Chapter 6 - The Arrival

Darkness receded.

The silence of the Dimensional Gap began to tremble, like the first ripples over still water. Where there had once been endless black, now emerged a slow shift—a current, a pull.

The soul of Ethan Spencer, who had died on a street in New York still ranting about a novel he loathed, drifted helplessly. No body, no thought, just a faint glimmer of self, suspended in what seemed to be the fabric between worlds.

A single strand of fate—unseen and unknown—pulled him through space and time.

And then… it happened.

A ripple. A tear. A thin, iridescent fissure cracked through the black void, revealing a light not of Earth.

It was not blinding.

It was not loud.

It was simply real.

And that thread—Ethan's soul—was drawn through it.

He didn't scream.

He couldn't.

The passage between worlds was weightless, voiceless, seamless.

But the sensation of movement was undeniable. Like being pulled through water without resistance. One moment he floated in stillness, the next—he was falling.

Only… there was no ground.

Instead, there was warmth.

A pulse.

A steady, rhythmic beat.

The soul passed through layers of unseen boundaries, and then—

It settled.

Unconsciously, unknowingly, Ethan's soul anchored itself to a forming body. A fragile, nearly invisible life, just beginning to shape within a womb. Its heart was barely beating. Its mind had yet to form. A life still undefined.

But as Ethan's soul made contact, it was drawn to the embryo—not forcibly, not violently. It was a perfect match.

The soul merged smoothly into the forming body.

There was no resistance.

No pain.

Only unity.

Ethan's soul, while foreign to this world, was strong—structured by modern thought, nourished by belief, and now tied to a mysterious system embedded deep within his essence.

The moment the fusion completed, the fetus inside the womb of Ah Yin pulsed once with a faint golden-blue glow.

And in that moment, everything changed.

Outside, Ah Yin stirred.

The shift was not visible to the world. There were no stars falling from the sky, no divine thunder heralding a miracle.

But inside her, a change had begun.

The forming child inside her womb was now host to a soul not of this world—a soul bearing deep spiritual potential, already shaped by the fragments of another life.

The world of Douluo Dalu had unknowingly accepted a new traveler.

A soul that would no longer be called Ethan Spencer.

But one who would now live—grow—fight—and suffer—in a name destined to shape history.

Or perhaps… defy it.

A name inherited by flesh and blood:

Tang San.

Yet not the Tang San of fate.

A new one.

Different.

Unbound.