"Is this the man you trained to stop me? Pathetic!"
The words didn't just carry through the air; they seemed to vibrate through the very molecules of the earth. The sound followed a sickening thud that signalled the end of yet another desperate struggle.
What had once been a lush, verdant forest—a jewel of the region—was now a cauterised wasteland. The vibrant canopy was gone, replaced by a jagged landscape of barren earth and deep, smouldering trenches.
Some of these fissures plunged so deep into the crust that a faint, hellish orange glow flickered from the depths, as if the planet itself were bleeding magma.
Thick, oily tongues of black smoke spiralled upward, weaving together to form a funeral shroud for the valley. From high above, the scene was unmistakable: a piece of hell had manifested on the surface of the world.
The carnage was absolute. Broken bodies and severed limbs were scattered across the dirt like discarded refuse, the remains of an elite force that had dared to stand against a force beyond nature.
In the centre of this theatre of death, three figures remained.
One was a cloaked spectre hovering in the air, his face concealed behind an expressionless mask. He floated in a state of eerie tranquillity, his posture radiating a cold, clinical detachment. He looked down upon the sea of blood with the uncaring eye of a scholar observing a failed experiment.
Hundreds of meters away, suspended at the same height, was his adversary. This figure was a nightmare sculpted into human form—a towering presence radiating the raw, suffocating vibe of a primordial beast.
Nine massive, shimmering tails danced behind him, lashing at the air with a consciousness of their own. He was a monster in the truest sense, a creature that inspired a primal, genetic terror in anything that possessed a heartbeat.
Between these two titans lay the third figure: a young man, broken and discarded on the scorched earth.
His armour, once a work of master-craftsmanship, was now a jagged mess of shattered plates and twisted mail. Deep gashes crisscrossed his torso, drenching his remains in a thick, dark crimson. He lay helpless, his breath coming in ragged, wet rasps that signalled the collapse of his lungs.
With a casual, almost bored flick of a single tail, the Fox picked up the young man's body. He was swung through the air in a wide, mocking arc before being slammed back into the dirt. But the tail didn't retract.
It sharpened into a point harder than diamond and plunged through the young man's chest like an unstoppable spear, pinning him to the ravaged ground.
The Fox stood midair, looking down like a merciless god. To the young man staring up through a haze of blood and pain, the Fox felt like a mountain that had moved to block out the sun—an insurmountable wall of power that defied the very concept of hope.
How did things come to such an end?
Despite the crushing disparity in power, the young man's heart didn't fill with fear. Instead, it was consumed by a cold, agonising bitterness. He had sacrificed everything.
He had trained until his bones cracked and his spirit bled. He had followed every instruction, mastered every technique, and pushed himself beyond the limits of human endurance. And yet, here he was—a footnote in the history of a monster.
"All of them are trash," the Fox said. He shifted his gaze across the battlefield, scanning the pulverised remains of the twenty elite disciples who had served the masked master. "I held high expectations for our encounter, and yet this is the result… How disappointing!"
The young man coughed, a spray of blood painting the inside of his teeth. He looked up at the golden eyes of the beast, his voice weak but devoid of surrender.
"Don't… don't think so highly of yourself," he wheezed, his spirit flaring one last time with a spark of pure defiance. "You are only a mere fox… not a god!"
The monster's eyes narrowed. "You…"
Fwoosh!
The tail retracted and lunged again in a blur of movement, dragging the young man upward until he was suspended mere centimetres from the Fox's face. For the first time, the young man could see the true, horrifying detail of his enemy.
The Fox's skin was a pale, sickly yellow, constantly cracking and deforming as if the power surging within him were too great for a physical vessel to contain. He was a being in a state of perpetual collapse and rebirth, held together only by an unknown, terrifying force of will.
His eyes were twin elliptical pools of molten gold, devoid of a single speck of humanity or mercy. Paradoxically, his features were handsome—sharp and regal—which only served to make the nine erupting tails behind him more grotesque.
The tail currently piercing the young man's chest adjusted its grip, protruding from his back at a new, more painful angle. It was a calculated cruelty, clear evidence that the Fox felt neither kindness nor the need for a quick kill. He wanted the young man to feel every agonising second of his failure.
"I never thought you bred foolish people as your disciples," the monster sneered. He ignored William's enraged, bloodless face, looking instead past the dying man's shoulders. His gaze landed with biting mockery on the cloaked figure floating in the distance.
"Do it!"
The master's voice was deep and decisive, cutting through the stagnant air of the battlefield. Despite witnessing the utter devastation of his disciples—the children he had raised and trained for this singular, apocalyptic moment—there was no hint of grief in his tone—only a cold, unwavering command.
"Do it? Do what exactly?" The Fox threw his head back, his laughter sounding like the grinding of tectonic plates.
"Aren't you going to cry? Plead for mercy for your precious student? Kakaka!" The monster seemed genuinely amused, as if he were watching a comedy rather than a massacre.
But he had miscalculated. The master wasn't speaking to him.
"You are an abomination, Mark!" William shouted, the effort forcing a fresh geyser of blood from his lips. He struggled for every syllable, his voice cracking with the strain of his shattered ribs. "A monster shouldn't have the power of gods! You will die here, one way or another!"
William was a spirit master, a man who had once been considered a pinnacle of power in a world that revered strength.
He had spent decades in the shadow of his legendary master, alongside brothers and sisters who were now nothing more than crimson stains on the barren earth. They had been the world's last, greatest hope to bring down the nightmare known as the Nine-Tailed Fox.
"And who is going to stop me?" the Fox asked, his elliptical eyes dancing with malice. "A human like you who is half a step past the door of death? Or that worthless coward behind you who hasn't dared to move a finger while I slaughtered his pride?"
Flash!
William wanted to scream a thousand more curses, but he knew his soul was on the verge of shattering like glass. He had only a guttering candle's worth of energy left. He couldn't waste it on words.
Following the final, secret teaching of his master, William reached into his sleeve. His fingers, slick with his own gore, closed around a small object. He pulled it out, holding it against his chest, right where the monster's tail protruded from his lungs. The simple movement allowed his warm, spirit-infused blood to coat the item completely.
"The Beads of Destiny? No way!"
For the first time, the Fox's mask of arrogance cracked. As he recognised the seven beads held together by a thin, shimmering thread—now stained a dark, sacrificial red—a flicker of genuine worry crossed his handsome, deformed face.
But the worry was fleeting. It was replaced instantly by a look of profound ridicule. "Even in your prime, you wouldn't have the power to touch me with those artefacts. You think a dying man can command the Myriad?"
As the monster laughed, the thread connecting the beads snapped with a sound like a harp string breaking.
Suddenly, the seven glorious beads took flight. They began to glow with a blinding, celestial intensity, circling William's broken body in a frantic, rhythmic dance.
To the ancient world, these were the Myriad Beads—ornaments that, when baptised in the blood of a master's sacrifice, transformed into the ultimate weapon of cosmic realignment. Each bead looked like a tiny, swirling universe, shimmering with a myriad of colours as they rotated faster and faster around the dying man.
"We'll see about that," the cloaked master spoke, his voice like a winter wind. "Do it, William. Honour my teachings. End him."
The simple words acted like a surge of pure adrenaline in William's veins. This master had saved his life as an orphan; he had given him a purpose and a family.
The absolute confidence in his master's voice made William's failing heart thrill with a final, glorious excitement. He didn't care about the darkness encroaching on his vision. He only cared about the task.
Rumble!
Unlike the nine-tailed fox's expectations, the beads did not discharge beams of destructive energy. Instead, they reached a state of terrifying stillness, suspended in the air like stars caught in a web of invisible gravity. They shone with a blinding, monochromatic brilliance that threatened to bleach the world of all colour.
Had William attempted to channel the artefacts' power through his own hollowed-out spirit, the attack would have flickered and died. But the young man was not reaching for a weapon; he was reaching for a cataclysm.
"Trying to detonate them? I won't let you have your way, damn human!"
The Fox was no fool. He recognised the signature of a soul-detonation—the ultimate, desperate gambit of a master who has nothing left to lose but his existence.
If William had used the beads conventionally, the monster could have shrugged off the strike, as the efficacy of the Myriad was tethered to the user's remaining vitality. But to sacrifice the beads themselves—to crack the shells of seven miniature universes—was an act of spiritual terrorism.
The thought sent a jolt of primal dread through the monster's scalp. These beads were unique in the cosmos, priceless relics that should have been hoarded and worshipped. He had lowered his guard because he never imagined a human would be "foolish" enough to destroy such treasures.
Desperation fueled the Fox's next move. He didn't pull away; he lunged. All nine tails whipped forward, a blur of golden fur and lethal muscle, perforating William's body in every vital organ. Lungs, liver, heart—the Fox sought to shred the vessel before the fuse could finish burning.
"I am the Nine-Tailed Fox! A legendary existence born under the very curses of heaven!" the monster roared, his voice shaking the foundations of the earth.
"I am destined to shatter the barriers of this reality and ascend as a god! I will not let ten million years of cultivation be ruined by an ant! No pathetic human can stop me!"
The world began to fade for William. The roar of the monster became a distant hum, and the scorched horizon blurred into a grey haze. He felt the cold seep into his marrow as his life force drained into the dirt. Control over his limbs vanished, leaving him a passenger in a dying shell.
Time seemed to dilate, stretching every millisecond into an eternity. In this slow-motion twilight, William did not feel panic. He did not feel regret. Instead, a small, bloody smile of pure ridicule touched his lips.
"You will fail, human!" the Fox hissed, his voice vibrating directly into William's mind.
The monster tried to retract his tails, to toss the dying master away and flee the blast radius of the beads. But he found himself paralysed.
The power radiating from the Myriad acted like a cosmic magnet, lashing the two sworn enemies together in an inescapable net of destiny. The very tails that had pierced William were now the chains that bound the Fox to his doom.
"I won't let you have it your way," William's voice whispered in the monster's mind, quiet but carrying an aura of absolute iron. "No matter what it takes—even if I have to do this a hundred times, a thousand times—I will kill you. Die, you bastard."
For the first time in ten million years, the legendary monster felt a tremor of genuine, soul-chilling fear.
BOOM!
The seven beads collided at the centre of William's chest. The resulting explosion wasn't just fire and sound; it was a rupture in the fabric of space-time.
A pillar of white, purifying light erupted, engulfing both man and monster in a nuclear flash that levelled the surrounding wasteland for miles.
The Fox did not die. His ten-million-year cultivation was a fortress of divine energy, but even he was not unscathed. As his tails were scorched and severed by the Myriad's light, a single, massive drop of golden blood—the concentrated essence of his divinity—was flicked into the air.
Amidst the blinding glare, unnoticed by the masked master or the dying world, that golden drop seeped into William's cooling chest, merging with his shattered spirit just as the light consumed him whole.
The explosion did not end in silence.
As the white light reached its zenith, seven distinct flashes—the spectral remnants of the Myriad Beads—streaked through the vacuum of the blast and merged into William's disintegrating form.
"Kakaka! I'm not dead yet, idiot! I'm not dead! Kakakaka!"
The monster's mocking laughter was the last thing to reach William's ears, a jagged blade of sound that followed him into the abyss. It was a taunt that sparked a final, incandescent surge of fury in his fading consciousness.
I'm going to kill you! I swear, even if it takes me a thousand lives, I'll kill you with my own hands!
Huff! Huff! Huff!
The silence of a small wooden cabin was shattered by a violent, lung-burning gasp. In a cramped space barely large enough for a single inhabitant, a small body jolted upright, nearly falling from a narrow cot.
Only moments ago, he had been screaming in a voice that didn't belong to a child—a hoarse, hellish rasp that carried the weight of a dying man's vow. Now, he was drenched in a cold, oily sweat that made his simple clothes cling to his frame. His chest heaved in a frantic rhythm, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"This…"
He stopped, his voice high and thin. He looked down at his hands and froze. He was a boy—no more than eleven years old. His limbs were spindly, his skin pale and lacking the hardened calluses of a master. There wasn't a hint of the powerful musculature he had spent decades building.
Yet, as he looked around the room, those wide eyes held the same terrifyingly sharp, defiant gaze that had once stared down the Nine-Tailed Fox.
It took five minutes for his breathing to settle. Five minutes of absolute stillness as he processed the impossible. He slowly pushed away the thin, scratchy blanket and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he caught sight of his reflection in a small, dusty mirror atop a nearby desk, he froze again.
He stood up on shaky legs and approached the wooden desk. It was a humble piece of furniture with a single drawer and a rickety chair, both covered in a fine layer of grey dust. He reached for the mirror, his small fingers trembling.
The face staring back at him was a ghost.
Messy, dark blue hair fell over a pair of wide, black eyes that seemed too large for his thin, gaunt face. His cheeks were hollow, and his chin featured the distinct indentation he remembered from his youth.
When he pulled his lips back in a grimace, he saw a gap in his upper teeth where a milk tooth had fallen out and was still waiting to regrow.
"No f*cking way... Hell! No way!!"
He screamed, jumping back as if he'd been bitten by a viper. He paced the narrow room, his mind a whirlwind of static and memory. "This is… I've returned. I actually came back!"
He began to tear through the small room, searching for confirmation. He threw open the single drawer. Inside were three identical sets of plain white tunics—the standard uniform of a low-level initiate.
Beside them sat a sturdy brown leather rucksack, designed for students to carry their supplies and spirit stones.
Finally, he stopped in front of the far wall. Hanging there was an emblem he hadn't seen in two decades, yet he could have drawn every line of it from memory: a rounded, concave shield featuring a tiger's head being shattered by a heavy smith's hammer.
"The Aspire Academy," he whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of shock and dawning realisation. "I'm back... I've been thrown twenty years into the past. Unbelievable."
He dragged the dusty wooden chair out and sank into it, oblivious to the grime. He stared at his small, bandaged fists—the fists of a boy who had only just begun his training.
In his mind, the laughter of the Fox still echoed, but now it was joined by a cold, calculating resolve. He had the knowledge of a master, the secrets of the Myriad, and twenty years of stolen time. This time, the fox wouldn't be the one laughing at the end.