The golden Rank Board began to dim, its light sinking into the horizon like a falling sun. All that remained was silence.
But not the peaceful kind.
The kind of silence that came before something titanic awoke.
Zhen stood still, gaze locked on the place where his name had stopped—Rank #63.
"From over three hundred… to sixty-three," Ji Yuyan murmured, arms folded, her expression unreadable. "In one hour."
Even Xuanyin looked faintly stunned.
Shen Lian cursed softly under his breath. "You just broke the First Threshold of the Heaven Divide."
Zhen turned slowly. "Heaven Divide?"
Xuanyin spoke. "The rankings are more than numbers. They reflect… strata of fate. When you reach certain thresholds, the world reacts. Opportunities that never existed before suddenly become visible."
She raised a hand and pointed to the air before Zhen.
A translucent path of golden runes unfurled in front of him, each one etched with multiversal glyphs.
> [Hidden Quest Line: Sealed Sovereign of the Broken Realms]
Status: UNLOCKED
Difficulty: ???
Entry Requirement: [Rank ≤ 100]
Reward: Unknown
Warning: System Disengagement is Permanent upon failure.
Proceed?
Zhen's breath caught. The system didn't offer quests like this. Not often. And certainly not ones that threatened disengagement—the erasure of the very system that had guided him all this time.
"Permanent failure?" Shen Lian squinted. "That's a trap."
"Or a test," Xuanyin said softly. "The Sovereigns always leave behind trials. It is said that those who pass… become more than system-bearers. They become Founders."
Zhen stared at the prompt.
Then, he spoke a single word.
"Proceed."
---
✦ Descent into the Rupture Vault
The world warped.
One moment, they were in Moonfall Citadel. The next, Zhen stood alone on a narrow stone bridge stretching over a chasm of floating glass and stars.
Above him, fractured moons circled a dead sun.
Below, a temple upside-down floated, its ancient pillars rising into the sky like broken fingers.
> [Location: Rupture Vault of the Sealed Sovereign]
Time Remaining: 7 Hours
Challenge Type: Memory Infiltration
Objective: Unravel the Sovereign's Binding Threads
Status: Solo Instance - Allies Locked Out
"Memory infiltration…" Zhen narrowed his eyes. "I have to relive his fall?"
The air around him shimmered.
A figure appeared—tall, robed in crimson and silver, with a halo of broken time spinning behind his head. His eyes burned like twin black holes, pulling even light inward.
"I am the Sovereign once known as Liuwen of the Seventh Aeon," the man said. "You have stepped into my echoes."
Zhen felt something grip his chest. A memory not his own began to sink into his bones.
The sky turned red.
The stars screamed.
And Zhen was no longer himself.
He was Liuwen—seated on a throne of obsidian, watching the multiverse tear itself apart.
---
✦ Echo of the Past: Fall of the Aeon Sovereign
Zhen—no, Liuwen—stood in the Court of Eternal Tithes, where universes once came to bargain with fate. Before him, traitors knelt: former champions who had traded destiny for chaos.
"You sold your systems to the Outer Ones," he said coldly.
One of the kneeling rebels, a woman with scales instead of skin, laughed.
"Because your rules bound us. We are not pawns on your Rank Board."
Liuwen raised a hand, and galaxies trembled.
"No," he said. "You were players. And now, you are nothing."
In an instant, time snapped. Their echoes were erased—not killed, but unwritten.
But even as he destroyed them, a hole began to grow in the center of the realm.
A void that refused to be named.
Liuwen turned too late.
From that void stepped a creature made of forgotten timelines. It had no face—only shifting masks of everything Zhen had ever feared.
"You climbed too high," the creature whispered in a thousand voices. "Now fall."
The Sovereign screamed as the world devoured him.
And Zhen—his mind returning to the present—felt the scream was his own.
---
✦ Trial Complete: Inheritor Identified
Zhen collapsed on the stone bridge, gasping. The stars around him flickered.
> [ Memory Trial Completed. ]
> Fragment Retrieved: [Sovereign's Vow of Continuity]
Reward Granted: [World-Breaker Sigil – Dormant]
System Acknowledgement Pending…
You have qualified to inherit one of the Seven Sealed Paths.
Above him, a constellation lit up—seven stars in the shape of a spiral.
One of them burned golden now.
Xuanyin's voice echoed in his ears—not physically, but through a distant tether of soul.
"You… survived?"
Zhen stood, wiping blood from his lip.
"No. I didn't survive."
He looked up at the burning star.
"I inherited."
---
✦ Return and Ripple
When Zhen re-emerged into Moonfall Citadel, the world felt different.
Subtle things.
The way space bent slightly around him. The fact that the system no longer floated beside him as a window, but instead pulsed within his palm like a glowing brand.
"You've changed," Ji Yuyan said softly. "You feel like something else now."
Zhen looked down at his hands.
"I saw what comes when Sovereigns fall. I saw the thing that devours time."
"What was it?" Shen Lian asked, his voice unusually serious.
Zhen answered quietly.
"I don't know. But it's not from this multiverse. It wasn't bound by laws. Not even by meaning. It called itself—"
He stopped.
Ji Yuyan narrowed her eyes. "What?"
Zhen clenched his fist.
"—the Nameless Threshold."
Xuanyin paled.
"That's… that's a myth. A corruption of the old systems. Even Sovereigns banished its name."
"Then it's no longer a myth," Zhen said.
"I think it's waking up."
---
✦ Interlude: The Cracked Heaven
Somewhere far away, beyond the 99 Divine Territories of the Multiverse, a woman in white sat before a pool of black water.
She watched as Zhen ascended.
She watched as the star flared gold.
And then she whispered a single line:
> "The last Founder has been chosen."
A second figure appeared beside her—faceless, cloaked in shrouds of paradox.
"Shall I awaken the Others?"
She shook her head.
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because he's not ready to remember what he left behind."
That night, Zhen sat atop the highest spire of Moonfall Citadel, overlooking the quiet sea of fragmented stars.
The air crackled around him. The World-Breaker Sigil—his reward from the Sovereign's memory trial—had settled over his heart like a sleeping brand. Invisible to others, but he could feel it: hot, ancient, hungry.
He opened his system interface—but what greeted him wasn't the usual translucent blue UI.
Instead, a black screen appeared, traced with spiraling gold glyphs.
> [Sigil Awakening: World-Breaker]
Status: Dormant (Stage 0/3)
Origin: Fragment of Liuwen, Sovereign of the Seventh Aeon
☼ When activated, the bearer can:
→ Disregard Domain Suppression.
→ Break fixed causality chains (Cooldown: 1 use per stage).
→ Transcend localized time-structure for 3 seconds.
Warning: Each stage unlocked will attract attention from the [Nameless Threshold].
Zhen's pulse quickened.
"Disregard suppression… break causality…"
In the multiverse, powers often fell victim to domain restriction—gods suppressing lower beings. Causality chains binding outcomes. Time itself imprisoning growth.
But this sigil… was cheating the game.
Yet the final warning chilled him.
> [Attention will be drawn.]
It wasn't a metaphor.
The thing that devoured Sovereigns—the thing in Liuwen's memory—it noticed anomalies. The more he used the sigil, the more likely it would find him.
He clenched his fists.
"Then I'll grow fast enough that it can't devour me when it comes."
Behind him, a soft voice spoke.
"I thought you might say something reckless like that."
Zhen turned.
Xuanyin stood barefoot on the roof tiles, her robe fluttering in the high wind, pale hair glowing under the broken sky.
She walked to him without hesitation, stopping just a few feet away. Her expression was distant, but her eyes were direct.
"You saw the Threshold, didn't you?"
Zhen didn't lie. "Yes."
"It has no system. No origin code. It doesn't belong to any dimension that obeys Rank Law."
He nodded. "It wasn't even bound by language. I could barely understand it."
"That's because it's not from a world with Words of Creation. It's from before even those."
She knelt beside him, voice low.
"You're not just climbing the rankings now. You're standing on old graves, Zhen. The kind that were buried by gods, not time."
---
✦ Enemy Movements
Meanwhile, in the distant Skyward Domain, a meeting of elite Rankers convened in a spiraling crystal fortress known as the Cloud Grave Tribunal.
At its center sat a being with six arms and a crown of burning bones—Ravkar the System Eater.
A projection of Zhen hovered in the air, flickering with system stats and a Rank #63 tag.
"He passed the Sovereign Trial," one of the cloaked advisors muttered.
Ravkar's voice was a low snarl.
"That shouldn't be possible. He's only a recent registrant."
Another responded, "The system adjusted. It acknowledged him."
A pause.
"Then we move up the timeline," Ravkar declared. "Contact the Voidbinders. Activate the Descent Protocol in the Outer Fringe."
"But he's still protected by the Founder Laws—"
"Then we'll make him break those laws himself."
---
✦ Back at the Citadel
As Xuanyin vanished into mist, Zhen rose, feeling the sky itself grow restless.
> [New Objective Added]
Protect the Founder's Spark
Location: Classified (Appears during critical path progression)
Optional Chain Trigger:
→ Form a multiversal contract with a designated Fragment-Bearer.
→ Initiate 'Sigil Sync' for shared ability growth.
Zhen narrowed his eyes.
"Fragment-Bearer…?"
He didn't know what that meant yet. But he felt the presence.
Faintly, from another world.
A soul calling to his.
One who carried a shard of a Sovereign like he did.
The multiverse was no longer just vast.
It was waking up.