Rain fell like needles from the sky.
Cold. Merciless. Endless.
A young boy knelt at the center of the Han Clan courtyard, his body trembling against the storm. Blood mixed with rainwater beneath his knees, flowing like a silent river of shame.
Han Seo Joon lowered his head.
Sixteen years of life… and not a single moment of dignity.
"Worthless."
The word echoed through the courtyard like a blade.
Clan members stood in rows, their eyes filled with mockery. Some laughed. Others watched with cold indifference.
At the front stood the clan patriarch — Seo Joon's own father.
"Born with a shattered spirit vessel," the patriarch declared. "A disgrace to the Han bloodline."
Each word crushed Seo Joon's heart.
He clenched his fists.
He had tried.
Tried until his hands bled.
Tried until his body collapsed.
Tried until hope itself abandoned him.
Yet heaven had never answered.
A familiar voice stepped forward.
Soft. Beautiful.
Cruel.
"Seo Joon… let us end this."
He lifted his head slowly.
Yoo Ara.
The girl he had loved since childhood. The one who once promised to stay beside him forever.
She stood next to another man.
Tall. Confident. Radiating overwhelming spiritual energy.
Choi Kang Hyuk.
A once-in-a-century genius.
"I cannot marry someone without a future," Ara said quietly.
Those words shattered something inside him.
Not anger.
Not hatred.
Just emptiness.
The patriarch raised his hand.
"Han Seo Joon is hereby expelled from the clan."
Gasps spread.
But the sentence was not finished.
"He shall be cast into Abyss Valley."
Silence fell.
Even the elders trembled.
Abyss Valley — a forbidden land where monsters devoured cultivators and no one returned alive.
Seo Joon laughed weakly.
So this was his ending.
Not in battle.
Not with honor.
But as discarded trash.
Moments later, guards dragged him to the edge of a black chasm outside the clan grounds.
The Abyss breathed below.
A darkness so deep it swallowed even light.
"Any last words?" a guard asked.
Seo Joon looked at the sky.
Rain touched his face like tears.
"I just… wanted to belong."
They pushed him.
He fell endlessly.
Wind screamed past his ears. Darkness swallowed everything.
His body crashed against jagged stone. Bones shattered. Blood spilled.
Death approached.
Then—
A heartbeat echoed in the void.
Thump.
A crimson light awakened beneath him.
A voice older than time whispered into his soul:
"Child abandoned by the world…
Will you devour the world instead?"
Power surged through his broken body.
Pain vanished.
Darkness became warmth.
His shattered spirit vessel reconstructed itself — not with spiritual energy…
But with something deeper.
Something forbidden.
His eyes snapped open.
They glowed black.
The Abyss had chosen its master.