A/N: Please make sure to give power stones if you liked the story thus far. I am planning to keep the story 100% free. Support will encourage me to continue the story. I mean, what's the point of writing a story if people don't like it? So, if you can, then make sure to give me some support.
INFO -
1. Thoughts are within '__' and in Italic characters.
And conversations are within "__"
2. Please inform me if you find any mistakes. I will quickly solve it,
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The Warden froze. He reached out again—his fingers struck something unseen. Resistance. Solid.
His expression faltered. "What?"
Then he heard a voice—calm, steady, and strangely familiar.
"Oh yes, Warden. That was quite fun."
The Warden turned sharply, his smile cracking just slightly. There, at the edge of the board where no figure had stood before... Someone waited. His eyes widened. And for the first time...
The Warden looked shocked. He staggered, eyes wide.
"How…?! I made you a puppet."
He looked down. His hand was gone—vanished below the wrist, like it had never existed.
Soon, Footsteps echoed—measured, steady.
The Law Maker stepped forward, but something was different. His silver radiance was gone. In its place, a burnished red glow pulsed beneath his skin, like molten threads winding through flesh. His eyes shimmered with a deeper hue—calm, unrelenting, and utterly inhuman.
It wasn't Jin who was in control. It was Shi
Reality rippled. The chessboard shattered into light.
And suddenly—they were back. The void. The breach. The broken gate at the beginning.
The Warden gasped, stumbling as chains burst from the ground, coiling around his limbs and dragging him to his knees.
The Law Maker (Shi) stopped before him.
"Do you finally get it, warden?" he said softly. "You were in my illusion from the very start."
The Warden stared up at him, disbelief cracking into awe. "Why do you look like that? Why do you have this much control—here, in my domain? No celestial ever has."
"I am the Law Maker," The Law Maker (Shi) said. "I don't follow laws. I make them. I'm not bound to any rule—especially not yours."
He tilted his head, watching the Warden like a cat studying a dying bird. A smile played on his lips—lazy, amused, and just a little too still.
"You looked so proud when you pulled the strings," Shi said, pacing in a slow half-circle around him. "Like a child who found matches and thought he invented fire."
The chains binding the Warden creaked as he struggled. Shi's smile widened.
"You built your whole identity around control. Around fear. But all the while..."
He crouched low, eye-level now, voice lowering to a whisper that slithered just past the ear.
"You never noticed the cage was yours."
The Warden snarled, but Shi only stood again, slow and smooth, eyes gleaming like rubies in the dark.
"Honestly, I expected more. A little resistance. A little bite. Instead, here you are—on your knees, rattling like a wind-up toy that thinks it's a god."
He stepped back, spreading his arms slightly as if presenting the Warden to an invisible crowd.
"Go on then. Dance for me, puppet master."
His chuckle came soft and sharp, like glass underfoot. Cold. Certain. Enjoying every second of this.
The Warden's eyes narrowed. He studied the crimson veins of light threading through the being before him for some time. And then, he laughed.
"Ah. I see it now," he muttered. "You're fractured, aren't you? You're not whole. There's more than one of you inside that mind. That's why you look different. That's why the difference in power and such."
The Law Maker's (Shi) expression didn't change.
The Warden grinned wider. "Something happened. During your ascension. It split you. A mistake in your making."
The Law Maker (Shi) said nothing.
The Warden laughed harder, the sound cracked and manic. "You should fear it more, Law Maker. Celestials with fractured minds... they don't last. They unravel. They disappear. Rare, but not unknown."
The Law Maker's eyes narrowed. "You should fear me. Not what might come."
"Oh, I do fear you," the Warden said, chuckling through clenched teeth. "But not for long."
He raised his head.
"I'm going to die. That much is true. But before I go…"
A violent surge of light burst from his chest—golden, seething, and ancient. It shot forward before The Law Maker (Shi) could react, piercing him dead center.
The Law Maker (Shi) staggered.
The Warden howled with laughter, triumphant and bitter. "That… was the energy of every celestial I've consumed. A million voices, a million cores. For normal celestials, they would die to get it, but for fractured celestials like you, it accelerates the break. You'll tear apart from the inside. I may die here…"
He smiled, blood running from his lips.
"But I'll watch your doom before I go."
Soon, all the light in the void began to fade—swallowed by shadow, drawn into silence. The Warden stood tall one final time, his form unraveling at the edges.
And yet, he grinned.
"I am the harbinger of chaos," he said, laughter curling at the corners of his voice. "I make puppets. Not the other way around. And no one toys with me and gets to live a single moment more."
With that, he vanished.
But the light he unleashed—corrupted and ancient—remained. It twisted through the empty space like a serpent of fire, racing toward the Law Maker.
The Law Maker didn't move.
He couldn't.
He stood motionless, like a statue carved from stillness itself. Not resisting. Not reacting.
Because no one was in control.
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Inside the mind.
In the collapsing mental space of the Law Maker's mind, three figures drifted—identical in form but wrapped in distinct hues:
Jin, cloaked in silver.
Shi, burning red.
Ryu, pulsing blue.
And all of them were unraveling.
The core they shared cracked and buckled, threads of energy splintering across its surface.
"Hold it!" Shi barked, his voice sharp, defiant. He threw his power at the fracture, red lightning dancing across the fault lines. "We're not breaking here!"
"It's not enough!" Ryu hissed, both hands pressed to the trembling core. "We're losing cohesion—if it shatters..."
Jin's jaw tightened. He stepped forward, hands outstretched toward the core, silver light flaring from his palms.
"Don't say what if," he said, calm but forceful. "In our early days, we were a force to be reckoned with—not to speak about now… when we are far stronger."
But despite their efforts, the core kept breaking, the cracks spidering outward, indifferent to his conviction.
It shrieked in silence, a scream of energy and stress as another crack split through its heart.
Their forms flickered.
Shi snarled, slamming a fist into the space beside him. "Dammit! No! Curse that Warden. The core is breaking into more pieces."
Ryu was breathing hard now, every word strained. "If it does happen then..."
Jin cut him off, his voice low, filled with an unsettling calm. "We might turn into more than three. If it happens, we might not be ourselves anymore."
The situation was grim. All three of them tried their best, fought against the rising tide of chaos within, doing everything they could to avoid splintering further. It was already chaotic for there to be three of them. The thought of becoming more—of losing themselves entirely—was unbearable.
Soon, the core gave one final, trembling pulse, and for a heartbeat, all of them held their breath.
Then—
Something unexpected happened.
The core didn't explode.
It imploded.
All the cracks folded inward, the fractures warping, folding into themselves. The threads that once tethered them separately twisted tight, unbidden—unnatural. Uncontrollable.
It fused.
Not like before—no longer a chaotic dance of scattered, separate forces—but a single, unyielding whole. The core was still cracked, but its essence was unified now, held together by something far stronger than before.
And in that moment...
Shi, Ryu, Jin—all disappeared. And in their place appeared a single, brilliant light.
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A/N: That's it. This is the end of Vol. 1. It's my first time writing, so I don't know if it was satisfactory or not. But I will try my best to improve my writing. Finally, I can get to the stuff that I was eager to write, starting from the next volume.