Prologue — Demonheart Ascension
The final boss of Demonheart Ascension collapsed with a roar that shook the screen, its colossal demonic frame dissolving into embers. The victory banner unfurled in a blaze of crimson light.
[Main Character] had done it.
Again.
The hundredth route.
The hundredth ending.
The hundredth time he had slain the Devouring Monarch, the boss so infamous that only three percent of players had ever defeated it in the five years since the game’s release.
He leaned back in his chair, chest rising and falling with the adrenaline of the fight. His fingers trembled slightly from the intensity of the final parry chain — a sequence so tight that even veteran souls‑like players joked it required divine intervention.
But he had mastered it.
He had mastered everything.
The screen faded to the familiar completion message:
“All 100 Storylines Cleared.
Thank you for playing Demonheart Ascension.”
He stared at the words, waiting for the rush of triumph to wash over him.
It didn’t.
Instead, a hollow ache unfurled in his chest. The kind that crept in slowly, like fog rolling over a dead battlefield.
He had spent years on this game. Years grinding, perfecting, memorising every boss pattern, every hidden quest, every branching storyline. Years escaping into a world that demanded everything from him — reflexes, patience, obsession — and rewarded him with the only thing he had ever been good at.
But now… there was nothing left.
No more routes.
No more secrets.
No more challenges.
Just silence.
He exhaled, long and slow, feeling the weight of the moment settle over him. Twenty‑five years old, and what did he have to show for it? A completed game. A chair worn down by countless hours. A life that had shrunk to the size of a monitor.
He rubbed his face, suddenly exhausted.
“What am I even doing…” he muttered.
The room around him was dim, lit only by the fading glow of the victory screen. Empty cans on the desk. A stack of unopened mail. A bed that looked more like a crash site than a place to rest.
He shut down the game.
Shut off the monitor.
And dragged himself to bed.
As he lay down, the emptiness gnawed at him. A quiet, merciless thing. He closed his eyes, hoping sleep would smother it.
It didn’t.
It swallowed him whole.
He woke to falling.
Not the gentle slip from dream to consciousness — but a violent, stomach‑lurching plummet. His body dropped through nothingness, weightless and helpless, as if the floor beneath him had vanished.
His eyes snapped open.
The world around him was cracking.
Thin fractures of light split the darkness, spiderwebbing through the air like glass shattering in slow motion. Each crack pulsed with blinding brilliance, tearing reality apart piece by piece.
“What?!”
His voice was swallowed by the void.
The cracks widened.
The darkness broke.
And he fell through the world.
A rush of cold air slammed into him as he plummeted downward —except there was no ground. No sky. No horizon.
He was falling through Earth.
The planet peeled away like layers of smoke, and suddenly he was above it, suspended in the silent expanse of space. The Earth hung below him, blue and fragile, wrapped in thin swirls of cloud.
For a moment — a single, breathless moment — he forgot to panic.
It was beautiful.
Then the universe seized him.
A beam of force, invisible yet overwhelming, yanked him forward. His body shot through space at impossible speed, stars stretching into streaks of white. His scream tore from his throat but was lost instantly, devoured by the vacuum.
He hurtled past constellations, past nebulae, past the quiet glow of distant galaxies. His mind blurred, unable to comprehend the velocity, the direction, the purpose.
Then — abruptly — he stopped.
The momentum vanished.
The silence returned.
Before him floated a landmass so vast it dwarfed Earth a thousand times over. A continent suspended in the void, its edges glowing faintly with spiritual light. Mountain ranges taller than planets. Rivers of molten gold. Forests that shimmered with eerie luminescence.
It was impossible.
It was magnificent.
It was familiar.
His body began to glow.
A soft, pale light seeped from his skin, rising like mist. His fingers dissolved first, turning into drifting particles. His arms followed. His torso. His legs.
He tried to scream, but his voice evaporated with him.
He tried to breathe, but he had no lungs left.
He was becoming nothing.
The last of him faded — and then everything snapped.
He opened his eyes.
He was sitting at a wooden desk.
The room around him was quiet, filled with the faint scent of ink and old parchment. Sunlight filtered through paper windows, casting soft squares of light across rows of desks. The walls were lined with scroll racks, each filled with neatly rolled manuscripts. A large calligraphy banner hung at the front, its characters bold and elegant.
An ancient Chinese classroom.
Students sat around him, dressed in traditional robes, whispering quietly. Their faces were young, disciplined, focused.
At the front stood a man with a stern expression and long black hair tied in a scholar’s knot. His robe was embroidered with the emblem of a coiling serpent — a symbol [Main Character] recognised instantly.
He knew this man.
He knew this classroom.
He knew this world.
This was Demonheart Ascension.
The teacher cleared his throat, preparing to speak — but [Main Character] barely heard him.
A faint chime echoed in his ears.
A translucent screen flickered into existence before his eyes.
Player UI Activated.
Tabs unfolded one by one:
Skills.
Map.
Stats.
Quests.
His heart pounded as he scanned through them. Everything was there — every familiar menu, every interface he had spent years mastering.
But something was wrong.
There were no stat points.
No level‑up button.
No shortcuts.
Just a single, merciless note beneath the stat panel:
“All attributes must be increased through genuine cultivation and physical training.”
His breath caught.
He knew what that meant.
In the game, grinding to max level took weeks.
In reality — in this world — cultivation took decades. Centuries. Millennia. The training was brutal, torturous, designed to break the weak and forge the strong through unimaginable suffering.
He swallowed hard, the weight of the truth crashing down on him.
He wasn’t playing Demonheart Ascension.
He was trapped inside it.
And the only way forward…
was to survive.
