Awakening in an Empty Sea

A single tear descends upon the waters of the great Turtle-back sea, from it, ripples dance upon her once silent surface. Spirit courses through her vastness, calming the once disrupted sea. In her domain, all is fixed and empty, the cycle keeps her Dao pure.

Stories from the 4th Era of the Dao tell the tale of an ink-shelled turtle, blessed with great affinity with both the Essence of Life and of Water. She founded the Harmony Sect after she stabilized her Spirit Sea in the Truth realm.

The 4th Era came to an end one day, her Sect found itself dissolving like many others. That lead to the 5th Era, the Desolate Era. A boy of the sword rose to power then, the day came where he achieved the peak and moved on to the next layer, but like the 4th, the 5th came to an end. Dragons rose in the 6th, they fell to the hands of man. In the 7th Era there was the enslavement of all beasts, this was the Era of the Human Hedgemon. Cultivation was rewritten in the 8th, humans were punished by the world itself, and the swirling maelstrom of lightning locked upon their Dao, once so favored for it's pure Will of destruction, it destroyed the human race from the inside.

The 9th Era is that of the modern day, it is an Era characterised for what it is not. It is not the Era of Humans, nor the Era of Beasts, the Dao is pure, and Desolation never ceased.

Through it all that little ink-shelled turtle kept her heart still beating, feeding on her soul of Life until left no more. All that remains of her is that Dao, the Dao of still water, of void, of empty. In the Human Era, they named her the Empty Sea. The longest life was only ever meant to be an Era, and here she lived to usher in the fifth.

Immortality was a false dream, and she knew it all too well, the Empty Sea on her last fin cleansed her soul, all in hope that her dead husk becomes another's legacy.

The great elder of all beasts, the undying, the soul of water herself cleared her slate willingly so that another may take her place. That last ripple to be suppressed, birthed from her last tear, a legacy unmatched in all 8 Eras, today has become among the living. The falling of that tear marked the coming of the first year of the 9th Era, the last in the cycle.

"These words shall be mine last, my son, I shall leave ye to act of Will your own, and may ye mark the end and be the beginning. I grant that thee, my son, that ye are the Soul of Void. Fail me not young one."