"You think you're weak 'cause nobody picked you. But that's your motherfucking strength."
Strength.
Strength?
I laughed. I laughed so hard my throat hurt. I was so weak. Only this… hunger. This pain that I couldn't get rid of, couldn't outdistance, no matter how hard I ran. But then, something in me snapped.
Something in me answered back, Yeah, that's right. I wasn't broken. I wasn't weak. I was fucking pissed. The words swirled in my head like a tempest, and I pounded my fist against the rock. Not to hurt, not to access the pain—but to make it exist. To make it mine. I had never wished to be a hero. I had never wished to be some model figure walking the planet with head held high, acting as if I knew it all.
I wanted to survive. To exist. I wanted to sign my name on the ground until they couldn't ignore me anymore. And when the words struck me—the reality of it, the harshness of it—I felt the ache of something within me perish.
That small, flickering spark of hope I'd clung to for so long, the hope that someday someone might recognize me for what I was—a person, a boy, deserving of something. It all broke.
But what took its place… it wasn't the emptiness I expected it to be. It was fire.
Fire.
"I wished to be a man. But you bastards only let me be a monster."
That was it. That is when I knew. I wasn't broken. I wasn't selected. I was a monster. And that was the only thing I could be. The only thing ever left for me. So I screamed it, but not out loud—not yet. I screamed it inside, a roar that seemed to shake me to my very center. I felt it in my bones. I wasn't the shadow begging for scraps of attention.
No. I was Wuming. I pressed my brow against the rock. My fingers gripped the cracks, keeping me in this godforsaken place. I could feel the soul of the person who'd written this, the person who'd been forgotten like me. Wiped out. But that wasn't all he was. He had bitten himself. [Wuming means Nameless.]
I whispered the name, Xie Wuming, again. And again. Until it was no longer a name. It was a curse. It was an oath that would never be broken.
"I was not selected. I am not justified. Yet I will be remembered."
The words escaped my lips, rough and parched. I wasn't meant to be good. I wasn't meant to be picked. I was supposed to survive. And the world? The world would remember me. Even if it was destroyed in the process. I stood up. For the first time in my life, I felt genuine.
I felt like me. A monster. A curse. A name that would stain the sky and consume all in its way.
....
He was still resting against the wall when he noticed it.
The altar.
At first, it was only another form in the blackness—another bit of the cave's rough anatomy—but as his eyes adjusted, the shadows dropped away like worn scabs.
And then he saw it in plain sight. It stood up from the ground like a monolith shaped by shattered hands, hunched in the blackness, waiting and unmoving.
Something about it tugged at him.
Not with magic.
Not with fate.
With familiarity.
It looked like it didn't belong here. But then again, neither did he.
His feet moved ahead of his mind. One step, then another, as if something inside him had already decided and left the rest of him running to catch up. The rock stairs that climbed the altar were fractured, worn smooth in place.
He ascended slowly.
He should've felt fear.
But what he felt… was clarity.
Each step was a decision. Each step from the boy who had pleaded to the heavens. Who had waited for a master to pick him up from the earth? Who had confused silence with punishment, rather than the reality—that no one was ever arriving?
There was no rescue. No savior. No golden hand reaching down from Heaven.
There was nothing but the stone.
And his hands.
And the altar.
When he topped the ridge, he halted—not to breathe, but to feel. Here, the air was not the same. Thicker. Heavier. His skin started to tingle, and his back bristled as if some ancient presence had turned its eye on him.
The altar reeked of aged ash and ancient blood. At first, the boy didn't see it—just the shapes, the stillness. But when his breath caught and his eyes adjusted to the cave's sickly glow, he understood.
There wasn't just one skeleton.
There were dozens.Twisted. Crumpled. Burnt. Stacked at the foot of the altar like rejected offerings—again and again. A few had claw marks scratched into the stone, and some had broken ribs and cracked skulls. One had even dragged itself halfway down the steps before it died, fingers still grasping mid-stretch.
One remained whole.
A seated body, draped in what had perhaps once been a regal red—now faded, torn, and stained a rusty brown.
It leaned in stillness upon the stone throne, as if it had never stirred, as if it had been waiting all this while. Waiting for someone. For something. Its head was bent. Jaw slack. Hands clasped neatly in its lap like a monk at peace, but there was no peace here.
And in the open cavity of its chest—where curled like broken fingers—There was a heart.
Still beating.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
It pulsed slow and heavy, like some blackened fruit carved from flesh and stone. Its surface was slick and veined—etched with deep, twisting runes that pulsed a dim, malevolent red. Not bright, not warm. Cold. Like coals beneath ash. The sound echoed through the altar chamber like a war drum muffled under centuries of dust.
He stood before it.
Silent. Still.
His eyes would not blink. Would only wander, slowly, towards the others—towards the skeletons littered across the floor like discarded prayers.
He understood that it was no gift. It was no blessing passed down from some master of the past. It was not left to some deserving heir. No—it was a curse. A heritage of brutality, cultivated by hate, bestowed only upon the kind of guy who no longer cared about damnation.
It had to be taken. Not received. Not inherited. Taken.
And that meant---It was for him.
He moved forward.
Once. Then again.
Not with reverence. Not with fear.Just a silent finality. The way a man walks into his own grave, not because he must, but because it's the last place that makes sense.
No hesitation.
No prayer.
No plea.
He pushed his hand against the pulsating heart.
And the instant flesh met skin—The world snapped.
Not broken. Not shook. Snapped. Like a chain pulled taut and yanked until it screamed.
Pain didn't enter him. It erupted.
Black veins erupted from the point of contact, slithering up his arm like hot worms. They tunneled under skin and muscle, carving themselves into the marrow. His flesh tore. His body contorted. This wasn't agony. This was transformation.
It was like his bones were being rewritten in a language that wasn't supposed to be spoken.
His lungs seized.
He coughed.
Nothing emerged but blood and spit and a muffled scream that was lodged so deep it may never escape.
When he attempted to scream with his mouth wide open, nothing came out. Only silence.
The heart pushed inward. Sank into his chest. And didn't stop. It didn't fuse. It became.
His vision shattered. Memory ruptured. Lifetimes—not his own—spilled into his head like scalding oil. Men murdered for nothing, children betrayed for power, mothers crying into hands smeared with their sons' blood.
Agonies, curses, murders. Not his. But he felt them. Each like a nail hammered into the tender spot of his mind. And beneath it all, a voice.
Not a comfort. Not a guide.
A curse. Uttered in the form of a man.
"RISE."
He struck his head against the altar.
Once. Twice.
The sound cracked through the chamber like thunder.
Blood sprayed.
"RISE, YOU LITTLE WRETCH".
His fingers grasped against stone. His spine curved. His entire body convulsed like something half-buried, half-born.
He would not pass out.
He declined.
If pain was the test—Then he would be the answer.
And then, as abruptly as—
Silence.
The final shock dissipated.
His breathing restarted. His heart—the heart—beat steady now inside his chest.
He opened his eyes.
And the seated corpse had turned into dust.
Nothing remained.
Only—
A ring.
Simple.
Jet black.
No gem. No inscription.
He reached for it.
Fingers trembling. Closed around it. He kept it in the palm of his hand like the last spark of something that might yet ignite.
And when he tried to wear it—Nothing occurred.
He frowned. Turned it. And waited.
"How…"
He struck the ring against the altar stone—once, twice. Spoke to it in a whisper. Exhaled a trickle of blood into its chill metal.
Nothing.
Then—A flash.
Not a light. A rupture.
Out of the center of that blinding light came a noise.
A gasp.
Not pain. Not fear.
One rasping gasp—like the first gasp after drowning.
Like relief.
"Oh, thank FUCK, you dumb little shit finally figured it out."
The voice didn't echo. It detonated. Gravel and smoke rolled off every syllable like it had been trapped in the stone for a thousand years, clawing its way out with bleeding fingers.
A plume of smoke burst out of the ring. The form took shape.
An elderly man.
No. A gremlin in human form.
Barefoot, floating, with a question-mark spine and parchment skin fossilized for too long in vinegar. What little hair he had protruded in greasy needles, all matted and recalcitrant. His beard was hacked and black, like rusty wire stuffed into his chin.
His robe—if you could call that threadbare, ass-revealing piece of rag a robe—hung off one shoulder, exposing a chest covered in talismans and tattoos of lewd women in war postures.
His eyebrows were curled like devil's horns. His teeth were like ones pilfered from five different species and stapled into his skull. He hung suspended in mid-air, arms spread, shining gold eyes open and hungry.
"Well butter my sagging balls and call me Patriarch! One of you piss-gargling sky-lickers finally lived!"
The boy stared. Ring still grasped in his shaking fist. Chest still wracked with pain.
The old man squinted. Floated closer.
One eye shut so tight it might've imploded.
"What's the matter, ratling? Cat got your spine. Or did my devilishly handsome face knock the breath out of your tits?"
He leaned forward, his incense ash-scented mouth and stale wine-stained lips open.
Then he froze.
His gaze landed on the boy's chest, directly in the center.
"By the bald breasts of the hungry nun," he gasped.
And then his grin split wider. Something hungry. Something awed.
He laughed.
Not a chuckle. Not a giggle.
A shrieking, unhinged, grave-rattling howl of pure disbelief. Like a drunk god seeing wine for the first time in a century.
"BLOODY BASTARDED HEAVENS!"
He trembled with delight and pointed a knobby finger.
"YOU—YOU'VE GOT A FUCKING NULLBIRTH SPIRAL?"
He spun in midair. He kicked his legs like a hyper kid.
"FUCKING HELLFIRE! You shouldn't even be alive!"
The boy stumbled, his anger still brewing from the rebuke. He bled from his nose. His eyes watered. His hand ached where the ring seared his skin.
He blinked up, lips not quite moving.
"What the hell is the Nullbirth Spiral?"
The old man stopped in mid-spin. Drifted down until they were nose to nose. Then he laughed again. A wheeze at first, then a roar. "Oh, you sweet, stupid demon-bait," he scoffed. "You thought you were chosen? Oh no. No, no, no. Listen up, shitling. You didn't get the Thrice-Cursed Heart because you're destined or holy. You got it 'cause your soul's a blank scroll. Karma can't stain you." He drifted back, arms spread wide like a preacher preparing to pronounce damnation.
"Nullbirth. You know what that means? It means you were never fucking supposed to be. No threads. No name in Heaven's book. No destiny, no rebirth, no fate. You're a crack in the fucking cycle, boy. A piss-smudge on the silk of Samsara!"