# Chapter 1: The Supreme Sovereign's Fall
The Celestial Court shuddered as Riven Aurelius raised his sword one final time. Around him, golden pillars cracked and crumbled, their divine light flickering like dying candles. One billion years as Supreme Sovereign beneath the heavens, and it had come to this—standing at the edge of an impossible choice with his greatest enemy watching from the shadows.
"Just give up the thought that you can break through?" The Void Emperor's voice echoed through the collapsing throne room, his form materializing from the darkness between the falling debris. "Face the truth, Riven. You've reached your limit."
Riven's grip tightened on the Celestial Slaying Sword. The weapon hummed with power that could split universes and drain oceans, forged from a dying star's core and tempered in the fires of collapsed worlds. Yet for all its might, it hadn't been enough to breach the final barrier—the Chaos God Realm that lay forever beyond his reach.
"My limit?" Riven laughed, though the sound carried no joy. His silver hair whipped around his face as divine energy erupted all over his body. "You speak as if you've succeeded where I've failed. But here you stand, still bound by the same walls that contain me."
The Void Emperor frowned and stepped closer, shadows coiling around him like serpents and dragons. "Perhaps. But I'm not the one whose cultivation is tearing him apart from the inside. Can you feel it, Sovereign? The way your divine soul fractures with each breath? Your precious Heaven Devouring Divine technique has finally turned against its master."
It was true. Every heartbeat sent fresh cracks through Riven's very essence. The cultivation method he'd found by chance—the technique that had carried him from mortal beginnings to divine supremacy—was consuming him. His meridians burned like molten metal. His soul felt as though it was ready to shatter completely.
But Riven Aurelius had not conquered the heavens by accepting defeat.
"You came to witness my destruction," he said, raising the sword until its point aimed at the Void Emperor's heart. "But you'll witness something far more interesting."
Before his enemy could react, Riven reversed the blade toward his own chest.
"You're insane!" The Void Emperor shouted in desperation and lunged forward, his form expanding with desperate urgency. "Destroy yourself here and your soul scatters into nothing! There will be no reincarnation, no second chance—you would be gone forever!"
"Will I?" Riven's smile was sharp as his blade. "You still don't understand what I am."
The Celestial Slaying Sword began to fracture in his hands after he had pierced himself with it. It was not breaking but transforming. Seven perfect splits appeared along lines of power that had taken billions of years to forge. Each fragment blazed with concentrated cultivation and accumulated divine powers.
"Seven pieces," Riven whispered as the fragments began to separate, each one shooting away like a falling star. "Seven keys to unlock what I couldn't complete in this life."
Divine fire erupted from his skin as he began to burn his own soul and body, converting his very existence into pure essence. The Void Emperor's desperate grasp passed through empty air as Riven's physical form dissolved into brilliant starlight.
"When I return," Riven declared, his voice transmitting across dimensional barriers even as his body faded, "I will not make the same mistakes. And you will learn why they called me the Supreme Sovereign beneath the heavens."
The explosion tore through the Celestial Court and beyond, its shockwave rippling across the divine realm, shattering it into more than seventeen different divine worlds. The Void Emperor was hurled backward by the explosion, his form torn and bleeding shadows.
When the light finally faded, nothing remained of Riven Aurelius but seven distant points of fire, already streaking toward the mortal, immortal, and some of the newly formed divine worlds.
In the sudden silence, the Void Emperor stared at the empty space where his greatest rival had made his final stand.
"Fool," he whispered, but there was no triumph in his voice.
Even in apparent defeat, Riven had found a way to spite fate itself.
"I guess we'll just have to start again," the Void Emperor said with a sigh. He shook his head and made a grabbing motion with his hand, taking a rainbow-colored pearl from where the Supreme Sovereign had been standing.
"It took you almost a billion years to reach the stage you were, and now after committing suicide, who knows how many more years I'll have to wait for another suitable candidate." The Void Emperor gritted his teeth in anger and began observing the rainbow-colored pearl.
This pearl contained the soul of the Netherworld Emperor, a being born from the darkest thoughts of Riven—basically his second half. He put the pearl away after observing it and disappeared into a spatial rift.
Deep within the Mortal Realm, a wheel of destiny was beginning to turn.