Chapter 0: A Legend Has Already Ended (Prologue)

The story has ended.

For those latecomers arriving to read this piece of history, if they could have come a hundred years earlier, they might have still been able to witness firsthand how a dashing young man, step by step, grew through tribulations, and finally, in this ultimate decisive battle, transformed into an Asura, plunging into purgatory alongside his enemies – an epic tale.

He originally thought this.

But indeed, a hundred years was too exaggerated a rhetorical flourish; he had only participated in the Otherworld War for a few years, which might make him seem a bit self-important.

However, it was no lie that his legendary story truly ended here.

“Little Butterfly, the shooting stars in the sky tonight are truly dazzling.”

“Shooting stars? Captain, are you referring to those Bloodkin?”

The girl addressed as “Little Butterfly” knelt on the ground, slowly raising her beautiful face, looking towards the distant sky illuminated by the cerulean aurora, her crystal-clear pupils reflecting the clusters of flames continuously streaking across the heavens, plummeting towards the scarred, scorched earth.

Those plummeting flames were precisely the Bloodkin legions, their wings incinerated, falling from the sky.

The black-haired boy’s head rested weakly on her thighs.

His excessively long side bangs covered half of his eye, his gray-green, tattered military robe was already soaked with fresh blood, and his body, riddled with wounds, made him utterly unable to move, yet when he gazed at that magnificent scene in the sky, the corner of his mouth still curved into a slight arc.

“To be able to die coolly in the arms of a beautiful girl at the end, this ending isn’t so bad after all.”

The girl’s ash-covered face lowered again, her forlorn eyes also drooping, as scorching winds blew through her long hair, the vast, smoke-filled battlefield making her figure appear especially minuscule.

‘…Is that so? Actually, it’s not cool at all.’

She quietly used her slender fingers to comb the hair of the boy in her arms, watching him close his eyes, an expression of serene contentment on his face, as if he had returned to those tranquil days listening to songs playing in his headphones.

At the same time, she also felt his heartbeat gradually weaken, his body temperature slowly turn cold…

Until all signs of life vanished.

Thus, the Otherworld War concluded.

The Bloodkin who had invaded the real world were severely wounded and repelled; both sides suffered countless casualties, including the entire S-rank vanguard elite squad “Wraith Squad,” which included the Chief Exterminator, all sacrificed.

The story belonging to him, to her, and to them, ended here.

–Things should have been this way.

But just as he was about to plunge into the endless long night, a strange yet delicate voice echoed within his consciousness, pulling at his body, permeating his entire being, and telling him:

The story has never ended.

The unquenchable flame will reignite in the soul.

Illuminating the path of endless destiny.

My past self.

I will await you in the future at the end of time.