The days following the divine gaze were a blur of silence and tension.No one in the Dravenholt Empire spoke openly about what had happened in the Hall of Dawn — but every mage, priest, and knight felt it.Something had cracked.Not in the walls of the empire, but in the very fabric that bound their faith to the heavens.
The first sign came at sunrise.
The light didn't fall evenly anymore.It bent — curving around Adrian as if reluctant to touch him.The priests who tended the palace chapel whispered that even the sun was unsure whether to bless or fear him.
Nymera didn't listen to rumors. She faced him directly, as she always did.
"You said the god who watches was waiting," she said, pacing the training courtyard. "Waiting for what, Adrian?"
He tightened the wrappings around his hand. "For me. Or for the seal within me to break."
Her emerald eyes hardened. "And if it does?"
He looked up at her. "Then what you call gods will remember why they learned to hide."
The silence that followed was heavy. Even the wind seemed to hesitate.
That night, the empire trembled.
The cathedral bells rang without being touched. Every divine statue within the capital cracked down the middle, as if something unseen had drawn breath inside them. Priests fell to their knees, weeping in terror, their prayers shattering into static whispers.
From the sky descended streaks of shimmering light — fragments of divinity, burned white against the black.
The High Oracle of Dravenholt tried to channel one.He lasted three seconds before his body dissolved into radiant dust.
Adrian and Nymera arrived too late to save him. The temple was gone — only molten glass and ash remained, glowing faintly with runes none of their scholars could read.
"What did this?" Nymera asked, her voice shaking for the first time.
Adrian crouched beside the ash.The sigil under his chest pulsed, answering her for him.
"I did," he said quietly. "Or rather… it reacted to me."
By dawn, the empire's scholars and warlords convened in the Grand Citadel. The atmosphere was chaos: divine ranks and mortal knights alike arguing about what the phenomenon meant.
The Hierarchs of Faith — beings ranked between Divine and Divine Lord — appeared through holy projection, their towering forms shimmering with authority.
"Adrian Kaelthorn Ravenshade," boomed one of them, a voice like thunder wrapped in silk. "The Core within you has fractured the veil of reverence. Faith itself bleeds."
Adrian didn't kneel. "Faith breaks because it was built on fear. I only revealed what already existed."
"Blasphemy," another hissed. "You speak as though you are equal to us."
"I'm not equal," Adrian said, his tone calm but heavy. "I'm what your kind sealed away."
The room erupted. Half the hierarchs vanished in alarm; the rest tried to suppress their own trembling aura.
Even Nymera stepped back. For a moment, the faint glow beneath Adrian's skin brightened — no longer gold or white, but something beyond color, a pulse that distorted the space around him.
Outside, the people of Solara's Crest saw the sky split open.
A fracture ran across the heavens — thin at first, then wide enough for the stars themselves to flicker and realign.Reality quivered.
From that rift poured waves of Rank Pressure — the tangible manifestation of existence-tier energy.Every being in the empire felt their standing in creation laid bare.
G to F ranks fell unconscious instantly.
E and D ranks could only crawl, faces pressed to the ground.
C and B ranks bled from their eyes and ears.
A and S ranks gasped as their mana cores spasmed violently.
SS ranks looked to the horizon and saw their own light dim.
And those of SSS Rank or above—few though they were—felt something terrifying: inferiority.
Because above all of them, something higher stirred.
A silhouette formed in the fracture — vast, serene, terrible.The God Who Watches.
Its voice reverberated across all realms.
The seal trembles. The child awakens. The age of borrowed divinity ends.
Nymera fell to one knee, her face pale. "Adrian—what is happening?"
He stood motionless, eyes reflecting the rift above."The truth," he whispered. "The gods aren't eternal. They're afraid."
A single tear of light fell from the fracture, striking the ground before him.It melted through marble, through bedrock, through everything — until it vanished into the earth.
The sigil on his chest flared, syncing perfectly with the rhythm above.
Then, just as suddenly, the fracture closed.
The sky sealed itself, leaving only silence.
The world had survived — but something fundamental had changed.Faith, as it was once known, no longer held absolute power.
And in the quiet aftermath, as Nymera struggled to steady her breath, Adrian looked at the fading sky.
"Fracture of faith," he murmured. "And the gods just blinked."