Crispin walked alone through the broken city, golden embers flickering off his skin like a fading storm. His steps were slow. Each one heavier than the last. Not from wounds—he'd stopped feeling pain hours ago. What he felt now was deeper. Like something inside him had cracked. Like he'd touched something too big for his mind to hold and now it wouldn't let go. His fingers twitched with a strange energy—gold and black woven together like tangled thread. Divine and Death. Light and Shadow. It pulsed through him like a second heartbeat, too loud, too alive.
He could still hear Aetherion's last words echoing somewhere behind his thoughts.
"You are not a king. You are a mistake."
Maybe that was true. But mistakes could still kill gods.
The city had gone quiet after the blast. Birds no longer circled. No sirens. No Guild squads sweeping in. Just him. The silence was thicker than the fog. It felt staged. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting to see what he'd become now.
He stopped in front of a broken mirror half-buried in the rubble.
What looked back wasn't human.
His reflection had no pupils—just gold rings burning in black voids. His skin shimmered faintly. The scars on his arms moved like ink in water. Even the shadows that used to trail behind him now floated in slow motion like they were watching him too.
Crispin stared for a long time.
Then smashed the mirror.
He didn't want to look at himself right now. Not until he knew what he really was.
A mistake?
A miracle?
Or something worse?
The air changed. Not cold. Not heat. Just…pressure.
Crispin's head snapped up.
A sound. A crackling, like a thousand doors unlocking at once.
He turned slowly.
And there it was.
Above the skyline, in the clouds where sky should've been solid—something shimmered. Reality folded. A vertical slash tore open space. It wasn't a Gate. Not in the way he'd known them.
This one bled golden light.
No countdown. No warning.
Gate Zero was waking up.
He could feel it like a call in his spine. His shadow pulsed, then retreated into him like it was scared.
His body moved on its own.
He started walking toward it.
But as he did, he saw something that made his heart twist.
A girl.
Tiny. Shaking. Covered in soot and blood. Maybe ten years old. She was curled up beside a collapsed wall, breathing fast, eyes wild.
He froze.
Memories slammed into him—Yara. The first time he saw her after their house burned. The fear in her eyes. That same look.
He knelt.
The girl flinched.
"It's okay," Crispin said, voice low, gentle.
She didn't move.
So he did what he never thought he'd do again.
He took off his coat and wrapped it around her.
"I'm not here to hurt you."
She looked up slowly. Her lip quivered. "M-my mom…"
Crispin nodded. "Where was she?"
The girl pointed to a nearby building.
Crispin stood and entered without a word.
Ten minutes later, he came back out, holding a body in his arms. His eyes were blank. The girl didn't cry. She just stared.
He placed the mother's body down gently beside her and bowed his head.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
She didn't say anything.
But when he turned to leave, her small hand grabbed his fingers.
"Don't die."
Crispin froze.
He turned just enough to look at her.
"Not today," he said. "But maybe soon."
As he walked away, he felt the Gate's pull stronger now. Not like before. Not a system call. It wasn't demanding him—it was inviting him.
He followed the pull until the world shifted again.
One second, city.
Next second—
Wilderness.
He stood in a forest of black trees, their branches twisted like claws. The sky was upside down—he was walking under stars that pulsed like breathing eyes. No sound. Not even wind.
This was a threshold space.
Between realms.
The Gate hovered ahead, suspended in mid-air like a wound in the world.
It pulsed once.
Then spoke.
"Come."
The voice was not male. Not female. Not human. It was every voice he'd ever heard and none at all.
Crispin stepped forward.
Chains wrapped around the Gate snapped, one by one, like metal tired of holding back the storm.
Then the Gate opened.
He expected light. Or death. Or madness.
Instead, he saw something worse.
Memories.
His own. But wrong.
He walked through the Gate and into himself.
Every version of him.
He saw a boy training with a sword in a village that never existed. Another one crying as a soldier dragged his mother away. Another, dressed in black armor, ruling over an empire of shadows. Another, dying in a pit, holding Yara's hand as she screamed his name.
Infinite versions.
Some weak. Some monstrous. Some already dead.
All of them were him.
But only one had survived.
He was standing now in a great hall of echoes. And at the end, on a throne of broken stars, sat a figure.
It looked exactly like him.
Same eyes. Same scars.
But smiling.
"Welcome home," it said.
Crispin's throat tightened.
"You're me," he said.
"I was," the figure replied. "Before I remembered everything."
"What are you now?"
"I am the first."
Crispin stepped closer.
"You're behind the Gate."
"I am the Gate."
Crispin didn't speak for a long time.
He could feel his heartbeat in his ears. Could taste ash on his tongue.
"You said I'd remember," he whispered. "So make me."
The First Crispin stood. Walked down the steps toward him. Each footstep echoed like thunder.
"When you died the first time, the world reset," the First said. "But something stayed. A piece of you. It latched onto the System. Burrowed into its code. You became a loop."
"A loop?" Crispin repeated.
"You lived, died, lived again. But not always in the same way. Not always in the same world. And every version left something behind. Memory. Power. Pain."
"And Gate Zero?"
"Is where all of it was stored."
Crispin stared at him.
"You're saying I created this Gate?"
"No. I'm saying you are it."
Crispin backed away a step.
"I didn't ask for this."
"No one does," the First said gently. "But the world doesn't need a hero. It needs a witness."
Crispin shook his head. "I didn't survive hell just to become some memory bank for broken timelines."
"You're more than that," the First said. "You're the lock. And soon, the key."
Crispin clenched his fists. "What happens when the Gate fully opens?"
The First's smile faded.
"Then He wakes up."
Crispin felt the temperature drop.
"Who?"
The First looked up at the sky above the throne.
There was nothing there.
Then everything.
A shape. Vague. Colossal. Shifting.
A presence that didn't belong to any plane of existence he knew.
"The original," the First said. "The first god. The first death. The one who forgot everything. And when he wakes—he won't just destroy the world. He'll overwrite it."
Crispin was shaking now. Not from fear.
From understanding.
All the deaths. All the timelines. All the chaos.
It wasn't random.
It was containment.
"You want me to stop him?"
The First shook his head.
"No. I want you to become him."
Crispin's eyes widened.
"Hell no."
"You already are," the First whispered. "You just haven't remembered enough yet."
Crispin drew his blade.
Then everything shattered.
He was back in the real world.
The Gate behind him glowing. Breathing.
But it wasn't just opening anymore.
It was cracking.
From within.
Crispin turned, chest heaving.
Something was coming through.
He felt the weight of it. The old gods would have screamed and fled. The System itself trembled.
But he didn't run.
He stepped forward and screamed one word:
"ARISE."
Not to the dead.
To himself.
And from every death he had ever died, power surged back into him.
Memories. Versions. Pain. Glory.
He absorbed it all.
He stopped being a mistake.
He became the storm.
The Gate exploded.
And from the wreckage came something tall, burning, and broken.
A man with no face. No name.
The First God.
And he was smiling.
Crispin didn't wait.
He moved.
The two collided with a sound that split mountains.
God and Echo.
Loop and Origin.
The fight didn't obey physics. It shattered skies, inverted oceans, turned air into flame.
Crispin's blade struck with memories. Each swing carried ten thousand lives.
The First God answered with silence. Every strike erased part of the world.
Crispin was losing ground.
But he smiled anyway.
Because this time, he wasn't alone.
The shadows came back.
One by one, his Echoes returned. Arlen. The Hunter from Chapter 3. The Wolf. The girl from the burning house. Even the corrupted ones. They rose behind him, not as soldiers.
As memories.
And together, they charged the god.
The war had begun.
Not to save the world.
To decide what it should become.