“Hero, has anyone ever told you your words can’t be trusted?” The Giant Squid watched the man, a mocking curl on his lips, sharp as a fishhook.

“Something that could kill her? Sorry, that thing doesn’t exist in this world.” His voice fell like cold ash. “Remember, everything here springs from her. You’d use her own creations to defeat her? That’s utterly impossible... unless...” A shadow flickered across the Giant Squid’s eyes as a new thought surfaced.

Birand nodded, the motion neat as a pebble dropping into still water. “Yes. Exactly like you imagined.”

“No... that shouldn’t exist.” The Giant Squid frowned, doubt rippling like a storm tide across his face.

Birand shrugged, unruffled as drifting cloud and light breeze. “You haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. You’re sealed off far too tightly.”

“... What proof?” The Giant Squid’s voice coiled like a wary eel, suspicion pricking his skin.

A prickle of unease crept along his spine before thought caught up. After he took power, he’d ordered scribes to write history—tales of how he unified the sea, deeds cast like bronze statues.

When he checked those records, a hollow opened like a missing reef. Every race among the Seafolk lacked a great, gaping piece of their earliest past.

The first chapter was gone, like dawn stolen before sunrise. Each race began its story after an ancient catastrophe—the Seafolk reorganized, then generations of Sea Emperors slowly spread and grew, waves layering into the present scale.

Before that, nothing was written, no ink, no bones. Only a few ruins held scraps, like shells whispering of a tide long fled.

Was that blank span what Birand meant?

Birand thought, eyes hooded like dusk. “To keep you from clinging to needless suspicion, to keep us from tripping over our own feet, I should tell you the history I dug up—the part buried under dust.”

“I’m all ears. And tell me about the weapon you found.” The Giant Squid’s voice was calm as deep water, the hook hidden under the surface.

Birand’s smile held a hint of play, a blade wrapped in velvet, as he looked the Giant Squid over. “Didn’t you say you didn’t believe me?”

“Sure. Convince me first, then I’ll care whether you actually have it.”

“Heh. Then... let me think where to start.”

In the ancient time, the whole world was pure chaos, a fog with no shore. No life, no gods.

Not even concepts—no names, no pathways, only blank silence, like a sky before stars.

One day, the universe grew an awareness, a spark like a lantern under endless night. Curious, hungry, he felt mystery drape the world like a shroud.

He learned the world’s bones, tracing their lattice like frost on glass. Soon boredom pooled like stagnant water.

He searched for other awareness in the cosmos, calling into a cavernous dark, hoping for an echo.

(Giant Squid: Hold on. I need to cut in.

Birand: Hm?

Giant Squid: You’ve gone too far back. How am I supposed to believe this?

Birand shrugged, easy as wind over grass: The murals say it like this. If you don’t trust me, what can I do?

Giant Squid: ... Continue.)

Lucky for him, other awareness existed, like distant fires across a black plain. They merged, they embraced, they leaned on each other like roots twining beneath soil.

Time sanded them down. Slowly, they became one whole, a single complete consciousness, full as a moon at zenith.

Then he thought. If it stayed like this, he would grow stronger and stronger, a tower into empty sky, but the universe remained cold and dull, a frozen sea without waves.

Then he met shock. The cosmos detonated—an explosion beyond any before, a supernova of screams and light.

The blast swept through every universe he knew, a tidal firestorm that tore him open and left him wounded, bleeding starlight.

After that, basic life and basic elements sprouted across the universe like spring shoots in burned earth. The super-being had a thought, bright as lightning.

If he wanted richness, why not birth lives different from himself? So he began to create, hands like the wind shaping dunes.

First he made the world’s skeleton after his own shape—a lattice we now feel everywhere as energy, like rivers beneath skin. Soon he saw it wasn’t enough; he had to make life.

He mimicked the simple things born in the blast, assembling and morphing them like a craftsman piecing jade.

Quickly, he created three beings, limbed and whole, bodies clear as emerald, gleaming like rain-washed glass.

He feared they were too weak, candle-flames in a hurricane. So he poured his own strength into those first three, a river from his heart.

We’d call them, in our words: the Abyss, the Celestial God, and the Netherworld.

(Giant Squid: Stop—what is the Netherworld?

Birand: Don’t overthink it. Treat it as someone as powerful as the other two.

Giant Squid: Got it. Go on.)

At first, the three were gentle, like three lamps in one hall.

Then they discovered a hard truth. If they wanted power beyond their creator’s, they’d need to devour one another, growth fed by hunger, conquest cast as duty.

They made it policy. Principles sharpened like knives.

Soon, they split over ideals, three paths diverging like rivers cut by rock.

The super-being left one last line and vanished like a star falling beyond sight.

He said:

He is the Only One.

.........................................................

The Celestial God and the Abyss seemed close, ropes knotted tight between them.

At the beginning, they struck the Netherworld together, twin storms against a single shore.

The Netherworld couldn’t withstand their combined tide and withdrew, dimming like a lantern in rain.

Then the Celestial God turned against her ally. I told you before: she will never allow anyone to threaten her throne. No race is exempt. Not a hint, not a sprout. Your strength must be pressed beneath Sacred Rank. Only then can she enslave you forever.

Because the Celestial God added shackles to every race, chains like frost on branches. After stepping into Sacred Rank, your sense of power dims by a tier. After Transcender, progress stretches thin as winter daylight. So slow that life runs out, and some never step beyond Transcender at all.

Back then, among the Demon Race, any commander was basically a Transcender, blades stacked atop blades. Under absolute pressure, the alliance armies retreated again and again, like tides pulled by a black moon,” Birand said with a shrug.

The line kept shrinking. If the Celestial God didn’t act, the Demon Race would own the whole world, their banners like stormclouds over every shore. That’s when I appeared. I came only to check the Demon Race, a counterweight dropped on the scales. So I carry no shackles.

From that day, the Abyss and the Celestial God were enemies, faces turned like clashing masks. I don’t know why.

But I think it’s mostly her betrayal, a knife slipped under the table.

Otherwise it makes no sense that the Abyss lost so fast, a mountain washed away in three rains.

The tug-of-war among the three had lasted hundreds of millions of years, stones worn smooth by hands.

The Abyss conceding the Celestial God only three thousand years? No matter how you cut it, that’s absurd, a drumbeat out of time.

..........................................................

Forgot to mention this.

The Celestial God creates life; the Abyss writes rules; the Netherworld cleans the mess, a broom in the dark.

After the Netherworld lost, her realm became a trash room, a pit for castoffs and grief.

All the dead in the world get sent there, a ferry to endless solitude. Until the soul wears thin and crumbles like dry leaves, they remain in that world.

From what I saw on the murals, the Celestial God wants to lock the Abyss in that space, too, a cage for wolves and kings alike.

From start to end, the Celestial God is petty, small-bellied, holding grudges like iron nails.

Break the shackles she set, and she’ll kill you, swift as a falling blade.

Maybe after you’re all dead, she’ll lay harsher chains on your descendants, tighten them until you’re reduced to common animals, hooves instead of hands.

(Giant Squid: Then why did she create us?

Birand: ... Don’t interrupt. I’m getting there.

Giant Squid: Fine.)

..........................................................

As far as I know, when the Abyss and the Celestial God ambushed the Netherworld, the Netherworld didn’t die outright, nor did she hand over all her authority, the keys still hidden under her tongue.

You know what I said: the Netherworld is the place that shelters the dead, a cold harbor under black stars.

Your deaths might force the Netherworld to surface, tides driven by blood. Then the Celestial God can harvest the remaining value, coins taken from a corpse.

With that chance, she can finally crush the Abyss and seize the authority of life’s source. Then she would become the new Only One, crown without rivals.

Our birth? Just her tool, a chisel in her hand.

..........................................................

A knot tightened in the Giant Squid’s chest before thought gathered. Birand’s story held holes, gaps like missing ribs. But right now he had nothing to refute it.

Birand had so-called evidence, stones and murals; the Giant Squid had nothing but the dark, empty hands.

“Right. Let me show you a glimpse of the future.” Birand smiled, light flickering like a knife-edge.

“The future? You can see the future?” Suspicion rose first in the Giant Squid, then voice. Doubt fluttered like a trapped bird.

Birand smiled and said nothing. He raised his hands, palms level like scales, then removed the mask from his face, the motion like peeling night from dawn.

“Because right now, I’m more than a Hero.”

The Giant Squid’s pupils contracted, a needle pricking the eye. “!”

..........................................................

Much like Eli back then, the feeling was a cold echo.

The Giant Squid drifted like a ghost through future time, a wisp blown along unseen currents.

Picking up Birand’s thread, we follow: these are fragments he fished from the ruins of the Sea of Time, memory shards like glass under sand.

The Giant Squid shook his head. The future felt too thin, too pale, a watercolor washed out by rain.

For some reason, the air held too little energy, like a sky after a storm with no lightning left.

He drifted on, a shadow over broken ground.

He came to a ruin, stones collapsed like teeth. A man knelt half on the ground, eyes gray as ash—life gone, warmth fled.

In his arms lay a girl, likely his wife, her breath extinguished, a flower crushed under boot.

Around them, bodies sprawled haphazardly, limbs askew like discarded marionettes, each killed in some eerie, inexplicable way.

“No idea what happened here.” The Giant Squid’s voice was dull, like oars dropped into still water.

Birand’s voice floated down from above, slow as snow. “This is a scene of persecution by the Celestial God, a frost that kills in silence.”

“How do you know?” The Giant Squid’s doubt rose again, a wave slapping stone.

“You said it yourself—the energy here is thin, scraped clean like a stripped bone. That man is the fate of those who resist the Celestial God.” Birand spoke like someone pointing at constellations, each word a cold star.

He kept backups of Eli’s shattered future memories, to use as he pleased, cards tucked up his sleeve.

“So, Giant Squid, what’s your choice?” Birand smiled, crescent-sharp.

“No rush.” Calm first, then words, the Giant Squid’s tone sank like a net.

“Oh?” Birand’s brow creased, a fine line drawn by a careful brush.

“You still haven’t shown me the weapon that can kill the Celestial God. I want to see its shape.” The Giant Squid’s voice glided, cool as moonlight on water.

Birand laughed, short and cold, a blade tapping glass. Then he slapped his forehead, feigning carelessness like a man who forgets his keys. “Ah. I almost forgot. Look at my memory. Come on. I’ll take you to see it.”