Chapter 1

The stars were moving.

Jinseong sat in the center of the milky salt plain, which had turned into a mirror, quietly staring at the sky. His pupils had become as clear as a mirror, reflecting the stars in the sky, and the place where he sat had clear water due to sorcery, capturing the stars and bringing the universe down to the ground.

“O stars, the great movement of the constellations….”

Jinseong marveled at the moving stars and muttered to himself. The only horrifying thing was that his voice sounded as if it had been torn apart and crushed in an abyss.

It was the result of his vocal cords and lungs, which had failed to function properly due to long illness and continuous battles.

Jinseong frowned momentarily at the pain that seemed to squeeze his lungs and the burning sensation in his vocal cords as he muttered.

‘It’s like this until the end.’

Even after ingesting nearly a lethal dose of fentanyl and injecting other narcotic painkillers into his body, the unbearable pain persisted.

Despite suffering various injuries and being tortured when captured by enemies during his time as a mercenary, he could never get used to the pain.

‘Body, weak body….’

It was a horrific pain, like having his nerves pulled out and rubbed with sandpaper, and having his brain seared with a hot iron, without even being able to faint.

Worse, this pain had greatly reduced his lifespan.

Pain can be transcended only with the mind, but it is a monster that even devours the mind.

The pain unconsciously manipulated his body, making him clench his teeth, shattering his once sturdy teeth, and twisting his properly aligned jaw joint.

Even lying down, sudden bursts of pain exposed all his nerves during his sleep, activating all his bodily functions, making him unable to control his body, and these seizures were no different from torture that denied him restful sleep.

His brain went mad with excessive pain, making even the most basic human senses erratic. Sometimes he couldn’t taste anything even when drinking saltwater, sometimes he smelled meat grilling when there was nothing, sometimes he felt the excruciating pain of his leg being crushed while walking, and sometimes he felt nothing even with a hole in his abdomen.

Even without blinking, the world would turn black, a blackout, and the returning pain would awaken his brain again, denying him the rest of fainting.

This bodily pain drove the soul within mad, and the twisted and wounded soul would transmit its effects back to the body. Thus, body and soul constantly inflicted pain on each other, leaving his soul tattered and his body no different from a corpse.

It was the worst synergy that could only end in death.

Spirit, energy, mind.

All three strongly influenced each other due to the nature of sorcery…. It was a tragedy.

‘If only I had strengthened my body in advance….’

If only he hadn’t given up from the start, if he had at least made an effort….

Jinseong looked at his body, cracked like an old tree, with a sense of regret. His body was cracked all over like a field parched by a long drought, and the blood vessels and muscles in the cracks were so dry that no blood flowed. The most severe parts showed white bones at the ends of the cracks, making it hard to believe he was still alive.

But what good would it do to sigh?

Jinseong was dying, and he had less than an hour left to live.

Looking at the sky, the star that had been with him since birth shone ominously, announcing his death, and looking down at the mirror-like ground, the energy of the afterlife wrapped around him in blackness. The lines on his palms, representing life and future, had completely disappeared, and his soul, which should have been quietly dormant in his body, was wildly rampaging, barely held in check.

Jinseong was about to die.

Fate was inescapable.

In the afterlife, there are no ledgers, and the Grim Reaper does not come to take humans away.

There were no angels for him who did not believe in religion, and no demons showed interest in him who had mastered sorcery.

Having mastered sorcery and wandered the world with his own power, he would meet his end entirely due to his own deeds.

Thus, his soul would return to the world, his body would be salted in the salt plain, and his mind would disappear without a trace.

That was death and the inevitability he would face.

“So regretful, it’s regrettable….”

Jinseong felt a sense of resignation about his imminent death. But if there was one strong attachment holding him back, it was that he had not achieved his goal.

He had lived solely for sorcery and had dreamed since childhood of mastering all sorcery and transcending through it, but he was about to die because of sorcery, ironically enough.

He had devoted his life to sorcery after encountering it by chance as a child, but fate decreed that sorcery would shorten his life and lead to his death.

Jinseong felt the irony of his fate.

“Since it cannot be avoided, I will choose the process myself.”

Jinseong believed that since he had lived a life dedicated to sorcery, his end should also be adorned with sorcery.

Therefore, he intended to finish himself with the most horrific and alien sorcery, “human sacrifice.”

‘To whom do I offer a person, and to what do I offer my body?’

However, he did not know to whom or for what purpose this human sacrifice was intended.

It was sorcery he had obtained from an ancient ruin while living as a mercenary.

The ruin was half-collapsed, and the murals were so weathered that they could not be properly restored even with the latest scientific techniques. The only thing remaining was the method of performing human sacrifice sorcery and a few brief records.

The sorcery depicted in drawings and unknown ancient hieroglyphs scratched onto the rough cave surface had unknown side effects and uncertain outcomes, so he never dared to execute it, only remembering it….

‘It should be fine for the last time.’

After all, Jinseong was a dying man.

What price could be heavier than death?

Moreover, thanks to his advanced mastery of sorcery, his body had become immune to the blessings of transcendent beings, so he would certainly avoid the horrific state of being neither dead nor alive.

Thus, using his life to resolve the unknown was the right thing to do.

Jinseong genuinely believed so.

Therefore, even when soaking the firewood in oil, when stacking the altar with firewood and straw, and knowing that he would soon have to burn himself alive and chant incantations at the end of the human sacrifice sorcery, he could do it all without hesitation.

For him, sorcery was everything, and there was nothing too precious to sacrifice for it.

“Ha….”

Suppressing the excruciating pain, he slowly walked towards the altar he had prepared.

The altar was made of oil-soaked firewood and straw, and in the center, clear oil rippled in the salty breeze.

Swish.

He threw off the single layer of clothing he was wearing, submerged his naked body in the oil, and lay down comfortably, staring at the sky.

“Grand Alignment….”

What he saw was the stars slowly finding their places.

It was the planetary alignment, where all the planets in the solar system lined up in a straight line.

“O stars….”

The Grand Cross, where the planets form a cross shape.

The Grand Alignment, where the planets align in a straight line.

Astrology claims that whenever these alignments occur, major events inevitably happen.

As the stars aligned perfectly in a straight line, Jinseong shouted.

“With the forgotten sorcery I discovered in the ruins, I adorn my final moments. O stars! Accept my death….”

Whoosh.

And right on cue, the altar began to burn, the fire drawing patterns all over the altar as it climbed upward. It looked like an evil snake flicking its tongue, like a nebula in some distant part of the universe flinging its gaseous body everywhere, and like the last scream of a bursting star.

Eventually, the flames gathered numerous shapes and symbols as they reached Jinseong, burning blue flames on the small oil pond and starting to consume Jinseong’s body.

The flames spread over Jinseong’s body, first burning his hair, then his skin, then his muscles….

At first, the blue flames turned into a deep, intense red, so bright and fierce that nothing could be seen inside them as they surged towards the sky. It was like lighting a giant candle with a human as the wick, evoking both horror and reverence.

Jinseong smirked amidst the fierce flames, feeling a pain that even all the drugs couldn’t suppress.

“ॐ–”

t, tT, Ttt, T-

Yha’sy thalap, Byyyyyyyyyyy——-

“ॐ——–”

The flames entered his lungs, reducing his tattered lungs to ashes.

His esophagus burned, losing its function as a passageway, and his organs shriveled as they cooked.

Yet, his voice continued to emerge endlessly.

A sound too high to be called low and too low to be called high.

It sounded like an unending wind deep within a cave.

Despite being unable to breathe, continuous exhalation flowed from Jinseong’s body, and despite having no tongue, the sounds varied and echoed as if something were moving in his mouth.

Ypag-sothepppppppppppt——–

Yi-t, t, ttttttttT…

The sound spread.

The burning candle, the blackened charcoal, the corpse that resembled an object rather than a human.

Unable to speak, his mind remained alive, moving his dead body.

His maddened soul had already left his body and scattered into the world, but his body, burning and collapsing in the flames, maintained its shape through sheer force of will.

“ॐ———–”

And finally, as the flames moved and formed shapes despite the lack of wind, creating long stems that blossomed like flowers decorating the sky, even though there was no more firewood to burn.

Ziiiiiiiiing!

With the sound of the world tearing apart, the altar turned to ash and exploded in all directions.

In the center of the altar, where he should have been, there was nothing. The last remnants of his consciousness had vanished.

As the planets shifted out of alignment, Jinseong disappeared from the world.

That was the end of one sorcerer among countless others on Earth.

The pitiful end of a sorcerer who wandered battlefields, scorned as a parasite, yet endlessly yearned for transcendence.

That was all.

Such is the futility of death.

That was all it was….