When chaos first emerged, the Envoy created six races and left behind six artifacts to hold the world in check.
The Lord of the Gods sought to claim all the artifacts and slaughtered the Spirit Race, sparing only its last Spirit Empress, who had become one with an artifact.
The Lord of the Gods imprisoned her in a secluded valley and brought in three thousand mortals, using her spiritual energy to nourish them. Every hundred years, he harvested them for the gods to cultivate their power. To keep her from discovering the truth, he erased her memories every hundred years.
Three thousand years. Thirty times forgotten.
She had always believed those mortals were hers to atone for.
Until, in this life, one of the chosen youths asked her, "No one who's left has ever come back. Where do you think they've all gone?"
She fled the valley and climbed the mountain behind it.
Beneath the moonlight, bones lay piled like mountains. Her spiritual energy was flowing into those corpses.
Behind her stood the chief guard, spear in hand.
For three thousand years, he had been the one to bring her back in every life.
And he didn't know that three thousand years ago, he had been the last member of the Spirit Race besides her.
As he lay dying, all he could think was: I want to protect her.
She forgot for three thousand years.
He lived through thirty cycles of reincarnation.
That night, they both remembered.
