Chapter One: Fallen Before the Battle Is Won
“Hermona! We’re going to gather flowers, are you coming?”
Several young girls waved to Yang Yan from across the meadow, their laughter carried by the breeze.
“No.”
Yang Yan declined without hesitation and walked alone toward the riverbank.
Having crossed over from the twenty-first century, the weight pressing on her mind was unbearable.
“Of all places,” she muttered, sitting by the water with nothing but a pale strip of cloth wrapped around her body, “it had to be the shameless world of Greek mythology.”
She had arrived only yesterday, yet fragments of memory and observation had already pieced together her situation. The girl whose body she now inhabited had been a wandering human, taken in by this small tribe five days earlier. Beautiful and striking, she had quickly drawn the attention, and admiration, of the men.
Where there is admiration, there is rivalry.
In what was officially deemed an “accident” the day before, the girl had died abruptly and quietly. Her life had ended, and Yang Yan had taken her place.
“I may not know who did it,” she said coldly, staring at her reflection in the water, “but it must have been one of those smiling companions.”
Her reflection stared back. The left eye was clear and blue. The right, ashen gray, clouded, strange.
The world seen through that gray eye was utterly different.
Within it, Yang Yan saw a towering divine mountain in the distance, radiant with countless hues of light that seemed to pierce heaven and earth alike. Without being told, she knew exactly what it was.
“Mount Olympus, the dwelling place of the gods.”
Instinctively, she touched the gray eye. It was not hers. As an Eastern woman, she had once proudly claimed black hair and black eyes. Now, in this borrowed body, she wore golden hair and foreign features. Yet according to the remaining memories, this girl should have possessed two blue eyes—not one blue and one gray.
She told herself it was a consequence of yesterday’s “accident.”
But in her heart, she knew better.
The gray eye shimmered.
Suddenly, visions flooded her mind, fragments of the future unfolding with terrifying clarity.
Precognition.
Had she not awakened this power yesterday, she would have followed those girls to gather flowers. And then, she would have fallen from a cliff and died once more.
In that vision, she had seen only a pair of pale arms behind her back. Enough to suspect her companions. Not enough to identify them.
Now a new vision surged forward—flames, crimson light, unbearable heat consuming her body.
Yang Yan gasped and snapped back to reality, her mind reeling.
She did not yet understand the nature of the gray eye. Only that it could be used once per day—and that the world it revealed was entirely different from the one her left eye perceived.
She named it silently: The Eye of the Gods.
Submerging herself in the river, the cool water calmed her racing thoughts. In a land not her own, surrounded by people as treacherous as venomous snakes, solitude was the only safety she trusted.
Tears slipped free, dissolving into the current.
She had arrived yesterday, terrified, disoriented, yet forcing herself to imitate Hermona flawlessly. Even at night, she had not dared to cry, biting into her thigh to stifle every sound.
“Only myself,” she whispered, “can be trusted.”
She had just finished her college entrance exams—on the brink of a new life. And now this.
“My exam results…” she thought bitterly. “At least let me die knowing my score. I was even planning to get a boyfriend in college, end over a decade of being single.”
Her thoughts spiraled, then returned to the vision.
Fire.
“If it’s fire,” she reasoned, leaning against a rock while soaking in the river, “then staying in water should be safe.”
The reflection in the water revealed a girl of striking beauty, golden hair, blue eyes, high nose bridge, full curves. A body finer than her own had ever been.
Yet it was not hers.
After only one day, she already missed the body she had lived in for over twenty years.
“Well,” she sighed, “being alive is better than being picky.”
Heat suddenly spread through the air.
“Why is it getting so hot?”
She dove deeper, hoping the river would shield her. But the water itself began to warm. Bubbles rose. Steam thickened.
Unable to endure the boiling river, Yang Yan hurried ashore, clutching the pale cloth around her.
Boom—
A mass of heavenly fire fell from the sky.
The world turned red.
Then black.
Her final thought flashed through her mind:
She had crossed worlds for only one day—and died again.
They say transmigration is like buying a lottery ticket. Some strike it rich. Others lose everything.
But the true tragedy?
Reincarnating as an emperor, only to see Star-Plucking Tower burning as the enemy army storms the gates.
Becoming a consort, only to be strangled by white silk before tasting luxury.
Becoming a minister, only to receive an imperial decree of extermination.
Yang Yan had barely understood her situation before heavenly fire reduced the world to ash.
When she opened her eyes again, she stood at the gates of the Underworld.
Black masses of souls crowded the banks of the River of Suffering, guided by weary death gods into the realm beyond.
Charon, the ferryman, sweated as he rowed endlessly across the river. One small boat—six souls per trip—what difference could it make against hundreds of thousands?
Even the gods were panicking.
“Slow down! Slow down!” one death god shouted, cracking a whip. “The Underworld has barely been established—why are there suddenly so many souls?!”
“World-ending heavenly fire,” another snarled. “Everything created under Kronos is dead. They all came here at once.”
Yang Yan, now Hermona, listened quietly.
Five rivers flowed through the Underworld.
Styx, the river of oaths.
Lethe, the river of forgetting.
The river of lamentation, where lost souls wandered.
The river of fire and molten stone.
And finally, the River of Suffering—the first barrier at the gate of death.
She stood beside it now.
Looking at her reflection, she squinted at the gray eye.
The power is still there.
Her gaze fell upon Charon. The gray eye flared.
Charon. Lord of the River of Suffering. Ferryman of the Dead. Second-rank divinity.
“So it can identify gods…”
She glanced at the others.
Nubi. Minor death god. Domain: corpses and decay. Third-rank divinity.
Siduna. Minor death god. Domain: serpents and venom. Third-rank divinity.
Harte. Minor death god. Domain: teleportation and communication. Third-rank divinity.
She sat down by the river, oddly calm.
What use was this knowledge? She was already dead. Better to consider her afterlife.
Calculating silently, she realized the truth: at this pace, it would take years to ferry everyone across.
Bitterness filled her chest.
She died twice in two days.
Suddenly, a thought struck her.
I’m Chinese. Shouldn’t I be in the netherworld of my own mythology? Why am I here? And this body…
Her thoughts dissolved beneath the wailing of countless souls.
Then chaos erupted.
Children ran through the crowd. Souls shoved and argued. People fell, crushed beneath the weight of the dead.
Pain, real pain, shot through her body.
Something snapped.
“Enough!”
Yang Yan surged forward, snatching the death god’s whip.
“Men to the left! Women to the right! Children and elders in the middle!”
The whip cracked.
Order returned.
……
When Thanatos, god of death, arrived at the twenty-eighth gathering point, he was exhausted beyond measure.
Then he froze.
Order. Calm. Structure.
Men seated on one side. Women on the other. Children playing under the watch of elders.
At the thirty-third point, he finally saw her.
A young woman stood upon a platform, wielding a god’s whip with authority.
The gray eye whispered:
Thanatos. God of Death. First-rank divinity.
“Well done,” a death god said nervously. “The Lord wishes you to manage several more points.”
“What lord?” Yang Yan snapped, flicking the whip. “Wasn’t this the last one? I was promised the Elysian Fields!”
This was not what she signed up for.
And yet—
This was only the beginning.
