One year later.
The wind howled across the shattered cliffs of northern Valdros, the frostbitten continent. The sky burned with streaks of crimson, not from fire — but from mana storms that tore through the heavens like bleeding scars.
At the edge of a frozen wasteland stood a lone figure, wrapped in black, silver-touched cloth billowing in the storm. His eyes — one storm grey, one gold — pierced through the snow as though it dared defy him.
His name had not been spoken aloud in a year.But his shadow had already begun to stretch across the world.
The Rumors
Across the seven continents, tales whispered like fireflies in the dark.
A noble family in Druenval disappeared overnight. Left behind was a room filled with blueprints — ancient curse seals erased, forbidden rituals destroyed.
A military laboratory in Zephyraul — the very one Caelum and Lysia once built — exploded from the inside, though no trace of the saboteur was found.
A mage-priest in Elystar screamed the name Caelum Verrian before leaping from the sky tower, his soul corrupted by fear.
No blood trails. No declarations.Only one mark burned into every scene:
A broken crown drawn in ash.
Caelum's Descent — and Awakening
He had not spoken since that day.His voice belonged to another life — to a man who still believed in light, in gods, in love.
But his hands still moved.Still built.Still created.
In the ruins of an ancient elven city buried beneath Aezrith's Spine, he discovered blueprints older than empires.In the flooded catacombs of Vaelus, he retrieved weapons that bent time and carved fate.He gathered knowledge the world had buried, hidden, or forbidden.
He was no longer just a scientist.
He was a godkiller in the making.
The Lab Beneath the Moonless Crater
In the exact place where the Empire had slain Lysia, Caelum returned — in silence, unnoticed.
Beneath that execution plaza, a hidden passage once used for secret experiments had been long abandoned.
He turned it into his sanctum.
Rows of humming machines. Recovered relics. Frozen weapons of all types, magical and mechanical. He even preserved the shattered pieces of Lysia's last prototype, her final invention — a memory-storage crystal that recorded their laughter, debates, and long walks under the stars.
He played it once.
Her voice filled the chamber.
"If I ever go first… don't lose who you are. Please."
He stood in the dark long after it ended.
And then began rebuilding the prototype into something far greater.
Revenge? No. Justice? No.
Caelum did not call what he did "revenge."That word felt petty.
What he sought was something far colder.
He would unmake the Empire from the inside.
Not with armies.Not with speeches.But with knowledge.With undeniable truths.
He would pull down every mask.Reveal every hidden crime.Uproot every corrupted root of the world Lysia once dreamed of saving.
And when the world was bare and bleeding—
He would ask it one question.
"Do you still believe in gods?"
A New Mask, A New Name
To move unseen, he wore a face that was not his own.A shapeshifted appearance — older, rougher. Sometimes noble, sometimes thief, sometimes vagabond. He called himself "Ashen" in whispers, though he kept no friends to speak it.
In Zephyraul, they feared the "Ghost of the Clocktower."In Elystar, they called him "The Man Who Walks Through Spells."But the most common name was simply:
The Immortal Swordsman.
A myth.A monster.A warning.
The Sword Drawn for the First Time
It happened in a borderland fort — the Empire's new research outpost on Myrrhvale. A continent once rich in arts and philosophy, now turned into a testing ground for war machines.
Caelum infiltrated it in one night.
But as he retrieved the blueprints of a cursed sentience engine — a machine that tortured living minds to generate mana — he was caught.
Four knights.
Two archmages.
And a unit of the Empire's elite Silver Sentinels.
They laughed when they saw him.
"You're just one man."
He didn't answer.
Not with words.
Instead, he drew the sword his father once gave him — untouched, undrawn for over a decade.
It gleamed with something ancient, something wrong. A blade forged of science and sorrow. Runes etched in blood, circuits pulsing faintly with soul-light.
In twenty seconds, they were all dead.
The final Sentinel, bleeding and gasping, looked up at the man who did not age.
"You… you're cursed…"
Caelum looked down at him, voice calm and dead.
"I was blessed. And then the world took her from me."
He left the mark again — the broken crown.
And vanished into the night.
The Gods Remain Silent
Even now, the supreme god who cursed him did not speak.
Not to explain.Not to apologize.Not to stop him.
The temples Lysia once prayed in now feared the shadow standing at their doorstep. And deep within the astral plane, even divine eyes began to tremble.
Because something had changed.
Caelum did not seek vengeance on mortals alone.He had begun to build a machine that reached into godhood itself.
If the divine would not protect the good…
Then they were part of the disease.
Closing Scene — A Letter Never Sent
In his lab, Caelum opened a drawer.
Inside was a sealed letter.
It was the one Lysia had written to him the night before their wedding.
He had never read it.
His hands hovered. Shook. Then slowly opened the envelope.
"Dear Cael,If you're reading this, then I guess I was right — you never check your messages. I don't know if you're nervous about the wedding, or just being your usual clueless self, but I wanted to say this one last time in ink.You don't need to save the world alone. I'm here. I will always be here.And if, someday, you ever find yourself alone… then I'll be waiting in every invention we built together.Don't let this world take your heart.I love you.— Lysia"
The lab was silent.
Then, quietly, Caelum wept again.
But this time, only for a moment.
Because he still had work to do.