Once upon a time, in the dawn of time when nothingness did not yet know it was nothing, the gods walked upon the void.

  They were eternal and powerful, but not perfect. Some shaped light and life; others sowed shadow and fire. They created a world to inhabit and rule, and from their will the races that now populate the earth were born.

  But every creation carries flaws.

  From the chaos the gods could not contain, the demon lords emerged. They corrupted all they could and retreated into the shadows, weaving pacts, curses, and wars that still echo in silence.

  And beyond gods and demons, others arrived.

  Nameless beings, born between the stars and the voids between worlds. Some surpassed the gods in power; others lurked even beneath the demons. They were sealed, forgotten… or simply waited.

  With the passing of ages, the gods withdrew or slept. The demons sharpened their patience. The world kept turning, ignorant of what still watches from the darkness.

  And then, in a forgotten corner of that world, a man decided to play god.

  The greenish-blue light of the candles trembled, as if afraid. The air in the underground laboratory smelled of burnt metal and something older—something that should not exist.

  In the center of the room, a black cauldron bubbled.

  The liquid inside was not liquid. It was life… that did not yet know if it wanted to live.

  The necromancer leaned over it.

  His white hair, short and carefully combed, contrasted with his impeccable black suit. The white shirt had not a single wrinkle; the tie was thin as a thread of shadow. But his left eye was a milky void, crossed by a straight scar running from forehead to cheek. The right eye, gray and icy, watched the cauldron like someone studying a dying star.

  He poured two vials.

  One contained translucent gray goo: remains of a mimic spawn. The other, a pale doppelganger larva.

  The substances met.

  The cauldron bubbled violently.

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  And then it exploded in blinding black light.

  From the trembling mass something emerged.

  A creature of gray obsidian goo, pale and semi-translucent, barely thirty to fifty centimeters tall. It tried to form a twisted humanoid body, but collapsed again and again into bubbles and trembling pseudopods, like a dream that had not yet decided to become real.

  Eight bulbous red eyes opened like embers: two large in the center, and three smaller descending on each side. A yellow mouth opened, revealing sharp teeth. Acidic drool dripped and hissed on the stone. Claws of the same color sprouted and retracted without will.

  The necromancer smiled.

  There was no warmth in that smile.

  “Fascinating,” he murmured. “You already try to be something more.”

  He lifted me with black leather gloves.

  Instinctively, I clung to them. I did not know why—only that it was the only living thing I knew. A clumsy, desperate embrace.

  He did not react.

  He placed me carefully inside an enchanted iron cage. The bars crackled when they touched my body, as if complaining about my existence.

  “You still have no name,” he said, in the tone of someone labeling an experiment. “But you will have one. You will be Aethermorph number forty-seven.”

  The door closed with a soft click.

  Darkness returned.

  But it was no longer absolute.

  Now there was something inside me.

  A longing.

  And a shapeless question that burned like a newly born ember:

  *What am I?*

  Days became weeks… or perhaps months. Time was a concept I still did not understand.

  The necromancer came every dawn and dusk. The same dark robe. The same cold gaze.

  He pricked me with silver needles that burned like ice. He cut pieces of me and watched how I regenerated under magical lights. He forced me to change shape again and again, until my body collapsed into acidic puddles that scorched the floor.

  “More,” he always said. “More perfect. More useful.”

  Each cut was a lightning bolt of pain that pierced my entire being. Each order, an invisible chain tightening something inside me.

  *I want out.*

  The idea was born one day like a new heartbeat.

  *I want to be free.*

  I tried to escape.

  My pseudopods stretched toward the bars, clung, tried to dissolve the iron. The enchanted magic reacted immediately: blinding white pain ran through me completely.

  I fell to the cage floor, trembling.

  The necromancer smiled.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “You are not ready yet.”

  But the seed had already been planted.

  Every test, every wound, every indifferent glance made the longing grow like a small, stubborn flame impossible to extinguish.

  *I want to see the sky. I want not to be alone.*

  And then, one night, something changed.

  A new sound.

  Hurried footsteps. Metal clashing against metal.

  The laboratory door burst open.

  And someone entered who was not the necromancer.

  (End of Chapter 1)

  Who is this intruder? Has he come to break my chains… or to forge new ones?