey."
As Le Wei turned, wings thundered above.
The Mythic Bird descended, landing with a tremor that fractured the unseen ground beneath them. Wind tore through the black space, and starlight flickered across its feathers. It gazed down at Le Wei.
"When you fall," it said, "you will rise as more."
"I don't want to fall," he replied, barely able to speak.
The bird blinked, ancient and cruel. "You already did."
Suddenly, the beasts began to circle once more, this time tighter. Their movements choreographed, purposeful, sacred.
Each passed before him, and as they did, images burst in his mind. The dragon showed him a city swallowed in storm.
The tiger revealed a battlefield where mountains cracked like bone.
The wolf showed him a lone figure standing in a blaze, laughing at gods.
The fox whispered a name, his name..while the world froze around him.
The serpent hissed prophecies in a dead tongue.
The lion dragged him through a graveyard of stars.
The bird offered him wings made of broken oaths.
Le Wei screamed.
"Enough!" he shouted, holding his head.
But they didn't stop.
The beasts reared back, then as one, they roared, not in sound, but in energy. Power surged through him, invisible and primal. His heart pounded. His eyes stung.
He was floating. Not in the air but in memory.
Not his. Another's?
A thousand lifetimes. A thousand deaths. A thousand choices.
He saw a throne of ash. A sword of light that shattered kingdoms. A man with his body stained with blood, wearing a crown made out of thorns.
The beasts circled, faster now.
And the voices returned.
"Le Wei, don't!"
"This isn't who you are!"
"Choose another path!"
His body trembled.
"I don't know what this is! I don't want this!" he cried.
The dragon's eyes narrowed.
"You don't choose us," it said.
"We choose you."
And just as the serpent lunged forward and the Wraith Lion's maw opened around him.
Everything shattered.
Light collapsed. The ground gave way.
He then woke. He was back.
Lying in the dim hut, fire-clubs burning low at the corners of the room.
No beasts. No chaos.
Just warmth, silence, and breath.
He sat up slowly, heart hammering against his ribs. Cold sweat clung to his skin.
From the next room, voices murmured. He recognized one of the voice's to be Old Ren's while the other voice was feminine.
"Give him this. It'll help," she said gently.
"Thanks," Ren replied.
Le Wei looked down at his hands. They were clean. No blood.
But the memory still clung like soot.
"What was that?" he whispered. "That didn't feel like a dream…"
His chest ached. The scar below his collarbone pulsed slowly. Quietly.
The day's trance returned to him...visions of war, walls, and names he'd never heard.
Crimson Heir.
Yanzhou.
And now...these beasts.
"Was it real?" he whispered. "What did they mean by...controlled the dead"
He scanned the room, looking for the scroll.
Gone. His heart seized.
"Where is it?"
Had Ren taken it? Thrown it away?
His mind raced.
And then...
A voice. Whispering from nowhere and everywhere. A voice that only echoed in his ears, not masculine or feminine.
A single, chilling word....
[Welcome, HeavenBreaker.]