Eternal Rebirth: I Ascend with Every Death

The Valley of Forgotten Echoes

The Blackened Village sat at the heart of a cursed valley—one so twisted by time and sin that it had long since been erased from the maps of men.

Li Tian stood at the valley's edge, gazing upon a landscape of silent horror.

The valley was a deep, sunken scar in the earth, its cliffs jagged and sharp, as though once cleaved apart by a wrathful god. A thick, pale mist rolled through the valley floor, curling around the roots of gnarled, blackened trees whose branches stretched upward, twisted like fingers grasping at a sky that had long abandoned them.

The earth itself pulsed beneath his feet, sickly veins of crimson light running through the cracked soil, illuminating the darkness like the dying embers of a forgotten pyre. There was no wind, no sound of life—only the occasional whisper of something unseen, slithering through the fog.

At the valley's heart lay the village, shrouded in an eternal half-light, where the moon above wept blood into the sky.

And waiting within… was something wrong.

The Ritual of the Masks

Li Tian moved carefully through the ashen pathways, his every step deliberate. The air was thick with the stench of decay and iron, and ahead, the first sounds of ritualistic chanting slithered through the darkness.

When he reached the village center, his breath hitched.

The villagers stood in a perfect circle, motionless, their heads bowed in eerie reverence. They were clad in ceremonial robes, stitched together from skin and sinew, their stitched flesh masks contorted into expressions of mocking serenity.

At the center of their gathering, upon a raised obsidian altar, a small girl knelt, trembling. Her eyes were wide but dry, and her bare feet were cut and bloodied, as though she had been made to walk across thorns.

A High Priest, draped in flowing black robes, stood above her, raising an obsidian dagger toward the bleeding moon. His golden mask, smooth and featureless, tilted downward as his voice slithered through the air.

"For the Moon That Bleeds, we offer this flesh."

The blade descended.

The Blade Falls

Li Tian moved.

His sword cut through the air, a silver arc of vengeance.

Steel met flesh.

The High Priest's arm severed at the elbow, the dagger tumbling from his grasp.

The chanting ceased.

For the first time since Li Tian had entered the village, the masked cultists turned—all at once. Their movements were too synchronized, their stitched masks snapping toward him in unison.

The High Priest did not scream. He simply tilted his head, gazing at the blood spurting from his severed arm as if it were nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Then, ever so slowly, he lifted his golden mask toward Li Tian… and smiled.

"You are expected, vessel."

Li Tian drove his sword through his throat.

The Wrath of the Cult

The village erupted.

A deafening howl tore through the valley, so piercing and inhuman that Li Tian's ears rang with pain.

The ashen ground split apart, the air vibrating with an unnatural force. From the cracks in the earth, blackened skeletal hands clawed their way up, their veins writhing with molten darkness.

The villagers lunged, their once-human movements unraveling into jerky, grotesque spasms. Their masks contorted, flesh splitting at the seams as jagged teeth pushed through the hollowed sockets of their eyes.

They no longer resembled men.

They were things that should not be.

Li Tian reacted instantly, yanking the child into his arms just as the first of the cultists lunged at him.

His sword whirled, a deadly arc that severed an arm, then a head, then another—yet they did not fall.

Limbs twitched and reattached, bones snapping back into place with unnatural ease.

From behind, another leapt onto the rooftops, its body twisting midair before lunging downward like a starved beast.

Li Tian spun, his boot slamming into its mask with bone-crushing force, shattering it into pieces.

No blood spilled. Only black mist, curling from the wound like something… alive.

One of the masked figures let out a choked, gurgling laugh, its mouth splitting open from ear to ear, revealing a gaping abyss lined with shifting teeth.

"Flesh bends, but the soul remains."

From the cracks in the earth, the skeletal hands fully emerged—no longer just fingers, but towering figures of charred bone, standing three times the height of a man. Their empty eye sockets bled black fire, their clawed hands reaching, grasping, as if hungering for something unseen.

Li Tian tightened his grip on the child.

The air grew thick and suffocating, the very shadows lengthening, reaching for him like ghostly tendrils. The sky above shifted, the bleeding moon cracking as an eerie hum vibrated through the land.

A voice whispered in his ear.

"Yanluo awaits you… in the City of Endless Graves."

Li Tian turned—but there was nothing there.

The next moment, darkness consumed the world.