Prolouge

When I first became self aware, I do not know. All I remember is the being surrounded by nothingness, with not even light or its opposite in existence. Yet, I seemed to know what they were, despite never hearing of them before. Eventually my understanding of the two deepened, and there was both darkness and light.

As I floated about in the void, I realized that I was a sphere of undulating black and white energy, the powers of light and dark. I found it strange, was that all there was? My surroundings felt, incomplete, to say the least. I had decided that I must find out, as there was nothing else to do with my curiosity.

With that in mind, I delved deeper and deeper into both parts of my self, almost failing to notice the changes happening around me. While my knowledge expanded rapidly, so did my physical form. Yet strangely, small clouds of energy would occasionally break away, before turning into something different. After an incalculable amount of time, I was sitting in an endless ocean of my own fragments.

Another thing I noticed is that some of the fragments would clump together, though this was a rare occurrence. These unions of fragments seemed similar to me as when I first awoke, but still had some clear differences. Primarily, they did not grow on their own, they needed to feed on other fragments to expand. After which, everything seems to have become hazy. Not because I was inattentive, but because time seemed to pass too quickly for anything to register.

But eventually, I awoke from my torpor, and that was when I was first introduced to what I would soon come to recognize as humans. It was a girl, no more than six years old according to human standards. She had a round face and a small nose, with some baby fat still on her cheeks.

Not knowing what I was, the child picked me up and swallowed me whole, as I was not large. After that I found myself in another void, yet this time I could also see what was going on through the child's eyes and hear through her ears.

Due to my curiosity, I did not act. But even so, I grew and split unintentionally. Far more quickly than before, my vessel grew dense in the energies of light and dark, as well as their diluted variants. But was most memorable when the girl first came to visit me. She was fourteen at that time, and our conversation was quite interesting.

"You, who are you? Why are you in my dantian?" she asked worriedly.

"I am no one."

"How can you be no one? You are able to think and talk, so you should have a name at least." the girl said after some thought.

"All I know is that I am formed of dark and light. I have never needed a name before as no one has ever communicated with me until now. In fact, I can only speak with you because I have learned your language through your ears." I explained.

After that the girl, told me to call her Venna, decided that that I should be called Nix. With nothing else to call myself I saw no reason to decline, and that was where Venna's adventures and misadventures both began in earnest.

She found that my fragments could be converted into a tyrannical force of both light and dark qi, while the fragments themselves could condense in order to act as her foundation. Occasionally, Venna would come to ask me about my energies, and I answered her queries as best I could. Other times, when Venna was at risk of being destroyed, I could not help but take over her body and defend my only true conversation partner since I had been awake. These protections got me scolded by Venna, as she stated that she was worried about me, but I could not understand.

As her power gained more and more recognition, many suitors found themselves at her doorstep. They cooed and charmed all they might, but Venna always answered with the same phrase.

"I love nothing and need nothing, all else is unnecessary."

Though I do not understand love, as my grasp of emotions is shallow, I did understand need. Apparently this enraged several groups, many of whom attempted to move against her, only to be eaten away by the darkness, or refined into energy by the light.

After some time, approximately 400,000 years by human standards, Venna told me that she was going to die. She said that even with her constant growth in power and eternal youth, her body could not handle the amount of energy I produced and would soon collapse upon itself. Since her time was limited, she started condensing my energy into pills outside of her body, so that future generations could gain at least a minuscule fraction of her power. I gave her my full support in her efforts, which even managed to slow down the rate at which her body was strained, and gave her another 5000 years of life. But my power could not be resisted forever.

As she was in her final moments, she asked if she could stay with me after her body was gone. I made an attempt to fulfill her request, but did not have the time to save her. As she passed away, she told me that she was just fine knowing that her final moments were with me. And it was at this time I understood the feeling of grief.

When I next awoke, I was before an adult dragon, who mistook me for a cultivation resource. As the cycle began anew, I was detached, still in sorrow for Venna, a small sphere of energy orbiting me was the only bit of her soul I could preserve. I only answered the dragon's questions regarding energy once a millennium, so as to not get attached. Yet even so, I could not help myself but bond with each vessel to the point where I preserved a soul fragment each, none allowed to be larger than the fragment from Venna. And thus I saw the lives of countless demons, beasts, and cultivators, and each time my host grew to a strength even the heavens must bow down to.

And thus, after several epochs after my last host, I could not take it. I forced myself to appear on a weaker world, just like the one Venna started on, so that I could experience the joys of life myself.