Chapter One: Birth from Sin
In ages that existed before the fall of legends, and long before the system that governed the world began to crack, there was an ancient belief preserved by priestesses within the deepest temples: that every light in existence is born from a fragile balance between innocence and sin. And that the moment this balance collapses, something will be born that belongs to neither side—something that cannot be called light nor darkness, but a truth that stands beyond both. No one ever believed that such a prophecy would truly manifest, because most ancient legends remain trapped within forgotten texts. Yet one distant night, inside one of the deepest temples of the world of Arknights, something occurred that no scripture had fully recorded.
That night the sky was calm. No storm gathered above the temple, no falling star crossed the heavens, and no omen announced what was about to occur. Only silence filled the air, as if the world itself had paused for a single moment to witness what would be born within a hidden stone chamber beneath the temple.
Inside that chamber stood the High Priestess, known to all simply as Priestess. Before her lay an ancient ritual circle carved into the floor centuries ago. The circle represented one of the forbidden rites—an invocation tied to the primordial concept of sin, the root from which existence itself was said to branch.
No one knew why Priestess had chosen to perform the ritual. No witnesses remained except the shadows trembling across the stone walls. Yet when the final symbol was carved into the circle, something strange occurred.
No flame erupted. No radiant light burst from the ritual.
Instead, the darkness within the center of the circle thickened slightly, as if the void itself bent inward toward a single point. Slowly, form began to gather within that darkness. A small body emerged—an infant.
The child did not cry.
He did not move.
Instead, his eyes opened immediately, as though awareness had been waiting for the moment of his arrival.
His hair was deep blue, like the color of a distant sea beneath a clouded sky. His eyes were violet—quiet, still, and unnervingly calm. There was no confusion in them, no fear, no fragile innocence. Only a silent awareness, as if the child had arrived already knowing that his existence was not an accident.
Priestess stepped back.
Just once.
Something within her instincts whispered that this moment was not merely the success of a ritual. It was the beginning of something far greater than she had intended.
Still, she lifted the child into her arms and studied him in silence. Her mind searched desperately for meaning. Was he simply a child? Or was he the product of a ritual that should never have given birth to anything at all?
Days passed.
Nothing outwardly unnatural occurred.
Yet deep within the temple, the ancient symbols that maintained the balance of spiritual energy began to dim. The ritual arrays no longer glowed with the same steady power. It felt as if some hidden source that once nourished them had quietly vanished.
No one understood why.
But within her heart, Priestess began to suspect something she refused to speak aloud.
She named the child Raven.
She did not announce the name publicly. She did not allow the other priestesses to approach him. Every time she looked at him, a strange sensation filled her chest—a feeling similar to standing before a vast abyss whose bottom could never be seen.
Years passed slowly.
When Raven reached the age of four, he had already become a quiet and unsettling child. He rarely laughed. He did not play like other children. Most of his time was spent sitting silently, staring into empty space as if he were listening to something no one else could hear.
Priestess's unease slowly hardened into something colder.
Eventually, she made a decision.
Raven was locked inside a dark room deep within the temple. The chamber had no windows. Only a faint lantern hung from the ceiling, spreading a weak glow that barely reached the corners of the stone walls.
The punishment was not physical.
It was silence.
Isolation.
And time.
Every night Raven slept alone within the darkness. And every night the dreams came.
In those dreams he saw layers of darkness stretching endlessly into the distance, one above another like overlapping worlds. Shadows moved within them—vast shapes that drifted silently across those layers.
Beyond those layers stood something far away.
Something watching.
Something waiting.
And every time the dream ended, a single question echoed through the emptiness.
Who are you?
Raven never knew the answer.
But he felt, deep inside his chest, that the question belonged to him alone.
Days turned into months.
Months into years.
Until one day the heavy door of the chamber opened once more.
A girl stepped inside.
She was seventeen years old. Her name was Emma.
Emma had grown up within the temple as an orphan. She was not a powerful priestess, nor someone chosen for sacred rituals. She was simply a girl with a quiet heart that had not yet grown used to cruelty.
When she first saw Raven sitting silently in the corner of the dark room, she stopped walking.
The sight was not frightening.
It was heartbreaking.
A small child sitting alone in the shadows, violet eyes reflecting the faint lantern light.
Emma slowly approached him and knelt down.
"My name is Emma," she said softly.
Raven lifted his head and looked at her for a moment. Then he asked a simple question.
"Are you the light?"
Emma did not understand what he meant. Yet she smiled gently and extended her hand toward him.
"I don't know if I'm light," she replied. "But I won't leave you here."
Those words were spoken under orders from Priestess herself.
The command had been simple.
Take the child away.
Raise him somewhere far from the temple.
Make sure he never returns.
Priestess no longer wanted Raven near the rituals or the sacred halls. Whether he was a curse or something worse, she wanted distance between him and the world she protected.
So Emma took Raven's hand.
And together they left the temple.
Raven stepped outside for the first time beneath an open sky, unaware that the path he had begun walking would stretch across countless years.
Because somewhere within his future waited many versions of himself—fragments of existence that would awaken across time.
Absolute Darkness.
Zero.
The Absolute Priest.
Absolute Silence.
And the White Eternity—one of the most powerful entities that would one day merge with Raven, granting him its unimaginable power.
But none of that had happened yet.
For now, Raven was only a four-year-old child walking beside a seventeen-year-old girl, leaving behind a silent temple.
Neither of them knew that this moment marked the true beginning of a story that would continue across ages.
A story that would not end until the final days of existence itself.
And in that distant future, the child named Raven would stand in his final form—the Absolute Self.
There, at the end of time, he would face the Absolute Evil and bring the final conclusion to all darkness.
But that future was still far away.
The story had only just begun.