The world dissolved from the bittersweet regret of victory into a void of absolute, seamless white. It was not the cold, indifferent blackness that had preceded each regression, that swallowing emptiness. This was different. This was… final. A terminus. A place of judgment, not of reset.
Adam found himself suspended, a mote of consciousness in a space between dream and reality. An endless expanse, not of black, but of brilliant, star-dusted white. It was like being inside a god's diamond. Countless strings of silver light, thin as spider-silk and humming with latent power, were woven into a beautiful, inconceivably complex net, forming vast, shimmering constellations and nexuses of impossible, non-Euclidean geometry. It was the celestial equivalent of a neural network, a tapestry of cosmic law and function, each thread a line of code in the operating system of reality. The air—though there was no air—thrummed with a silent, potent energy, a vibration that resonated in the very marrow of his soul.
Where…? The thought was a frail thing, a spark in an infinite furnace.
Somehow, he understood. This was the backstage. The inner workings of the Nightmare Spell. The clockwork behind the curtain of reality. And if this was a neural network… was the Spell itself alive? Did it possess a consciousness, a will? The thought was fleeting, a terrifying prospect that was immediately dismissed by the sheer, overwhelming, impersonal presence of the system. It was neither alive nor dead, sentient nor mindless. It was a function. A cosmic process. And he, Adam, was a single, evaluated variable within its grand, inhuman equation. A data point that had just finished running a particularly complex and anomalous calculation.
His mind, still reeling from the psychic poison of the Cursed Terror and the crushing weight of his final, necessary betrayal, struggled to focus. He was no longer in the jungle. The scent of blood and damp earth was gone. The feel of the knife in his hand, the sound of Kaelen's last, gurgling breath—all were replaced by this sterile, overwhelming luminescence. He was… elsewhere. Awaiting judgment.
A voice resonated, not in his ears, but in the core of his being, etched directly onto his soul. It was the same crystalline, vast, and alien voice from the beginning of his trial, now stripped of all subtlety and distance. It was the universe itself speaking, and it spoke only to him.
[Aspirant! Your trial is over.]
The words were not sounds but concepts, hammered into the foundation of his identity. They carried the weight of finality, of a verdict rendered.
[A nameless slave, forged in cycles of despair, broke the wheel of his own damnation. He did not merely survive; he conquered. He turned cattle into an army, pawns into brethren, and through ruthless cunning and forgotten steel, he felled a terror that stained the roots of the world. A Sovereign was born in the crucible of endless night.]
Adam's breath hitched in a throat that didn't physically exist. It knows. It knows everything. The acknowledgment of the loops was not accusatory, not impressed, but… utterly factual. A statement of record, as one might note the temperature or the time. His one hundred and ninety-three cycles of hell were reduced to a line in a cosmic ledger. The sheer, dismissive scale of it was more humbling than any punishment.
[You have defeated numerous Dormant beasts and flora.]
[You have defeated numerous Awakened monsters and flora.]
[You have defeated a Fallen Demon: Blood-Silk Spinner Pack.]
[You have defeated a Fallen Demon: Patterned Night-Walker Commander.]
[You have defeated a Cursed Terror: Blood Woven.]
The list went on, a grim, endless roll call of every creature, every carnivorous plant, every horror he had outsmarted, outlasted, or outright slain across the endless iterations. Each name was a ghost, a memory of pain and fear. The final name—Cursed Terror—sent a shiver through his essence. The classification confirmed the sheer, wrong-scale impossibility of what he had faced. It was a thing that should not have been, and he had killed it.
[You have received a unique Blessing from the Unknown.]
[You have achieved the impossible!]
[Final appraisal: Flawless and boundless. Your will is a singularity of madness and glee.]
Flawless. The word echoed in the void, a pebble dropped into a bottomless well. After all the failure, the mutilation, the despair, the moments of broken, sobbing futility in the mud… flawless. The term felt like a lie, or perhaps a truth so profound he couldn't comprehend it. He had been anything but flawless. He had been a mess of terror and desperation. But he had persisted. And in the eyes of this cosmic machine, that persistence, refined through infinite repetition, amounted to perfection.
[Dreamer Adam, receive your boon!]
Dreamer. He was an Aspirant no more. The title landed not with a sense of pride, but with a grim, weary satisfaction, like a heavy coin paid for with a lifetime of labor. He had paid for this title in blood and time beyond measure. It was his. He had earned it in the only currency the multiverse seemed to respect: suffering.
[You have been bestowed a True Name: Sovereign of the Physical World.]
His mind went blank, the weariness shoved aside by sheer, unadulterated shock. A True Name? He knew of them, rare legends whispered even in the dust-choked silence of the ossuary, marks of destiny granted only to the most potent, world-shaking Awakened. They were said to be keys that unlocked the deepest potential of a soul, defining its nature and its path to power. To receive one from a First Nightmare was… it was unheard of. It was the stuff of myths that predated myths. It was a key to a future he could barely comprehend, a title that resonated with the absolute control he had exerted over his own flesh, his army, his battlefield.
But before the shock could settle, before he could even begin to process the implications, a second wave of cosmic pressure slammed into him, a force that felt like the birth of a galaxy condensed into a single point.
[You have been bestowed a Second True Name: Origin of Evil.]
This was different. This was not a boon; it was a branding, a searing iron pressed into the heart of his soul. The pressure was immense, agonizing. It felt as if the very fabric of his soul was being compressed, folded in on itself, hammered into a new, denser, darker shape. And with it came a cataclysm within his own mind.
The chorus of voices—the psychic static that had haunted him his entire life, the worried mother, the frightened sister, the arrogant, unseen entities—did not just go silent. They were crushed. They were screams in a collapsing star, snuffed out in an instant of infinite pressure. For a single, eternal moment, he felt an agony beyond any physical death, a psychic compression into a singularity of self. It was the death of a universe that had lived inside his skull.
Then, silence.
An absolute, profound, terrifying silence inside his own head for the first time since he could remember.
The voices were gone. Not quiet, not subdued. Gone. Their essence, their psychic weight, had seemingly been forged into the unbreakable metal of these two, diametrically opposed True Names. He was alone. Truly, utterly alone in the cavern of his own consciousness. The relief was so profound it was a pain in itself, a phantom limb of the soul that ached with its absence. He could think. A single, unified stream of thought, belonging only to him.
He knelt in the shimmering void, his form trembling, grappling with the magnitude of the silence. It was a peace he had never known, and it was almost as frightening as the noise had been.
[Your Aspect is ready to evolve. Evolve Aspect?]
The voice was an anchor in the terrifying quiet. "Y-yes," he thought, his mental voice raw and unfamiliar in its solitude.
[Dormant Aspect [Mimic] is evolving…]
A new sensation, not of compression, but of expansion. It was as if a seed he had carried all his life, a seed he thought was a worthless pebble, had suddenly cracked open, and a world-tree was erupting from it. The simple, almost laughable ability to throw his voice and copy animal calls shattered and reassembled into something… monumental.
[New Aspect acquired.]
[Aspect Rank: Divine.]
[Aspect Name: Origin Mimic.]
Divine.
The word hung in the void, defying comprehension. Adam knelt, stupefied. The shock was so absolute it robbed him of all coherence, all thought. Divine. It was an unknown rank. A myth. A power that, to a sixteen-year-old ossuary rat, was as theoretical as the edge of the universe. He had known of Common, Uncommon, Rare. He had heard whispers of Epic and Legendary, powers that could level cities. But Divine? That was the stuff of the foundational forces, the principles upon which reality was built. And he, Adam, possessed one. On his first trial. Not just any Divine Aspect, but one born from his own pathetic, survivalist trick.
He summoned the runes, his hands—or the conceptual form of them—trembling in the non-space. The script that appeared was no longer the simple, functional text of before. It was ornate, gilded with subtle, shifting patterns that whispered of immense power.
Name: Adam
True Names: Sovereign of the Physical World, Origin of Evil
Rank: Dreamer
Soul Core: Dormant
Origin Shards: [0890/1000]
Attributes: [Fated], [Mark of Chaos], [Mark of Divinity], [Blessed by the Unknown]
Aspect: [Origin Mimic]
Aspect Rank: Divine
Aspect Description: [You are the source from which all imitation flows. You do not merely copy; you understand, absorb, and perfect the essence of what you observe. Sound, movement, form, technique—all can be yours to wield. Your mimicry now approaches the origin of the act itself, the first principle behind the motion.]
Divine Ability: [Perfect Replication]. [You can perfectly replicate any physical movement, martial form, or combat technique you have witnessed, provided you possess the physical capability and dedicate sufficient time to practice and comprehension. Fidelity and potency are dependent on the depth of your understanding and the strength of your will.]
He stared, uncomprehending. His useless party trick, the skill he had used to lure predators and confuse rivals, had become… this. A Divine Aspect that could, in theory, allow him to master any fighting style, any physical skill, any art of war, just by seeing it performed. It was the ultimate expression of the Forgotten Sword style he had cobbled together through endless, bloody repetition. It was a weapon of limitless, terrifying potential. He could learn anything. He could become anything.
I am not just a copycat, he realized, a slow, dawning awe spreading through him. I am the origin of the copy. The template from which all facsimiles are drawn.
But the Spell was not done with him. The cataclysmic compression of the voices, the forging of the two True Names, had left echoes, psychic scars that bled not pain, but raw, unformed power. The "Blessed by the Unknown" was now making its interest known, and its patronage was not subtle.
[The First Seal is broken.]
[Awakening dormant powers…]
[Unique Soul Confluence Detected. Granting Secondary Aspects.]
Secondary Aspects? The concept was alien. One was the rule. Two was a legend. Three was…
[Aspect: Soul Infusion.]
[Aspect Rank: Divine.]
[Aspect Description: [You can bind a creature, object, or concept to your soul, allowing it to grow in power and affinity alongside you. This bond is profound and permanent, sharing a portion of your destiny. You are a wellspring for the souls of others.]**
[Divine Ability: [Soul Bond]. [You may form a soul bond with a willing or subjugated target. This bond allows for shared growth, empathic connection, and the potential for ability synthesis over time. Limit: 3 Bonds.]**
Adam's mind reeled. This was the power he had unconsciously craved in the ossuary, the power to have a connection, a true ally. But now it was twisted, magnified to a Divine principle. He could bind things to his soul. Make them a part of his growing legend. It was a power of creation and ownership, terrifying in its intimacy.
Before he could even process this, another wave hit.
[Aspect: Flesh and Blood Weave.]
[Aspect Rank: Divine.]**
[Aspect Description: [You hold absolute sovereignty over biomass. You are the master of the physical form, yours and others'. Life and death are clay in your hands, to be shaped by your will.]**
[Divine Ability: [Biomass Control]. [You can manipulate biological matter to accelerate healing and regeneration. This consumes ambient biomass from a recently deceased creature you are touching, or, if no external source is available, your own bodily reserves. Cannot regenerate lost limbs or organs without an immense external biomass source. Mastery of this Aspect may reveal further abilities.]**
The third. The third Divine Aspect. This one resonated with his first True Name, Sovereign of the Physical World. It was the power of the general made manifest, the power to command not soldiers, but the very stuff of life itself. To heal, to mend, to control. The sheer, overwhelming flood of power was terrifying. He was no longer just a Dreamer with a single neat trick; he was a vessel for three separate Divine powers, a trinity of potential centered on replication, binding, and physical dominion. He was a nexus. A singularity.
"The Unknown…" he whispered into the void. "What do you want from me?" There was no answer. Only the humming of the cosmic machinery.
And then, the final, foundational change began.
[Consolidating gains. Forging the Vessel.]
A sensation like a waking star erupted in his chest. It was not the gentle warmth from the stories he'd heard of Awakening; it was a violent, glorious, agonizing conflagration. Energy, raw and potent beyond imagining, flooded every cell, every atom of his being. The chronic, gnawing ache of hunger from a life in the ossuary vanished, scoured away in an instant. The phantom pains from a hundred different deaths—the spider bites, the eviscerations, the crushed skulls—were unmade, their echoes silenced forever. His muscles tightened, humming with latent strength. His bones hardened to steel, his senses sharpened to a preternatural degree. He could feel the individual vibrations of the silver threads of reality around him. He could see the subtle shifts in the luminescence of the void. He felt strong. He felt whole. He was being rebuilt, not into a mere healthy human, but into a foundation capable of bearing the impossible, Divine weights placed upon his soul.
His consciousness was pulled inward, down, away from the cosmic vista and into the most private realm of all: his Soul Sea.
He expected a sunny shore, a bright, cheerful core reflecting his "success." He found neither.
He stood on a shore of black, volcanic glass that reflected nothing. It was sharp and cold under his bare feet. Before him stretched a silent, crimson sea, its waters perfectly still and opaque, like a basin of spilled blood and ink. Above, in a starless sky the color of a fresh bruise, hung not a sun, but a sphere of absolute crimson void—a hole in reality that warped the space around it, drinking the light and hope from this internal universe. This was his soul core. This was the heart of the Sovereign of the Physical World, the Origin of Evil. It was beautiful, and it was terrible.
Two smaller, gentler spheres of light orbited the crimson star. His Memories, waiting to be claimed. But there was a third presence. A shadow, humanoid and sleek, detached itself from the deeper darkness at the edge of his Soul Sea and stood beside him. It had no face, only the suggestion of one, and its hands ended in wickedly sharp claws that gleamed with a faint purple light. He felt a connection to it, an echo of the predatory grace and silent lethality of the Patterned Night-Walkers he had slain so many times. It was a piece of his nightmare, given form and bound to his will.
[You have received an Echo: Shadow Stalker.]
[Echo Rank: Fallen.]
An Echo. A slave of his own. The irony was so thick he could taste it, a metallic tang on his non-existent tongue. He had spent his life as a slave, and his first act as a sovereign was to acquire one. He looked at the silent, waiting shadow. It did not bow. It simply was. His.
[Awakening complete.]
[Receiving your Memories…]
The two spheres of light shot toward him from the dark sky, resolving into physical forms in his grasp.
The first was a pair of swords. They materialized in his hands with a satisfying, solid weight. They were simple, elegant, and deadly, their blades a dull, non-reflective grey that seemed to absorb the faint light of this place. The grips were wrapped in a dark, rough leather that felt like it was made for his hands alone. As he held them, he could feel the ghost of ten thousand practice swings, a million parries and strikes from his loops. They were not just weapons; they were the physical manifestation of his perseverance.
[Memory: Blades of the Nameless Master.]
[Memory Rank: Awakened.]**
[Memory Description: [Twin blades born from the essence of a style forged in endless repetition. They do not hold the legacy of a single, famed warrior, but the accumulated echo of a thousand perfected failures. They are unbreakable, and their edge grows infinitely sharper with the user's comprehension of combat and the depth of their will.]**
The second was a small, worn leather sack, no larger than his palm. It felt utterly mundane, rough and supple against his skin. It was the most ordinary thing he had ever seen, which, in this place of cosmic wonders, made it the most extraordinary.
[Memory: The Hungry Pouch.]
[Memory Rank: Ascended.]**
[Memory Description: [A sack that contains a small, stable pocket dimension. Capacity: 100 cubic meters. Living beings cannot survive within. The interior is timeless, preserving all stored matter in its current state. It is eternally hungry for more.]**
An Ascended Memory. On his first trial. The value was incalculable. He could carry an armory. A library. A year's worth of food and water. The oldest and most constant of his struggles—the struggle for resources, for the next meal, for the tools to survive—had just been rendered trivial. It was a freedom he had never dared to dream of.
He was drowning in riches, in power beyond any fantasy he'd ever dared entertain in the dark of the ossuary. He had True Names that would make kings tremble. He had three Divine Aspects. He had an Echo, legendary blades, and a bottomless bag. He was a god in the making, emerging from the dirt.
But the Spell, in its infinite, impersonal logic, had one final, crucial piece of information. A cornerstone upon which all this power would rest.
[All power has a price.]
[You have received a Flaw.]
[Your Flaw is: Perfectionism.]
He read the runes, and a cold, deep understanding settled in his gut, colder than the black glass beneath his feet. This was not a curse of the weak, like a limp or a stutter. This was a burden of the powerful, an integral part of the engine he had become.
[Flaw Description: [You are the Sovereign. The Origin. You will accept nothing less than perfection. A crooked line is an insult. A chipped cup is a failure. A flawed strategy is an abomination. Your actions, your creations, your very existence, and the world around you, must strive for an impossible ideal. You are cursed with a divine, grinding drive to identify, analyze, and correct every flaw you perceive. This compulsion is mental, spiritual, and eventually, physical.]**
He understood immediately. This was the shadow of his own obsessive nature, the cartographer who had mapped hell, the general who had perfected his human machine down to the last, sacrificial pawn, now amplified to a Divine principle. It was the reason he had looped one hundred and ninety-three times, unable to accept any victory that was less than total, less than perfect. The Spell had not given him this flaw; it had seen it in him, recognized it as the core of his being, and elevated it. He would never be satisfied. He would always see the cracks in the world, in others, in himself. And he would feel a compulsive, unbearable need to fix them, to sand them smooth, to reforge them into something perfect. It was a torture far more exquisite than any physical pain.
The appraisal was over. The constellation of silver lights began to fade, the white void dissolving at the edges, pulling back like a curtain.
[Returning you to the waking world, Dreamer Adam. Your nightmare is over. A new one awaits.]
The last thing he felt was the perfect, balanced weight of the twin swords in his hands, the silent, predatory presence of the Shadow Stalker at his back like a shard of solidified night, and the crushing, glorious, terrible weight of the three Divine Aspects burning in his soul like dark, hungry stars.
He was soon finally , undeniably going to be awake, awake. And only better things awaited him in the outside world.