Deep within the Sea of Darkness, silence reigned like eternity.
Night Falcon hovered in the void, his entire body wrapped layer upon layer in countless ancient runes.
Those runes seemed almost alive as they slowly writhed. With every movement, a wisp of Darkness Origin, refined to the extreme, seeped into his body and fused with his own spiritual energy, flesh and blood, bones, and even the depths of his soul in a way that defied description.
This was the inheritance of the Night God Ancient Body.
It was not a simple bestowal, but a true fusion.
Night Falcon kept his eyes closed, his consciousness immersed in a boundless darkness.
The darkness was warm and profound, as though he had returned to the womb, or merged into the origin of the universe. He could feel himself undergoing a metamorphosis that was transforming him from the inside out.
His physical body disintegrated, then reassembled.
His meridians broke, then were reforged.
His spiritual energy dried up, then was reborn.
Every disintegration and reassembly was accompanied by unbearable agony.
But Night Falcon clenched his teeth and held fast to the last trace of clarity.
He knew this was a necessary path. To bear the crown, one had to bear its weight.
Time flowed slowly through the darkness.
One day.
One month.
One year.
There was neither sun nor moon in the Sea of Darkness, and Night Falcon had long since lost all sense of time.
He only knew that the changes within his body were advancing slowly but surely toward some unknown end.
That nearly exhausted Darkness Ancestral Symbol had now completely merged into the depths of his Sovereign Sea, transforming into a slowly rotating vortex of darkness.
At the center of the vortex, the faint image of a miniature Night God Ancient