Overlord of Puppets.
A being born in the depths of Aetheron long ago.
Unlike humans, beasts are born with varying levels of strength... some open their eyes at the peak like a shard of a falling star.
And some are born at the bottom.
But the Overlord of Puppets was between them.
Neither at the peak nor at the bottom.
For hundreds of years, this being wandered the world of Aetheron, guided by pure instinct.
And feeding on the bodies and souls of other beasts, it was able to reach Rank 6.
But there, its advancement stopped.
Most high-ranking beasts possessed extraordinary intelligence... in some aspects even better than humans.
So after its growth halted, it understood that there was something it lacked.
But it could not find that thing.
Until one day, when space tore open before it and from behind that darkness it felt something calling to it... a faint, tempting whisper.
Without hesitation, it crossed the rift... it was a beast after all, and beasts do not hesitate.
There, it found itself in another world above the barren desert and, more specifically, near the stone maze.
Hidden inside a spatial pocket, unnoticed by any creature when it stepped into this world.
The moment it emerged; it sensed new and special presences... something it had never seen before.
So it simply followed the source, only to end up above Asfaria.
From behind the curtain that concealed it from all eyes and senses, the Overlord of Puppets looked at those creatures below.
They were weak... far too weak and fragile in those small bodies.
Except for a few of them.
It could have consumed them at that moment, just as it had done with countless beasts.
But it did not.
It restrained itself... and this was the first time that had happened since it was born.
Because they had aroused its interest.
For days it watched them without making a move.
It saw how they fought and struggled... how they died and cried... yet it did not understand why.
Why did the strong die for the weak... why did they enter losing battles.
Wasn’t the right thing to do to flee, as it had done in the past.
In the end, it realized that these small creatures, who could not even perceive its existence, were complex.
Too complex even for it.
They were a mixture of contradictions.
So slowly, its instincts began to stir.
Perhaps this was what it needed to achieve greatness.
Perhaps this was what it had searched for throughout the past centuries.
One day, guided by its instinct, the Overlord of Puppets decided what it would do.
It did not know that there was something called the ritual of ascension.
But its instinct led it to it.
So it decided to become them.
To become human.
But one day, one of them discovered its existence.
The strongest person in this place and the only one who kept some caution toward it... Arthania.
But even after discovering it, she did not run, and she did not fight. Under its watch, she tried to take everyone and leave.
This annoyed the Overlord of Puppets, who had been waiting for the right time to make its move.
Staring at the large gathering of residents below, it wondered whether it should move now or wait longer.
Moving now would provoke that woman and spark a battle.
Fighting would cost the lives of thousands of humans.
And it did not want that... what would it do with a pile of corpses.
Especially since it wanted them all... all of them without exception.
Especially the strong ones among them.
But at one moment, something happened... something that stirred fear even in the Overlord of Puppets itself.
A deep, primal fear.
A loud cracking sound spread, and the sky above it shattered like a piece of fragile glass.
And from there, that strange darkness emerged.
But what frightened the Overlord of Puppets was not the shattering sky nor the darkness itself.
It was the existence it felt coming out from there.
Staring at the entire world, indifferent to everything around it.
A being like those things below... humans.
As for the humans beneath it, their minds collapsed and their souls shook at that moment... they were completely exposed to it, ready for it to make its move.
Even that strong woman was no exception.
So at that moment, resisting the primal fear within it and guided by its ancient instinct.
It revealed itself from behind the curtain and cast its threads downward.
Threads that wrapped into the depths of their bodies and wound around their souls while controlling their minds.
It faced varying degrees of resistance, especially that woman and the old man beside her.
But with their minds already broken, its threads went deeper, erasing that part of their memories and closing their eyes, plunging them into a deep sleep.
Then, using its power, it wrapped its curtain around all of Asfaria, trying to hide its stage from the darkness and avoid attracting the attention of that existence above.
Even the Overlord of Puppets itself refrained from looking outside.
So it did not know how much time passed... perhaps days or months.
The Overlord of Puppets and all of Asfaria hid behind that curtain, and even then it still felt that existence enveloping the entire world.
And if that was not enough, another existence reached this mortal world.
Then one day, those entities collided above this world.
Hidden in darkness, cut off from the outside, the Overlord of Puppets endured fear for a long time.
It did not try to flee... because there was nowhere to flee to.
All it could do was hide and not look.
Until one day, their existence disappeared from the world.
Then it revealed itself once more, along with Asfaria and everyone in it.
Tens of thousands of humans beneath it... those weak creatures who could not endure hiding without food or water.
So it had to preserve their bodies and feed them from itself.
When its threads wrapped around them, it could not only control them, but also inherit their memories and all their lives... lives that were far too short and meaningless to it.
But they were complex too.
Under the moon that had become shattered, the Overlord of Puppets itself wrapped itself beneath that curtain, hiding its existence from the world once more.
But its threads did not disappear; they remained wrapped around the sleeping residents... controlling tens of thousands of people at the same time.
Then, with a single command from it, everyone rose to life again.
Guided by the memories it inherited from thousands of humans, it understood how they should act.
But it did not understand why.
To understand that, it needed to do something more than merely moving its threads and moving those bodies.
It needed to immerse itself completely.
To become human.
To become all of Asfaria.
So, hidden in a pocket dimension, the Overlord of Puppets entered a slumber while dividing its consciousness across all its puppets and becoming them.
But two of them were different... no matter how much it tried, it could not become them for some reason.
Perhaps because their minds were strong... or because there was something else.
In the end, it erased and manipulated their memories to make them merge with the performance, until the day it could fully control them.
With its main body asleep in a place no one could see, its consciousness split across tens of thousands of human puppets, and using their memories, it became them... or tried to.
So the Overlord of Puppets was Adam and Rem.
It was the baker making bread and the worker tending the fields.
It was all of Asfaria except for Arthania and Elias.
But as time passed, it realized that their lifespans were not enough for it to achieve its goal... so it began extending them with its own life, even keeping that old man from dying.
He had been very interesting, even if it could not fully immerse itself in him, not to mention Arthania herself... that woman was the main piece.
Years passed, and with each year its behavior began to become more human... and with every seed of doubt forming inside Arthania, it erased it so she would never be freed.
Until one day.
When it sensed from its sleeping body the arrival of other humans.
Its main body was in deep slumber, immersed in the puppets, so it could not use its full power and consume that small group of children.
Even so, and without full consciousness, its main body began sending its threads toward Caius and the others.
It thought it would get an interesting new addition.
They were a very special group.
So when they tried to leave, it could not let them escape like that.
And it did not want to ruin the performance that had lasted for an entire century, especially after feeling that it was close to greatness.
So the baker or the ordinary worker was never supposed to realize that the guests were about to escape... so it did not.
Pretending ignorance and trying to stop them by other indirect means.
But it failed.
All because of that black-haired young man.
In the end, it decided to make an exception and sent Arthania away from here, then moved itself to stop them personally in Adam’s form.
But it failed... and its failure unraveled everything.
Because of its failure, it could not prevent that young man from cutting the threads around Arthania.
All its ships were far from there and could not arrive in time.
And now, after everything had been ruined and that woman had cut down all the progress it had made, anger surged within it...
Pure anger.
So after hundreds of years of slumber, the Overlord of Puppets awakened and began revealing itself to the world.