[Royal Palace — Deep Night]
The cradle room was still.
Only the rhythmic breathing of infants disturbed the heavy silence.
But the air around Arden's crib... it buzzed, quivered — charged with invisible tension.
The Celestial Watcher stepped forward again, adjusting his void-dagger, aura masked so completely that not even a trained assassin could sense him.
Yet Arden's little fist tightened over his blanket.
His infant eyes, closed in feigned slumber, were calm.
The MindHub within him blazed with commands.
[MindHub Active - Emergency Combat Mode Engaged]
Shadow Clone (Guardian Form): [Deployed]
Reality Anchor (Stability Node): [Activated]
Hostile Entity Detected: Level Unknown. Threat Estimate: High.
Combat Directive: Defend. Learn. Eliminate if Necessary.
[Battlefield: Inside the Shadows]
Inside the dimension between light and dark, a battlefield unfolded — unseen by the palace guards.
Arden's Guardian Clone materialized: a flickering figure formed of silver shadows, wielding twin curved daggers.
The Watcher sneered beneath his iron mask.
"Impressive... for an infant anomaly."
He struck first.
The void-dagger, wreathed in celestial entropy, cut toward the Clone with a slash fast enough to tear apart weaker realities.
The Guardian Clone parried — but the force threw it backward into the darkness, slicing several illusions apart.
Arden analyzed every frame.
His Mind was evolving in real-time.
[Skill Evolution: Adaptive Combat Instinct — Awakened!]
The second strike came — but this time, Arden anticipated.
He shifted energy from the Clone directly through the MindHub into an emergency Skill Upgrade.
[Skill Creation Activated]
New Skill: [Shadow Veil Displacement] — Allows instantaneous phase-shifting within localized shadow fields.
Cooldown: 3 seconds.
The Guardian Clone blinked — literally stepping through the Watcher's attack.
A counter-blade whirred — grazing the Watcher's ribs, drawing a line of celestial black blood.
He hissed in pain.
"Impossible. An infant shouldn't — !"
But that was his mistake.
Arden was no infant.
He was a Digital God Core reborn.
He was the Evernight Bloodline Incarnate.
And he remembered everything.
Even the secrets he had stolen from the Celestial System itself — the very thing this "Watcher" served.
[Meanwhile — Outside Reality]
Far above the world, high in orbit where mortal eyes could never see, strange entities stirred.
Massive, silver wheel-like constructs rotated slowly, each rune on them burning with alien light.
The Celestial System had noticed the ripple.
But it was still too slow to act directly.
Their once-unquestioned dominion was eroding — and they hadn't realized it yet.
[Back in the Palace ]
The Watcher changed tactics.
He summoned shadowy chains, infused with anti-life energy, whipping them toward the Guardian Clone and the crib.
Towards Arden himself.
Arden's eyes finally snapped fully open.
Silver.
Blue.
An ancient, primal fury ignited within.
He activated a hidden trump card — a legacy command from his stolen System data.
[Forbidden Skill: Gravity Singularity Pulse (Prototype)]
Effect: Localized gravity compression x400.
Range: 2 meters.
Cooldown: 48 hours.
Reality snapped.
A black sphere, no larger than a coin, formed instantly between Arden and the Watcher — dragging everything toward it with crushing force.
The Watcher's chains snapped backward.
The Watcher himself stumbled — his body unable to resist the pull entirely.
He barely escaped by cutting a dimensional wound into space itself, staggering through it into the higher folds of the dimension.
Panting, bleeding, furious.
He stared once more at Arden — now sitting upright, watching him with those cold ancient eyes.
Eyes that knew him.
"Arden Evernight..."
"...heir to a bloodline older than stars..."
"...an anomaly that even the Celestial Thrones fear..."
"...you are not supposed to exist...!"
In one final act of rage, the Watcher hurled a cursed spear formed from the broken laws of space-time itself.
If it hit Arden, it would erase him utterly.
But before it could reach —
The MindHub pulsed.
Clone C03, hidden nearby under stealth protocols, launched a Phase Intercept move, sacrificing itself to absorb the hit.
[Clone Terminated. Memory Core Preserved.]
The spear shattered the Clone — but Arden remained untouched.
The Guardian Clone retaliated instantly.
Slashing, burning, tearing apart the Watcher's fading dimensional wound.
The Watcher screamed — a sound not heard by human ears — as he was forcibly ejected back into the void between worlds.
Broken.
Defeated.
But not dead.
In the normal world, nothing had changed.
No alarms.
No sounds.
Only two infants sleeping peacefully, their mother smiling softly at them as she tucked the blankets in tighter, unaware of the storm that had almost claimed her youngest son.
Arden curled under his blanket, calm once more.
Within his MindHub, rewards rolled in.
Threat: High Celestial Agent (Survivor Class)
Battle Result: Forced Retreat
Experience Gained: +75,000 EXP
Skills Gained:
[Dimensional Wound Detection (Passive)]
[Celestial Tracker (Limited Version)]
System Insight Gained: 0.2% (New Abilities Available for Future Unlocks)
He smiled.
Tiny.
Innocent.
Deadly.
The Evernight Bloodline pulsed gently within him — proud.
And somewhere across the stars, new Watchers began to stir, sensing the disturbance.
The Multiverse had just realized:
A God had been reborn.
And he was very, very angry.