The world responded like a wounded beast sensing predators.
Across continents, kings, sects, and empires gathered their greatest champions.
In the gilded empire of Avaron, the Emperor rose from his throne. "Send the Seven Warlords," he commanded, voice cutting through the silence of his trembling court. "If the Exception falls to corruption, we will not face a boy—we will face the birth of another void."
In the desert kingdoms, scarred gladiators known as the Ash-Titans broke their chains, marching beneath banners of crimson sand. Their steps cracked the earth, each stride carrying the weight of a battlefield.
In the northern wastes, frost-shrouded war-priests sharpened their rune-etched halberds. The eldest whispered to his kin, "The White stirs again. We march not for conquest, but to ensure the world endures."
And in the east, cloistered beyond veils of mist, an assassin lord released his hidden blades. Shadows pooled around him like a tide as he muttered, "The Exception will be measured. And if he cannot be controlled… he will be ended."
The board was set. Powerhouses—monarchs, saints, warlords, heretics—moved for the first time in centuries. The world was no longer waiting. It was converging.
Back in the rift.
Lucien staggered as his reflection's blade swept across, the impact tearing another scar into the fractured plane. His pale eyes narrowed, his breath steadying as the reflection's words clawed at his mind.
Seed of the White…
His chest tightened, a resonance deep within his bones vibrating in tune with the rift itself. The White called to him—its endless hum, its formless chorus—demanding he bloom.
His reflection's grin widened. "Yes. Feel it. Don't resist—unleash it."
Lucien's aura twisted. The pale storm that always cloaked him darkened, threads of black weaving into the light. For an instant, his body blurred, as if he were both there and not. The void-born shrieked—not in worship this time, but in terror.
A blade of pure nothingness erupted from his hand, jagged, devouring the light around it. It was not steel. It was absence. A weapon shaped from the hunger of the void itself.
Lucien stared at it, horrified, the weight of its existence gnawing at his mind. But when his reflection lunged, he swung without hesitation.
The rift itself screamed.
The mirrored Lucien's blade shattered under the strike, fragments dissolving into mist. The shockwave split the battlefield apart, casting void-born into oblivion.
Silence fell. Even the reflection froze, eyes wide in disbelief.
Lucien raised the blade, its edges warping reality as if the world itself recoiled from its presence. His voice was cold, steady—yet beneath it, a tremor of fear.
"This… will not be my master. It will be my weapon."
His reflection's grin returned, feral. "And that, Lucien… is the first step to becoming the White itself."
The rift shuddered, widening once more. The bloom had begun.