The Ascension: Calamity’s Heir

"If I have to become the floor to survive it… then carve my name into the walls."

The air in the apartment smelled like piss and old heat.

Not the kind you clean. The kind that soaks into the wood. Into the drywall. Into the fucking bones of the building and hums with mildew and hopelessness. Burnt oil, roach droppings, and something Jié couldn't name clung to the ceiling like memories that refused to rot.

He didn't blink. Didn't shift on the mold-warped mattress.

He just stared up at the cracked plaster and listened.

Not for voices.Voices were simple.Predictable.

He listened for the silence between the creaks, for the way the walls held their breath when his adoptive father stalked down the hall. For the pauses between words — that moment when the sentence cuts short and you know a hand is coming before it lands.

Tonight the apartment was quiet.

Which was worse.

Fifteen years old.Already dying by degrees.And no one noticed.

Jié Dè was broad-shouldered but round, soft-faced with rough skin and sharp eyes. A body that never got to choose what it became. His skin had turned purple in places weeks ago — bruises that weren't healing because bruises don't heal when you stop eating.

The cracked ceiling above his head hadn't always been cracked.

But something had changed.

Yesterday, the paint had just been peeling. Today, a long black fissure ran down the middle like a scar bisecting heaven.

The first time he noticed it, the roaches were still crawling across it.Now they avoided it.Moved in a wide circle like rats avoiding poison.

He stared.

It was nothing. It had to be nothing. Just mold and moisture and age.

But it throbbed.

Subtle. Almost imagined.

Knock. Knock. Knock…...knock.

Three short. One long.

The door to his room creaked as he slid across the floor and cracked it open just wide enough.

Xiǎorú slipped in, barefoot and silent. Her stuffed rabbit was missing again. Her lips were split. Eyes puffy. She didn't cry.

They both stopped crying a long time ago.

He sat on the floor. She sat next to him. No words. Just shared breath in the dark.

He reached beneath the mattress and handed her the rabbit — re-stitched with shoelace thread, one eye dangling like it wanted to leave the world.

Her arms wrapped around it like she was trying to keep it from bleeding.

"Tell me the one," she whispered.

"The crippled one?"

She nodded.

"He didn't have a core. Didn't get accepted into any sect. He was trash. So he studied beasts. Let them break him. And he copied the way they moved."

"He let his bones grow wrong. Let his knuckles scar."

"One day he came back and didn't ask to join."

"He killed the elders."

Xiǎorú smiled into the rabbit's fur.

"That's my favorite one."

He wanted to tell her it wasn't real.

That cultivation stories were lies poor kids swallowed to forget what their world tasted like. But he couldn't. Because it was her escape, too.

Because it used to be his.

Because pretending was better than the silence.

Because deep down, he wanted to believe it, too.

At 3:03 a.m., the crack in the ceiling pulsed.

It didn't open yet.

Not like a door.

But something behind it... shifted.

Jié sat up.

He didn't wake Xiǎorú.

Didn't call out. Didn't blink.

His eyes stayed locked on that black fissure as a soft white glow began to leak through.

A glyph.Circular.Pale.

Not carved — grown. Like a scar forming outward. Like a fungus spreading.

His breath caught.

And the crack began to open.

There was no sound.

Just a wet peeling — like scabs being torn from skin. The plaster bent inward. Split.

A perfect circle.

A wound in the ceiling.

A door.

No frame. No logic.Just glowing white emptiness ringed with twitching fibers.

"Ascension is not a gift. It is a transaction."

"To be chosen… is to be consumed."

Jié stood.

No words.No tears.

He looked back once. Xiǎorú was still sleeping.

He memorized her face.

Then walked toward the ceiling.

And stepped into the wound.

[SYSTEM INITIALIZING…]

Welcome, Jié Dè.You are no longer part of the world below.

This is Floor 0: Waiting Room.Time limit: 24 hoursNote: There is no food. No safety. No kindness.

Only silence. And the watchers within it.

He landed hard.

But not on floorboards.

Not on concrete.

On light.

The whiteness beneath him was empty, but it caught his weight like gravity had been turned sideways.

He rolled onto his knees.

Looked around.

The room was massive. No walls. No ceiling. No shadows. Just light so white it made color feel like a lie.

He wasn't alone.

Dozens.Hundreds.Thousands.

Men. Women. Teenagers. Children. Old. Broken. Half-naked. Armed. Crying. Laughing.

All strangers.

All survivors.Or sacrifices.

He crouched low.

Watched.

Always watch first.

A girl was sitting nearby — maybe eighteen. One eye bandaged. Blood-soaked hoodie. One shoe. She didn't flinch when he looked at her.

"Don't touch the bread," she said without looking up.

Jié's eyes scanned the table in the center of the room.

Perfect food.Fresh fruit.Still-warm bread.Clear water.

"What happened to the one who did?"

She turned her face toward him.

One word.

"Screamed."

"Room peeled him open."

Jié nodded.

Sat beside her.

Didn't say anything else.

The crowd grew.

The silence didn't.

Some cried. Some curled into fetal positions. Others stared into nothing.

One man tried to pray. His words came out backward.

Jié watched them.

Catalogued expressions. Looked for patterns. Measured breath.

This wasn't a room.

This was a scale.

A measuring place.

A mouth.

The floor shifted.

Something beneath the light blinked.

Hundreds of tiny eyes.

Staring up.

Then...

Smiling.

[SYSTEM ALERT]

Next Floor Selected:FLOOR 1 — THE SKIN THAT WHISPERS

Objective: Survive 4 hoursFailure = assimilationRule: Touch nothing that bleeds

The floor didn't open.

It peeled.

Like a throat unsealing itself.

A wet, circular wound in the light opened at Jié's feet.

And it waited.

"You coming?" he asked the girl beside him.

She shook her head.

"I'm waiting for my floor."

"What kind?"

She smiled with broken teeth.

"The one that kills me right."

Jié didn't look back.

He stepped into the flesh.

And the mouth closed behind him.

END OF CHAPTER 1Next: Chapter 2 – The Skin That Whispers"It wears your face before it takes your voice."