The morning sun bled through the curtains of Arjun's bedroom, casting long, distorted shadows across the floor. He lay still on his bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling fan spinning lazily above. The familiar surroundings of his home—the wooden desk cluttered with books, the worn-out sneakers in the corner—felt like a facade.
His body was here, but his mind was still anchored in the freezing, sapphire depths of a memory that refused to fade. It didn't feel like a dream. Dreams didn't leave your muscles aching with phantom power.
Dreams didn't leave the taste of salt on your tongue.
He needed to verify it. He needed to know if the words spoken by that man were a divine revelation or the onset of madness. The man had spoken of a specific, desolate region in Antarctica—a place where the answers to his existence were buried beneath the ice.
"Come to Antarctica... prove yourself."
Arjun closed his eyes, and the "dream"
rushed back, more vivid than the room he was lying in.
The Void of Infinite White
The transition in his memory was violent. One moment, he had been gasping for air, crushed by the weight of a Water Dragon's tail; the next, he had awoken in a realm of pure, terrifying abstraction.
The ground was a seamless, polished expanse of white that stretched to a non-existent horizon. Above, a sky choked with silver clouds churned in a perpetual, silent storm. There were no mountains to climb, no shadows to hide in. Just Arjun and the vast, suffocating emptiness.
Suddenly, a roar shattered the silence—a sound like the earth itself was being torn apart. From the distance, a gargantuan wall of water began to sweep across the white floor.
Arjun turned and ran. He ran until his lungs screamed, but in a world of infinite flatness, there was no sanctuary. The wave was a predatory mountain of sapphire liquid, moving with a speed that mocked human effort.
The water crashed over him, a hammer blow of cold.
Arjun braced for the darkness of drowning, but it never came. Instead, he felt a strange, cooling sensation in his chest. He opened his eyes and gasped—only to find that he was breathing the water as if it were air. He realized he could move through the liquid medium with thought alone, gliding through the depths with a grace he had never possessed on land.
The Water Dragon—a creature of nightmare and ancient beauty—spiraled around him. It flicked its massive tail, creating a liquid vortex that trapped Arjun in place. Then, the dragon lowered its head, revealing a figure standing atop its scales.
The man looked to be in his late thirties, possessing a gaze that felt like it had witnessed the birth of the world. He leaped from the dragon's head, landing softly on the watery floor. When he spoke, his voice resonated within Arjun's very soul.
"So, you are the Sin Vessel," the man said. "Show me what you have learned. You must come the place where you belong, Arjun... and you must speak of this to no one."
Arjun stood trembling, confused and terrified. "Who are you?"
"My name is Ajay. I was the world's first Sin Vessel," the man declared. "In my time, mythical creatures were not myths; they were companions. This dragon, whom I named Drago, is one of the immortals. They are hidden now because humanity began to hunt them for greed. I tamed Drago, the second most powerful creature in existence. But I fell trying to tame the first—the Devil Dragon."
Ajay stepped closer, his presence expanding until he seemed to fill the entire ocean. "You are not just a vessel, Arjun. You are my reincarnation. My power is yours, but you are currently incomplete."
The man reached out and placed a heavy hand on Arjun's shoulder. "Go to Antarctica. Prove yourself, and you shall inherit all that I was."
As the words left his lips, Ajay's body began to fracture into shimmering golden particles. Like a river of light, the essence of the first Sin Vessel flowed into Arjun's chest. The heat was unbearable for a second, then a profound sense of "wholeness" washed over him.
Recognizing the soul within the boy, Drago bowed its massive head. Arjun climbed onto the dragon's scales, and the beast surged upward toward the silver clouds at a terrifying velocity. At the peak of its flight, the dragon tossed Arjun into the sky—
And he woke up on his bed, drenched in sweat.
Back in his room, Arjun sat up. He felt the change in his blood. His senses were hyper-tuned; he could hear the distant footsteps of a neighbor and the faint hum of electronics in the walls. He also felt the "Eye"—the spy who had been tailing him for days, hovering somewhere outside his home.
Arjun moved with a new, quiet purpose. He ate a quick breakfast, hugged his mother with a lingering intensity that he hoped she didn't find suspicious, and bid her goodbye.
He didn't head for the public transit. Instead, he slipped out the back and made his way to the docks. Using a hidden reserve of cash, he chartered a private, high-speed mini-ship. As the engine roared to life, he steered the vessel away from the coast. He wasn't just running away; he was heading toward the only place where he could finally become what he was meant to be: the frozen wastes of the south.
[W.S.O. Main City]
While Arjun sailed toward the ice, the massive cruise ship docked at the pier of the W.S.O. Main City—a floating metropolis that looked like a vision of the future.
Spy A stood on the deck, watching the elite "Men in Purple" disembark. He needed a disguise to get inside the inner sanctum. He slipped into the private cabin corridor, searching for a target. He found a door with the nameplate: Yuvraj Singh.
He entered the room, finding a spare purple uniform. But as he reached for it, the door clicked shut. Yuvraj Singh stood there, eyes wide.
Before Yuvraj could scream, Spy A lunged. With a brutal, practiced motion, he snapped the man's neck. The body slumped silently. Thinking fast, the spy dragged the corpse to the engine room and heaved it into the churning, massive pistons and gears. The body was gone in seconds.
Donning the purple robe, Spy A walked into the city. He was breathless. The architecture was impossible—white towers reaching for the sky, roads perfectly stable despite the ocean beneath. He followed a group of Men in Purple into a massive assembly hall.
He found his assigned seat and sat down. The air was thick with tension. Then, the lights dimmed. A single spotlight hit the stage.
A figure stepped out. Spy A felt his blood turn to ice. It wasn't a man. It was Lizzy—a creature with the scaled face of a lizard. The spy gripped his armrests. What have I walked into?
Lizzy tapped the microphone. "We have a problem," he hissed, his amber eyes scanning the crowd. "One of our brothers is missing from this ship."
Spy A's heart hammered against his ribs.