As Anthony stepped into the portal, the glow swallowed him whole. One second he stood in the eternal hall. The next—gone.
The silver-bronze ring hummed once, then stilled.
The administrator, still seated at his desk, took another sip of coffee. His eyes lingered on the now-empty gate with a flicker of rare interest.
"Well then," he said aloud, his tone lacedwith quiet amusement. "Let's see how your journey unfolds. Should be… interesting."
He set the cup down and sighed contentedly.
"This coffee really is good."
Then he went back to signing papers—like nothing at all had happened.
Meanwhile…
I… Anthony… or whatever I'll be soon…
Darkness.
That was the first sensation. Complete black. Not cold. Not suffocating. Just… void. Empty. An endless tunnel with no floor, no ceiling. No walls. No sound. No time.
Seconds passed.
Then minutes.
Then hours.
Or so it felt.
But in truth, only moments slipped by.
Time in the portal was strange.
Bent.
Irrelevant.
Anthony floated—suspended in nothing. He couldn't feel his body. Couldn't see his hands. It was like being a thought without a shape.
"Okay… this is taking longer than expected," he muttered to himself, voice echoing in the vacuum like ripples in still water.
He blinked—or thought he did.
"How long is this damn tunnel?"
Then, at last—
A flicker.
Far ahead.
A pinprick of light.
Tiny. Distant. Barely a spark against the pitch-black around it.
But it was there.
And it was real.
Anthony's eyes lit up—figuratively and literally, if such a thing was possible in this place.
"Is that it?" he whispered. "Is that the exit?"
Excitement surged.
He moved toward it, walking—or something like walking. Step by step, the light grew. But it was slow. Agonizingly slow.
Too slow.
"Oh come on," he muttered. "I can do better than this."
He pushed harder.
His pace quickened. From walking to jogging. From jogging to running. Still the light stayed far. Still it teased him—always ahead, never closer.
"Okay, screw this. Let's go."
He sprinted. Or tried to. It was like running underwater—slow, sluggish.
But the harder he tried, the faster it got. Momentum built. Something around him shifted.
The darkness began to retreat, peeled away by the growing glow ahead. Shadows thinned. The void trembled.
And then—
BOOM.
Anthony shot forward, breaking the last invisible threshold like a bullet leaving a barrel.
He flew toward the light—laughing, shouting, not even caring if it made sense.
"Like an F1 car!" he yelled, then rolled his eyes mid-flight at his own dumb metaphor. "What the hell, brain."
But it didn't matter.
He was almost there.
The light grew massive. Blinding. Pure white, pulsing like a heartbeat of existence. The darkness recoiled completely now, sucked back into oblivion.
And then—
He reached it.
No, he crashed into it.
And in the instant his soul touched the light, the entire world around him exploded—not with fire or force, but with meaning.
White. Then warmth.
Then everything.
Anthony didn't fall.
He entered.
With all the excitement of a child on launch day, he plunged into the exit point, arms wide, heart blazing, eyes full of the fire that had always lived inside him.
Somewhere, far away in a different time, in a different galaxy…
A child was about to be born.
And destiny itself was already holding its breath
Meanwhile…
In the Chaos—the swirling, endless storm that exists between the Sea of Ruination—there hung countless universes, spinning like embers in a windless inferno.
This was the place before places. The raw, untamed womb of reality.
In that chaos, within one particular universe born of violent pressure and improbable order, nestled a spiral galaxy—a young, unstable beauty spinning at the edge of the known veil.
And in that galaxy, surrounded by the lesser-known systems and unmapped routes, there rested a quiet federation of human influence: fractured, underestimated, but stubbornly enduring.
The Human Federation.
And deep within one of its subordinate territories—on the fringes of influence and beneath the shadow of larger, richer powers—there stood a faded jewel of old imperial blood: the Star Imperia.
Among the many powers within the Star Imperia, one particular noble house ruled over a sprawling territory that wrapped around a beautiful T-2 class life planet named Pangia.
Pangia—named after the ancient myth of Earth's lost supercontinent—was no ordinary world. It was massive. Four times the size of Earth. Wild. Elemental. Untamed.
And one-tenth of its surface belonged to a single family.
The Ashborns.
An earl family—once proud, now quietly in decline. Their influence once stretched across multiple star systems, but the golden days were fading. Their lands remained vast, their castle grand, but their power was a shadow of what it had been.
Still, their legacy lived.
And tonight, in the heart of the Ashborn estate—a castle built like an ironclad fortress crowned with spires—something stirred.
Wind howled through the mountains that surrounded the estate. Dark clouds churned overhead, lightning flashing like war drums in the sky. Rain was close. The air was thick. Tense.
Inside the grand bedroom, the atmosphere was no different.
A noblewoman lay in a grand bed carved from deepsteel and obsidianwood, silk sheets tangled around her trembling body. Her name was Lady Cathy Ashborn, and she was deep in labor.
She was beautiful even in her pain—long black hair plastered to her face, her pale skin glistening with sweat, and her sapphire eyes dazed but fierce. She gritted her teeth through another contraction, refusing to scream.
Around her, a swarm of maids—ten, maybe twenty—moved with clinical precision, tending to her with calm, rehearsed urgency.
One younger maid, likely in her early thirties, looked pale.
"Why is it taking so long?" she muttered aloud, unable to keep her thoughts from spilling out.
The lead maid, perhaps the same age but with sharper features and a colder stare, snapped.
"Stop talking. You're making everyone nervous."
The room hushed
But then, another voice spoke up—worn, older, heavy with worry.
Madam Bella.
Lady Cathy's mother.
She stood near the bedside, dressed in dark noble robes, hands clenched together in silent anxiety.
"