Prologue: The End of All Things

The heavens felt silent.

What stars remained flickered dimly above the ruined sky, as though ashamed to witness what was left of the world. Broken cities lay beneath blackened clouds. Realms swallowed by the hunger of war. And at the center of the devastation, on the scorched altar stones of the final battlefield, Nie Li lay dying.

His breath came in rasps. His body broken. His soul realm shattered.
The Temporal Demon Spirit Book was clutched to his chest, its leather cover cracked, pulsing faintly with a warmth that no longer made sense — like a heartbeat not his own.

Above him, like a mountain of presence, stood the Sage Emperor.
Immortal. Radiant. Cold.

He was wrapped in silks of voidlight, golden eyes like stars collapsed into themselves — yet something old flickered behind them. Weariness. Hunger. Even sadness.

He gazed down at Nie Li in silence for a long time.

“It’s over,” he said at last, voice low — not cruel, only final.

Nie Li could not answer. His jaw was broken. His strength was gone. Pain had become distant, a whisper at the edge of eternity.

The Sage Emperor crouched beside him — not with disdain, but almost with reverence.
“You were the one,” he murmured. “I thought — no, I hoped — you might become my adversary. A worthy one.”

Ash stirred in the wind, like memory refusing to settle. The world was ending, but the Emperor’s voice was steady.

“I have ruled longer than even the stars remember. I crushed empires, devoured gods, broke the cycle of reincarnation itself. Yet even then… I never found an equal.”

His gaze drifted to the book pressed against Nie Li’s chest. He reached for it, then stopped, inches away. The faint aura seared the air.

“This book,” he whispered. “The last relic of a forgotten order. Not forged by gods or men. It will not open for me. I could not break it. I could not touch it. It burns me — as though it knows what I am.”

A tremor ran through his voice — the edge of madness bleeding through the weariness.

“I sought its secret. I thought through you I might learn it — the secrets it guards. The one thing I could never claim. I wanted to ascend beyond even my throne… higher than heaven itself. But the truth eludes me still. Even within reach, it denies me. And it drives me mad.”

He stood slowly, eyes tracing the ruined plain. “I watched you grow. Scheme. Return from the edge of death. You were clever — no, brilliant. Too brilliant. I was tempted, more than once, to interfere. To lend you just enough power to rip open the book. But that would have ruined it. It had to be real. Earned. A rival born, not made.”

He looked down again. Not with hatred. Not even with triumph.
With regret.

“You had what I never could: the Book. The potential to understand it. That’s why I let you live as long as I did.”

His hand hovered, the voidlight trembling at his palm.
“I thought perhaps, through you, I might steal its secret. Perhaps you would uncover its truths, and I — through you — would finally see what the Covenant denied me.”

The words hit Nie Li like a bell struck in a cavern.

Covenant.

He wanted to ask — what covenant? What secret was worth all this ruin? Why did the book burn even the hands of gods?

His lips trembled. His jaw would not move. Blood filled his throat. No sound came.

The question roared inside him, but his body was already ash.

But Nie Li’s soul was unraveling. The book would die with him.

The Sage Emperor straightened, silence heavy as eternity. Energy gathered in his hand. Slow. Heavy. Not an execution. A burial.

“You ruined everything,” he whispered. “You were the last chance I had to feel alive. I am tired of playing god.”

Power coalesced into a final stroke.

Nie Li’s fingers spasmed around the book. It pulsed once, twice — steady now, like a heart beating beneath the ash. He did not know why it comforted him. He did not know who was watching.

But as the Sage Emperor unleashed his final blow, something unseen moved.

Time did not bend. Not yet.
But grace had seen enough.

What was broken would not stay broken forever.