A storm had broken over the Nameless Grave.
Wind shrieked through the ruins, tearing through shattered mausoleums and broken statues of long-dead emperors. The sky crackled with ghost lightning—faint, silver arcs that never quite reached the ground, flickering like old memories. The air smelled of rain, blood, and something more ancient still—earth that had not seen light for centuries.
Li Tianming stood at the edge of a collapsed ravine, gazing down into darkness. Beneath his feet, a fractured monolith jutted from the ground at a jagged angle. Its surface was etched with inscriptions older than any sect, the characters nearly eroded by time and fate alike.
But he could read them.
"One soul, two fates. One fate, two worlds."
The meaning pulsed in his mind, echoing with something he could not yet name. His fingers brushed the runes gently. The moment his skin touched stone, the wind halted. Silence slammed down like a falling blade.
Then, a whisper—barely more than a breath—slid into his mind.
"Li Tianming... you carry the wound of Heaven."
His eyes widened.
"Who speaks?" he asked, stepping back, hand instinctively reaching for the Threadstealer Gu coiled in his palm.
"Not a who. A what. A memory. A seal broken."
The monolith shimmered faintly, and beneath it, something stirred. A subtle vibration through the bones of the world, like the heartbeat of a buried god.
Then the ground beneath him cracked.
With no time to leap away, the stone gave out entirely. The world tilted as he plunged into the dark.
He landed hard, shoulder-first, in cold mud. Darkness enveloped him, save for the pale glow of his Fate Furnace pulsing faintly from beneath his robes. He groaned, rising to his feet slowly, shaking the damp soil from his arms.
He was in a cavern. An ancient one.
Carved pillars stretched up into nothingness, their tops lost in gloom. Fossilized roots clung to the stone walls, wrapped around long-dead skeletons still clutching broken weapons and tattered talismans. The smell of rot was deep and sour—old as time.
At the center of the chamber stood an altar of black jade, split down the middle. Something flickered above it—a torn fate thread, glowing violet-black. It was unclaimed.
Li Tianming's breath caught.
This was not just a fate thread. It was wild—unbound, unanchored to any living being. Such threads were impossibly rare. Normally, a thread vanished with death, devoured by the Heavens. But this one had lingered, defied the cycle.
He stepped closer. His Fate Furnace thrummed greedily. Even the Threadstealer Gu coiled tighter, alert and ravenous.
But his instincts screamed caution.
A voice returned—cold, amused, and ancient beyond reckoning.
"Take it, thief of fate. But know this: not all threads lead upward. Some drag you into the abyss."
Li Tianming's jaw tightened. "Power is never free."
He extended his hand. The Threadstealer Gu surged forward like lightning, sinking into the violet-black thread.
The world convulsed.
A shockwave blasted through the cavern, shattering bones and toppling stone. A whirlwind of fate energy surged into Tianming's chest, his Fate Furnace erupting in wild, unstable light.
He screamed—not in pain, but in raw awakening.
Visions burst behind his eyes.
A sky split by golden spears.A god with no face screaming as it was chained to a pillar.A city that walked on legs of obsidian.A mirror that swallowed souls whole.And… a man. A version of himself. Older. Colder. Crowned in ash.
When he came to, he was kneeling before the shattered altar. His body trembled. The furnace inside him pulsed stronger than ever—no longer just absorbing fate, but now rewriting it.
A new glyph had formed on his left palm: 逆 — Nì — Inverse.
"You are now marked," the voice whispered. "You walk the path of the Inverse Providence."
The Gu had changed too. Once a shadowy tendril, it now shimmered with violet edges, pulsing like a living vein of lightning. It no longer just consumed. It infected fate — altered the shape of destiny it touched.
He rose slowly.
"I don't know who you are," he said into the empty dark, "but I will master this power. Even if it means I fall into the abyss."
"You will. And others will follow. Will envy. Will fear."
"Because you are no longer merely a thief of fate."
"You are its defiler."
Far above, in the mortal world, the sky rumbled.
Somewhere in a distant holy sect, an elder in meditation snapped open his eyes. Blood ran from his nostrils.
"Someone… has stolen from Heaven," he whispered.
And in the underworld, in a realm of chains and void, a chained figure smiled in the dark.
"So... he has returned."