1: Tale of the Heavens.
TEoEAN?
Somewhere in the endless space, far beyond the heavens. It was out there.
...
In the middle of a forest, an injured boy was lying on the ground.
{I finally have a body... but where am I?}
{Where was it? Who was she? And... who am I?}
{I don't remember much. Only a few pieces of my past.}
In a dimly lit room, a girl with snow-white hair and glowing blue eyes sat with an old book. She was incredibly beautiful, unparalleled in the whole seven heavens. She read aloud in a soft voice.
A dark place. Eight figures sat on grand chairs in a circle. Each one looked powerful enough to shatter the heavens.
They ruled over everything. They were talking about the state of the heavens.
"Haha!" laughed the King of the Dark End of Existence. He sounded confident. "Our fifth heaven is growing faster than any of yours."
"That is true," the Queen of Light Before Dark said with a gentle smile. "Your side is growing fast. But the environment of our second heaven is still the best in all the seven heavens."
The Spirit Awaken King looked annoyed. "My sixth heaven has the cleanest, purest air. None of you can match that." He turned to look at the leader of the seventh heaven.
"It is so nice to see everyone here," the Queen of Perfection said sweetly. "It feels like the old days."
"Yes," the King Who Rules said proudly. "And our first heaven is as strong as always. No one has ever dared to break a single rule here."
"Oh, that sounds so boring!" the Queen of the Essence of Life teased with a playful smirk. She did not care about the angry look the King Who Rules gave her. "No one breaks the rules? How dull. Our third heaven has the biggest population. That is much more exciting."
"Don't make me laugh," the All-Knowing King said. "The rest of you still use old weapons like swords and bows. Our fourth heaven has advanced technology that is far ahead of everyone else. What about you, Master?"
The Eternal Death was a mysterious figure covered in shadow. He spoke slowly, and his voice made everyone quiet.
"I was once in a place called the eighth heaven," he said. "It is lost now, nobody lives there. It has the knowledge required to reach the real world."
The room went completely quiet. The other rulers looked at each other, confused. To them, the 'eighth heaven' and the 'real world' did not exist. The ideas made no sense to them.
As she finished reading, a cloud of spinning spiral smoke suddenly appeared next to her.
"Is that the end of the story?" the Cloud asked.
The girl closed the book and looked at the smoke. "Oh! Hey, Nx. You are here. Are you spying on a pretty girl like me?" She was teasing him yet seemed oddly confident while saying that.
Nx was speechless. He turned toward the window and started to fly away.
She grabbed him tight with an angry look. "Where do you think you are going?!"
After some minutes of lecturing and teasing Nx, she finally calmed down.
"Haha, you really love stories," she said proudly. "Before this, you couldn't even talk. It looks like training with me has made you a lot smarter."
Nx was a bit scared. {I was forced to be her training dummy,} Nx thought.
The girl stood up on her feet. "To answer your question from before... yes, that is the end. But the eighth heaven is just a myth."
Nx floated closer and looked at the book. He asked why the book claimed to be a real history record if it was just a myth. He also asked what the "real world" meant.
"Oh, it's just a story for kids," she said with a cheerful voice. "It is full of lies. Besides, you have been with me ever since I found you in that cave, and I still don't even know what you are."
Nx drifted back. "I don't know either. Everyone else calls me 'The Waste' and 'The Cursed One.'"
The girl wanted to make him feel better. She smiled warmly. "That is a bad name. I will tell everyone they must address you as Nx."
"Thank you. ******," Nx said as he floated up and sat on top of her head.
{Wait, how does he even talk when he doesn't have a mouth?} The thought suddenly came to her mind.
But thinking about the day she found Nx still made her feel terrified.
{Guessing from her look, she is thinking about that day again,} Nx thought as he recalled what she had told him long ago.
She had snuck out of the grand palace to pick some flowers...
When suddenly, the sky turned a dark, bleeding red. And she remembered seeing something burning, falling straight out of the sky.
