I Need to Prove Myself

Preface: Inscription of the Foundation

Blood for ink, wings of light for blades. As the old world convulsed in its death throes, one name, "Chen," was carved into a dying body and branded upon a newborn sanctuary. Not salvation, but an anchor.

The agony that split his collarbones was sacred geometry, forging mortal flesh into the foundation of the world. The wings of light unfurled, not for flight, but with the roar of engines preparing for launch. The refuge, an ark forged from ash and scars, bore the full weight of its existence upon Chen's battered body, along with its solemn janitors and swaying vines of light. He was no passenger. He was the keel itself, the sole coordinate on a course toward the eternal void of deep space.

The wings of light beat, and the sanctuary became a comet, tearing through the polluted sky screen. Acceleration hammered him like destruction; the deathly silence of the vacuum became a furnace of existence. Droplets of blood drifted like miniature galaxies around Prometheus, nailed to the world's axis. Blood-contract runes throbbed before his heart. Each pulse was an orchestral fusion of tearing pain and the wings' will to protect, the only umbilical cord connecting the individual to the boundless expanse, and a wound that would never heal.

Deep space was no smooth passage. The folds of spacetime and the cold currents of entropy were all reefs of annihilation. The wings of light used star charts as sails and sacred flame as a shield; every narrow escape forged the anchor deeper. The boundary between flesh and runes blurred in agony, and beneath the crushing weight, the wills of Chen and the ark merged.

Bearing the world, becoming its monument. In the boundless darkness, only those wings of light, burning with scars and sacred flame, remained as an eternal beacon forward. The bloodied wings cried out, and the old cocoon sank into the depths. The ark named Chen carried destruction and rebirth, anchored agony and protection, and sailed