[World] Origin

History repeats with a cruel rhyme, like ripples returning to an old well.

The instant he saw the girl's tears, his heart sank first, then the truth clicked like flint.

Another new [Hero King]. Another new sacrifice, laid on the altar like frost on a blade.

So many years had passed, yet the [World] hadn’t budged, like a millstone grinding the same grain. People hadn’t budged either. No—progress.

“Still— is—” He meant to mumble, but shock hit first, then the dry truth: he couldn’t speak.

No surprise. For over a decade he hadn’t traded words, like a hermit buried under snow. No need to talk, so the tongue rusted, and speech fell away like old bark.

“Heh.” He laughed at himself, a cracked sound in a hollow gourd. Wild man indeed.

Then he stepped out of the deep forest, leaves parting like a green tide around him.

…

On this continent, there’s a beast called Long.

The Long moves with lightning legs, fast as a thunderbolt across the plains. You can’t catch it in open chase. But it has one quirk. If you hold up a loop, or even scratch a circle in the dirt to pen it in, it will tuck its limbs, curl its spine, tighten into a wary knot within the ring. It won’t cross the line, won’t step beyond the thunder-border.

People mock the Long for jailing itself with a stroke of chalk, not knowing they’re no different—each drawing their own prison with a trembling hand.

People hate what slips their leash. They tiptoe along made roads, like ants on a branch. Even if those rules bind them into a [Cycle] and pin them like butterflies, at least it calms the heart. At least they can [live].

They fear becoming variables, and they loathe other variables even more.

So when Aerin slipped from sight, panic rose first, then spread like fire through dry reeds.

The lake they’d barely calmed after the [Demon King]’s birth began to boil again, bubbles drumming like warbeats.

They couldn’t see Aerin. So they couldn’t see her change. So they had no way to know—how far she’d grown, how bright the edge had become.

Worse, Aerin hadn’t left like a leaf on the wind. The Empire sealed the scene fast as a closing fist, but walls breathe like reeds; wind finds the cracks, and whispers leak.

“Did you hear?”

“Yeah. The [Hero King]’s manor…”

“Blood. Ruins… a brutal fight.”

“They say a dense dark power still clings there. That’s the [Demon—”

“Hey!”

“S-sorry…”

In alleys and squares, at tavern bars and shop counters, over bread tables and in cramped workshops, rumor thickened like stew. Bit by bit, they “restored” the “truth”: Aerin battled the [Demon King]’s underlings, then either rushed alone to hunt them down… or was taken. In any case, no trace now, but surely still alive.

As for why the invaders were the [Demon King]’s hand, and not the [Demon King] himself, no one had proof. People chose not to look that way—the thought was a blade at the throat. Aerin hadn’t matured, and the [Demon King] could already walk the [World]? That broke the pattern.

It should be on the seventh day that the [Demon King] manifests, intent on ending the [World]. Then the [Hero King] appears in time, lifting the blade from the neck.

While they were still reeling from Aerin’s vanishing, another rumor ran like a shadow on swift feet—the head of [Purple Blossom], the Empire’s First Minister, the one tasked with speaking to elves for any trace of the [Demon King], was dead.

The scene was carnage. The wide castle and manor looked like a giant hand had closed around them, kneading stone and bone into grit. The ground itself heaved like after an earthquake; hard soil and gravel from hundreds of meters down had been wrenched up like a whale breaching.

Know this—[Purple Blossom] is one of the Empire’s top three houses. Their manor was sealed with ferocious warding spells. To break it so, this wasn’t something a mere [Saint]-class could do.

The Empire’s high command burned with fury. They sent out a few ancient powerhouses who rarely left their shadows. Yet on the road back, those titans kept silent, like cicadas stunned by frost.

They were old monsters who’d lived centuries. Their names had once rung like bells. They’d withdrawn, turned into legends, but still drew bows of respect.

They had passed through several [Cycles]. They had seen both [Demon King] and [Hero King]. They had weathered those storms like cliffs.

But there, they tasted a scent both familiar and alien—the powers of the [Hero King] and the [Demon King]. What froze their marrow was this… the breath of dozens, even hundreds of [Hero Kings] and [Demon Kings]. Those beings should exist only in history and tale—dead, long buried under dust.

They didn’t know it was Augustine and Ye Weibai—this pair of cross-era [Hero King] and [Demon King]—who had fought with reckless command of those legacies, leaving that wild wake behind. Even if told, they wouldn’t believe it.

Who could wield, at once, the powers of countless former [Hero Kings] and [Demon Kings]? Wouldn’t that be invincible under heaven?

Ordinary folk knew none of this. They knew only this: Aofan was beaten to death—alive, then crushed—within his own manor, on the very day the [Hero King] vanished.

If the [Hero King]’s disappearance stirred the crowd like wind across grass, Aofan’s death was thunder out of a clear sky.

In years past, if people wanted to learn of the [Demon King], they had two roads—through the elves, or through the [Hero King]. Now, at this hour, both roads were cut like bridges burned behind them.

They… had gone blind.

…

“The height no blazing heaven’s might can reach—that is the Church of the Divine.”

This saying paints the Church’s aloof standing in so many lands.

As all know, the Church of the Divine claims no nation, yet plants a branch wherever a banner flies.

The Star-Moon Empire has one. The Aize Empire has one. Though the Church holds no legal scepter, it speaks for the [Deity], for Heaven’s Will. So its sway leans over the throne like a taller shadow.

Kings don’t meet kings. Out of caution, out of propriety, emperors do not meet the Church’s local heads—let alone the most powerful, most aloof, most sacred within the Church—the [Pope].

“Xiuze.”

Night.

In the empty, unbearably sacred cathedral, the dome hung like a pale moon, the pillars rose like a forest. Splendor wore sternness, yet there was no lamp-light—only a sea of dark.

A slender figure, ghost-sure, appeared beneath the dome, step by step like a shadow crossing still water.

He arrived without sound or invitation. No cleric beyond the hall stirred. He strolled as if through a garden, slipping past layer after layer of arcane wards, and entered the holiest ground on the continent—the Heaven-Suspended Church.

The Heaven-Suspended Church was where the [Pope] lived and ruled.

An old man with silver hair sat with eyes closed, as if stone had learned to breathe. His wrinkled right hand gripped the scepter of divine authority. The white scepter shed a cold glow in the dark, and its light spilled over his red-and-white robe like milk over blood.

Without doubt, this frail elder was one of the most powerful under heaven—the [Pope].

“Xiuze… a name I haven’t heard in ages.” The old man slowly opened his eyes. Those twin seas, pale as a white ocean, reflected that hazy figure. Even he couldn’t see the intruder clearly.

No wonder—this was the 7,430th [Hero King], the only one in history to carry the title with the class of Rogue—an anomaly written in shadow.

“Ha. Long time.” The 7,430th [Hero King] let a thin laugh scrape the dark.

“People call me the [Pope], and forget my true name,” Xiuze said, unbothered by scorn, his voice like warm light on cold stone. “Just like the title [Hero King], isn’t it, Qi?”

“[Pope] is just the label [It] pinned on you.” The [Hero King] called Qi smiled with a frost-edge. “You’re just [Its] dog.”

“A dog is still a life,” the [Pope] didn’t anger; his words fell like gentle rain. “All beings are equal. As long as you live, you should be content.”

“You can be content. I won’t.” Qi’s chill came first, then the words, like steel drawn.

Wrinkles folded into a smile on the [Pope]’s face, mild as spring sun. “If you won’t be content, you’ll end up like Augustine. [It] will beat you into a dog. And in the end, not even a dog.”