For ten millennia, time had been Kaelen's plaything. He had watched galaxies coalesce from nebulae, seen stars ignite and die like fireworks in the endless, velvet dark, and had charted the silent, gravitational dance of black holes. His celestial palace, a structure of woven starlight and solidified cosmic will, hung in the void, a testament to a power so absolute it bordered on godhood. He was Kaelen, the Celestial Sovereign, and his name was a whisper of awe across a thousand worlds.
He stood now on the precipice of his grandest achievement, observing the birth of a new galaxy from the highest spire of his palace. It was a symphony of light and creation, and he was its conductor. The universe hummed with a power that resonated deep within his soul, a final, harmonic chord that signaled his ascension to a new, unheard-of realm.
A respectful presence approached from behind. Kaelen did not need to turn. He knew the energy signature, the deferential cadence of his soul, as well as he knew his own.
"Master," a voice said, smooth and filled with reverence. It was Jax, his first and most trusted disciple, a being he had plucked from obscurity and guided for eight thousand years.
Kaelen turned, a rare, faint smile gracing his lips. Jax knelt, his head bowed, offering up a chalice carved from the heart of a fallen star. It shimmered with an internal light, filled to the brim with Cosmic Nectar, a brew made from the dew of newborn constellations. It was a celebratory drink, fit for a god.
"A toast, Master," Jax said, his eyes gleaming with what Kaelen perceived as devout admiration. "To your final breakthrough. To an eternity under your guidance."
Lost in the triumphant culmination of his life's work, Kaelen accepted the tribute. He had no reason to suspect; Jax was more than a disciple, he was the son he had never had, the rock upon which he had built his celestial court. He raised the chalice, the cool, starlight-infused metal a familiar comfort against his lips, and drank deeply of the shimmering nectar.
The moment it touched his soul, he knew.
It was not a physical poison that could be purged with a flex of his will. It was a conceptual venom, a primordial toxin designed to sever the very connection between a spirit and its power. A cold, alien numbness spread through his energy core, not with the speed of a serpent's strike, but with the insidious, unstoppable crawl of a glacier. His power, vast enough to shatter suns, seized. It was still there, an infinite ocean locked behind a wall of ice.
He looked at Jax, his eyes widening not with pain, but with a profound, soul-shattering shock. Jax's respectful expression, the one he had seen for eight thousand years, twisted and melted away, replaced by a raw, naked greed that was terrifying in its intensity.
From the shadows of the grand hall, others emerged. His senior disciples. Elara, the mistress of illusions. Corbin, the master of celestial forge. Lyra, the weaver of fates. All of them, his children of the stars, their faces alight with the same horrifying avarice.
"Did you truly think we would serve you for eternity, old man?" Elara mocked, her voice, once so melodic, now dripping with venom. "Your power, your treasures, your understanding of the Dao… they are wasted on one being. It is time for a new generation to rule."
Rage, pure and hotter than any star, erupted within Kaelen. He tried to detonate his own soul, a final, desperate act of annihilation to drag his treacherous children into oblivion with him. But the poison was absolute. He was a god trapped within a statue of his own making.
His last sensation was not of a physical blow, but of his very essence being torn apart, his consciousness shredded as they greedily ripped away the treasures and cosmic laws he had spent his entire existence accumulating. The universe, once his playground, went silent and black.
A gasp.
Not the roar of a dying star, but a weak, pathetic, mortal gasp that rattled in a chest too small, too fragile.
Kaelen's consciousness slammed back into existence with the violence of a head-on collision. The whiplash was not cosmic, but physical, and it sent a wave of nausea through him so intense that he retched, his body convulsing. He vomited onto a stained, threadbare carpet, the acidic taste of bile a horrifying new sensation.
He was drowning in a sea of alien feelings: the dull, throbbing ache in his joints; the sticky film on his skin; the sharp, pounding pain behind his eyes. The air was thick and heavy, not with starlight and potential, but with the cloying stench of mildew, stale food, and human despair.
He pushed himself up, his new limbs trembling with a weakness that felt like a defilement. He stumbled, catching himself on a rickety wooden table cluttered with instant noodle cups and overdue bills. Where was his palace of starlight? Where was the endless expanse of the void?
He found his way to a small, grimy room. A cracked mirror hung on the wall, its surface clouded with filth. He stared at his reflection, and for the first time in ten millennia, a being other than himself stared back.
The face in the mirror was that of a stranger, a boy on the cusp of manhood. Pale, gaunt, with cheekbones too sharp from malnutrition. Lanky, unkempt hair fell across a forehead beaded with sweat. But the eyes… the eyes were the worst part. They were wide and filled with a deep, pathetic well of exhaustion and hopelessness. This was the face of a creature that had been beaten down by life, a creature that had surrendered.
Kaelen reached up, his new, trembling hand touching the unfamiliar face. He closed his eyes and opened his mind, not to the cosmos, but to the fractured, terrified memories sealed within this mortal skull.
The name came first. Kaelen Vance. An orphan. A scholarship student at a place called Keystone University. An existence defined by the relentless, grinding pressure of poverty. He saw memories of skipped meals to save money, of sleepless nights studying under a flickering lamp, of the quiet, constant humiliation of being the poor kid in a world of wealth.
Then came the more recent memories. The death of his only living relatives in a car crash. The subsequent slide into depression. Missed exams. Failing grades. And the debt. A mountain of debt taken from a loan shark to cover funeral expenses and rent, a debt that had spiraled out of control.
This body, this life, wasn't just a cage. It was a sewer. For a being who had once commanded legions, who had viewed the struggles of entire civilizations as fleeting entertainment, to be trapped in such a pathetic, miserable existence was a torment beyond any physical pain. It was a profound, soul-deep defilement.
He stumbled back from the mirror, his borrowed heart pounding with a mixture of rage and revulsion. He, the Celestial Sovereign, had been reduced to this? A mortal worm, crawling through the mud of a backwater world, about to be crushed by the most mundane of problems? The irony was so cruel, so absolute, it was almost elegant in its perfection.
Just as he was about to be consumed by this fresh wave of despair, a sound echoed in the silence of his mind.
It was not a sound he had ever heard before. It was not the hum of a nebula or the roar of a supernova. It was a clean, crisp, ethereal chime, a single perfect note that cut through the chaos of his thoughts.
He froze.
A translucent blue screen, woven from light he had never seen before, materialized in the air before him, visible only to his eyes. It was a perfect rectangle of data, its text glowing with a soft, steady luminescence.
[Cosmic Dao System Detected Soul Remnant of Celestial Sovereign...]
[Analyzing Soul Integrity... Integrity at 0.17%. Catastrophic damage detected.]
[Binding with compatible host soul...]
[Binding complete.]
[Welcome, Host.]
Kaelen stared, his ancient mind struggling to process what he was seeing. A System? What was this? Some new form of celestial artifact? A trap left by his treacherous disciples?
The screen flickered, and new information appeared, stark and clinical.
Name: Kaelen Vance
Physique: Mortal (Frail)
Cultivation: None
Abilities: None
Status: Malnourished, Exhausted, Minor Internal Injuries.
He read the words, and despite the absurdity of the situation, a single, cold thought cut through his despair. This… this was a lifeline. A fragile, incomprehensible, but undeniable lifeline. Perhaps this pathetic world had one last miracle to offer. Perhaps his story was not yet over.
Before he could begin to explore the strange System's functions, a sound from the outside world shattered his concentration.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The flimsy apartment door shuddered violently in its frame, the sound of heavy fists striking wood echoing like thunder in the small room.
A brutish, angry voice, muffled by the door, bellowed from the hallway. "Vance! We know you're in there! Open up! Payment's due!"