Chapter 101: Genesis of the Shattered Realms
The scent of aged parchment and heavy incense filled the private study. Leonars leaned back in his mahogany chair, his eyes stinging from hours of deciphering archaic script. Opposite him, Stacian moved with practiced grace, stacking leather-bound volumes of mythology and forbidden religious texts onto the desk.
"These are the oldest records we have, My Lord," Stacian whispered, her voice tinged with a hint of reverence. "The tales of the beginning. Before the 'System' existed."
Leonars pulled a heavy tome bound in what looked like iridescent dragon-scale toward him. He began to read, and the world around him seemed to fade into the white void of the past.
The Weaver and the Void
In the beginning, there was only the Plain, a silent void of non-existence. That was until the Goddess Minum descended. She did not merely build; she reconstructed.
Her fingers danced through the Linear Dimension, an alternate universe of pure information. With a flick of her wrist, she grabbed the chaotic "Information Particles" of the void and wove them into the fabric of reality. But she was not alone. Shadows had already begun to seep through the cracks.
With a heavy heart, Minum used her own divinity to seal the Gateway to the Void, locking out the horrors that sought to unravel her tapestry. From her essence, she birthed the races: the resilient Dwarves, the graceful Elves, the sturdy Humans, the diverse Beastfolk, and the intricate Homunculi.
As she stood upon the precipice of the newly forged universe, her cyan-green hair gleamed like a nebula against the dark. She saw the potential for chaos, so she fractured the universe into distinct dimensions, connected only by Link Dimensions. They were designed to converge only once every seven hundred years—a celestial alignment intended to prevent collapse, yet one that birthed a Calamity with every cycle.
Yet, Minum felt a cold shiver. Her children were beautiful, but they were soft. They were sheep in a world where the shadows were growing teeth.
"Azazel..." she murmured. "Why must you do this?"
From the shadows behind her, the air curdled. Azazel, the God of the Void, manifested. His black coat fluttered like the wings of a dying crow, absorbing the very light around him.
"Why?" Azazel's voice was a low, melodic rasp. "What a pedestrian question, Minum."
"I am creating stability," Minum countered, her voice as calm as a frozen lake. "I have established the Six Realms: the Outer and Lower Heavens, the Demon Realm, the Realm of the Dead, the Realm of Impossibility, and the Mortal Realm. I have woven the multiverses to ensure balance."
"Stability is a slow death," Azazel chuckled, stepping into her personal space. "Mortals are born from violence; they crave the friction of the struggle. Your 'perfect' world is a stagnant pond."
Minum's eyes narrowed. "Is that why you birthed them? The Monsters? The Avantris and the Dryiands?"
"Precisely. I have given them a challenge. What use are children who only know how to graze? I want them to survive."
The Law and the Rewrite
A rift of shimmering violet light tore open. A man stepped through, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His long, deep-purple hair was tied back with a silver cord.
"This is Vergest," Minum introduced, her tone sharpening. "The God of Justice, and Order. He is a Lower God, Azazel, but do not mistake his rank for weakness."
"A Lower God? How adorable," Azazel sneered.
In a flash that defied the laws of physics, Azazel vanished. He reappeared instantly behind Vergest, his hand transformed into a blade of pure void-matter, swinging for the God of Law's throat.
Vergest didn't even turn around. He simply tapped his finger against his chin.
[Authority: Future Negation]
The void-blade passed through Vergest's neck—or rather, the event of the strike was simply erased from the timeline. The attack never happened. Azazel felt his momentum vanish as if he had swung at a ghost.
"Oh? A Rewrite Ability?" Azazel's grin widened, showing too many teeth. "So the runts have some bite after all."
"Do not test us, Azazel," Minum warned.
"I wouldn't dream of it," Azazel replied, his form beginning to dissolve into black mist. "But know this: while you craft heroes, I am crafting a weapon. Something even your 'Order' cannot account for."
The First Crusade
Millennia passed. Azazel's creations, the Avantris and Dryiands, grew in power until they were no longer a "challenge"—they were a plague. Their strength surpassed the limits of the mortal plane, forcing the Gods to descend.
The Crusade was a bloodbath. Millions fell on both sides, the soil of the mortal realm turning into a muddy crimson marsh. But Azazel, watching from his obsidian throne, only smiled.
"Is it time, Lord Azazel?" his servant, Azan, asked.
"Minum thinks her heroes are enough," Azazel said, looking at his two greatest lieutenants, Azan and Azalea. "She does not understand that I have granted my children power that transcends her logic."
The trump card was played.
On a jagged cliff overlooking the divine army, two figures stood. One was a young Dryiand man, his eyes glowing with predatory light. Beside him stood Emalian Seers, an Avantris whose very presence caused the air to vibrate.
The "battle" that followed was not a war—it was an execution.
Emalian moved like a localized hurricane. When the Gods descended to stop her, she didn't just fight; she broke the world. She warped through space like the wind, her movements bypassing the concept of distance.
Vergest stepped forward to impose the Law, but Emalian reached out and gripped the very concept of Causality. With a sickening crack of reality, she bent the effect before the cause. Vergest was sent spiraling into the dirt, his glasses shattered, his "Order" bypassed by her sheer existential weight.
By the time the sun set, the golden fields of the Lower Heaven were silent. Three Gods lay dead, their essences flickering out like snuffed candles. Emalian Seers stood alone amidst the divine wreckage, a weapon that had finally outgrown its creator's darkest dreams.
The Lower Heaven was no longer the pristine sanctuary of golden light it had once been. The sky was bruised, streaked with the lingering violet trail of Emalian's passage, and the very air tasted of ozone and divine blood.
Vergest stood at the edge of a floating marble promenade, staring down at the mortal realms far below. His hands trembled not with fear, but with a humiliated, scorching rage. He adjusted his glasses, but the frames were cracked, a mocking reminder of how easily his "Order" had been shattered.
"I'll kill him," Vergest hissed, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "I'll unmake every atom of his existence. Azazel will pay for this insult!"
"Control your temper, Vergest. It is unbecoming of a Pillar of Order."
The voice was like a calming wave of deep-sea water. Goddess Minum manifested from a cluster of shimmering information particles, her cyan-green hair flowing around her like a living nebula.
Behind her, the remaining five of the Seven Gods appeared, their auras dimmed. Simultaneously, they sank to one knee, their armor clattering against the cracked marble.
"You speak of killing a Void God?" Minum asked, her gaze drifting toward the horizon where the dimensions blurred. "You are a master of Law, yet you forget the most basic equation. Against Azazel, you are a fly caught in a storm. He would not just kill you; he would erase the very memory of your birth."
Livera, the Goddess of Divine Justice, looked up, her silver eyes sharp. "Then what is our path, Great Mother? We cannot sit idle while the Six Realms tremble."
"We prioritize," Minum replied, her voice cooling. "Azazel is the architect, but Emalian Seers Avantris is the wrecking ball. She is a variable we did not account for—a threat we cannot afford to let roam the Link Dimensions."
Urian, the God of Infinity, frowned, his form flickering as if he existed in multiple places at once. "But she has already leaped into the Link Dimension, Mother. She is lost in the folds between universes. Tracking her is like looking for a specific grain of sand in an infinite desert."
Vergest slammed his fist into a standing pillar, shattering the stone. "We are Gods! We warp worlds! We rewrite concepts, dictate the flow of multiverses, and command the very threads of the timelines! And yet... one mortal bitch bypassed it all? She bent my Law as if it were wet clay!"
"She is a rare case," Minum said, her eyes turning a deep, pensive shade of emerald. "Azazel did not just give her power; he gave her a 'Precept' that contradicts our own. We must look into the records of her soul. Dig into her past, her lineage, the very moment of her awakening. Somewhere in her history, there is a fracture. Find it."
While the Heavens scrambled in panic, the Realm of the Dead remained eerily silent.
Azazel sat in his study—a room carved from a single block of void-matter. He was leaning back, his long, dark hair spilling over the shoulders of his coat like spilled ink. He ran a finger along the edge of a floating holographic display showing the devastation in the Lower Heaven.
"She surpassed even my highest projections," Azazel murmured, a thin, dangerous smile tugging at his lips. He reached up, smoothing his hair with a satisfied sigh. "To watch Vergest's 'Order' crumble under the weight of a single mortal's will... it was poetic."
Azan stepped out of the shadows, bowing low. "The Heavens are in disarray, Lord Azazel. Minum is calling for a hunt. They seek to find the 'origin' of Emalian's power. Now what, My Lord? Shall we strike while they are blinded by their own pride?"
Azazel let out a low, vibrating chuckle that seemed to make the very shadows of the room dance.
"Let them hunt," Azazel said, his eyes glowing with a dark, predatory light. "They think they are investigating a person. They don't realize they are investigating a catastrophe that has already begun. The more they dig into Emalian's past, the more they open the door for me to rewrite their future."
He turned his gaze toward the Link Dimension, where a faint spark of cyan and black energy still flickered.
"The game has only just begun, Azan. And I've always been fond of a long game."
The wind screamed in Lyra's ears, a chaotic symphony that drowned out the mocking laughter of the slavers. For a few heartbeats, she was weightless—a small, broken bird untethered from the cruel earth. Then, the world returned in a shattering roar of impact.
CRACK.
She didn't hit the water first. Her body slammed into a protruding jagged shelf of limestone halfway down the cliff. The sound of her ribs snapping was like dry kindling being stepped on by a giant. The agony was so absolute it transcended pain; it became a white veil that blinded her. Her body bounced, limp as a ragdoll, before finally plummeting into the churning, icy currents of the subterranean river below.
The water swallowed her scream.
Time didn't exist in the dark.
Lyra drifted in a shallow alcove where the river deposited the debris of the surface. Her breath was a shallow, wet rattle. One lung had collapsed, and her right arm lay at a sickening angle. She was dying. The grey silt of the basin was finally claiming her.
"So warm…" she thought, her consciousness flickering like a candle in a gale. "Mama, is the light finally here?"
But the light that appeared wasn't the sun. Small, flickering orbs of soft cerulean and pale gold began to drift out from the damp cave walls. Cave Spirits. Minor manifestations of the world's information particles, attracted to the sheer intensity of her fading will.
They hovered over her shattered form. To these spirits, Lyra wasn't just a girl; she was a blazing hearth of defiance in a cold world.
[Skill Manifestation: Minor Spirit Synthesis]
The orbs began to sink into her skin. Lyra's body jerked as the spirits sacrificed their essence to knit her back together. She felt the agonizing "pop" of her ribs sliding back into alignment and the cooling sensation of her shredded feet sealing over into fresh, pink scar tissue. It wasn't a perfect healing—the ache remained, deep in her marrow—but the shadow of death retreated.
Her eyes snapped open, amber pupils dilated in the dark.
"Thank... you," she croaked, her voice barely a vibration. The last of the spirits flickered and vanished, leaving her in the damp silence.
She stood up. Every muscle screamed, but she stood. She wasn't just Lyra anymore. She was something forged in the furnace of the Grey Basin and tempered in the ice of the abyss.
The climb out of the ravine took the better part of the day. When she finally dragged herself over the lip of the canyon, she saw it.
Three miles to the west, the air didn't shimmer with heat; it shimmered with power.
She saw the border of Avangard. It wasn't a wall of stone, but a wall of atmosphere. The sky there was a different shade of blue—sharper, colder. And standing at the edge of the horizon was the silhouette of a fortress that looked like a bleached skull rising from the earth.
"Three miles," she whispered, her fingers digging into the dirt. "I took a wrong turn... but I'm back now."
Behind her, the sound of a horn blasted. The slavers. They had found a path down and around. They were coming to reclaim their "investment," their horses kicking up a wall of dust that looked like a Great Beast charging toward her.
Lyra didn't run this time. She leaned forward, her fox ears pinned back, her eyes locked on the white spires of the distance.
"Leonars..." she breathed, the name a prayer and a command.
She began to move. It wasn't a sprint; it was a rhythmic, predatory lope. Each time her feet hit the ground, she felt the lingering magic of the spirits pulsing in her veins.
The lead slaver, the man with the leather-scarred face, was closing in. He stood in his stirrups, uncoiling his whip. "You're a persistent little bitch, I'll give you that! But look at you! You're walking into a graveyard! Avangard is the land of the free!"
Lyra didn't look back. She could see the border markers now—iron pikes topped with white banners that stayed unnaturally still despite the wind.
"Then I'll be the one of the Graveyard," she hissed.
The slaver swung the whip. The leather hissed through the air like a viper, aiming for her legs to drag her down once and for all.
Lyra lunged. Not away from the whip, but forward, crossing the invisible line between the Seraphim wastes and the sovereign soil of the White King.
As the whip's tip was inches from her skin, the air around Lyra suddenly froze.
In the heart of the Avangard Citadel, Leonars froze. The quill in his hand snapped, ink splattering across the ancient lore of the gods. A chill, sharper than any winter wind, raced up his spine—a spatial disturbance on the very edge of his domain.
He didn't speak. He didn't signal. In a ripple of distorted reality, he [Teleported].
He reappeared on the highest battlement of the border wall. His eyes, cold as glacial ice, narrowed as they swept the horizon. Three miles out, a speck of orange and grey was lurching through the salt flats, pursued by the thundering dust of Seraphim cavalry.
"Awaken," Leonars commanded.
The ground before the fortress groaned. From the bleached earth, armored hands clawed upward. The Death Knights of Avangard rose in silent unison, their eye sockets igniting with baleful crimson flames.
The Last Yard
Lyra was blind with agony. She had reached the border markers—the white banners of the Plague King—but the distance was closing.
"Got you, brat!" a voice roared.
A heavy hand clamped onto her mangled, bleeding ankle, yanking her backward. Lyra's face slammed into the salt, but the spirit-fire in her heart refused to go out. With a guttural snarl, she swung her free leg, her heel connecting squarely with the slaver's jaw with a sickening crunch. As he recoiled, she scooped a handful of stinging alkaline sand and flung it into his eyes.
She scrambled up, her ribs grating together. She was so close. The air of Avangard smelled of ozone and ancient stone.
THWACK.
A heavy wooden bat, reinforced with iron, collided with the side of her head.
The world tilted. Lyra's vision fractured into a thousand jagged shards. "Oh," she thought with a strange, detached clarity. "I was hit with a bat."
She staggered. Her legs were no longer under her control; they were merely stilts moving by habit. She saw red banners through the haze—no, not banners. Blood? Or the capes of an approaching army?
"What the fuck is that?" one of the slavers yelled, pulling his horse to a skidding halt.
Ahead of them stood a figure draped in midnight silk, his presence so heavy it seemed to flatten the very grass at his feet. Leonars didn't wait for them to speak. He didn't offer a trial. He simply waved a pale hand.
"Seize the filth," he murmured. "And leave them breathing. Salene has been complaining of a lack of materials."
The Death Knights moved like shadows. In seconds, the slavers were dragged from their horses, their screams cut short by armored gauntlets.
Leonars stepped toward the collapsing girl. He caught her before she hit the dirt, his touch surprisingly gentle for a man known as the White Plague. He channeled a torrent of [High-Tier Regeneration]. Lyra's skin knit, her bones fused, and the bruising faded into porcelain skin.
"I'm... here..." Lyra whispered, her amber eyes fluttering before they finally closed. She didn't see the King; she only felt the safety of his warmth. She buried her face in his chest, her small fox tail giving a weak, instinctive wag before she fell into a deep, healing sleep.
"Rest, young one," Leonars said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "You have walked through hell. You need not walk another step."
The Cost of Cruelty
Leonars carried the child back to the palace himself, laying her upon a bed of swan-down and silk. He turned to Stacian, his expression a mask of barely suppressed fury.
"I was under the impression that slavery had been abolished in the Seraphim Kingdom," he said, his voice vibrating with power. "Explain this."
Stacian bowed her head. "Officially, it is, My Lord. But this... this is a border region we likely overlooked during the liberation. A pocket of the old world that refused to die."
Leonars looked at Lyra's peaceful face. "For a child to crawl forty miles through the Grey Basin just to find me... I cannot ignore this. No child under my sky will ever endure the chain again. Prepare the legions. We are finishing the liberation."
The Laboratory of No Return
Deep beneath the earth, in the lightless bowels of the citadel, the heavy iron doors of the Underground Laboratory groaned open. The Death Knights dragged the four slavers inside.
The air was thick with the copper tang of blood and the sharp scent of formaldehyde.
"A delivery, Lady Salene," Bellian said, his voice sounding hollow inside his helm.
A woman stepped out from behind a curtain of flayed skin. Her blonde hair was splattered with red, and she was casually tossing a discarded intestine into a waste bin. She looked at the trembling men, her tongue darting out to lick her lips.
"Slavers?" Salene whispered, her eyes wide with a manic, terrifying joy. "Oh, what exquisite specimens."
She walked toward the lead slaver, who was hyperventilating. She pulled a rusted, long-handled screwdriver from her belt and traced it along his cheek.
"I think I'll start by sewing your eyes shut," she mused. "Then, perhaps, we'll see how you breathe if I swap your lungs with your liver. Or maybe I'll see if your kidneys can function as ovaries. I've developed a new serum, you see—Temporary Immortality. You won't die, no matter how much I take apart."
She leaned into his ear, her voice a lover's purr. "And even if you do break, the King can just raise you as a zombie so we can start all over again. I need fresh parchment... and your skin looks just the right texture for a new lore book."
Bellian took a hurried step back, shoved the men inside, and slammed the heavy door. Their screams began before the locks even clicked.
Upstairs, Leonars watched the sunset with Althelia.
"What is the survival rate of those who enter Salene's care?" Leonars asked.
Althelia didn't look up from her reports. "Statistically? 0.000001 percent. And frankly, My Lord, the 0.000001 percent usually pray for the death they were denied."