The battlefield fell silent.
Not because peace had come, but because something far worse had arrived.
The Void Creature walked, each step a blasphemy against the laws of the world. Reality warped in its presence—colors bled from the sky, the earth fractured beneath its stride, and even the fundamental runes that governed existence trembled.
Every human, monster, and aberrant froze.
Even those locked in mortal combat could not tear their gaze away from the thing that now walked the land.
Up above, one of the Rank 8 gods hovered in the heavens—an entity worshipped across continents, a pillar of divinity. Yet now, that god's voice cracked like brittle glass.
"Is… is that an Outer? An Outer God? A Void Being?
Is… our world ending?"
Terror didn't scream. It whispered.
And it silenced the entire world.
The Void Creature said nothing as it approached the Black Colossus, the twisted avian horror that had rained chaos and despair. The beast shrank before it—trembling not in fear, but in raw, instinctive submission.
And then—
A slap.
Reality blinked.
What followed was not a battle.
It was judgment.
The skies turned black. A storm of inverted light fell like rain. The Divine Executioner of the Void had begun its retribution.
The punishment was beyond comprehension.
It wasn't pain. Pain could be endured.
This was something else—something eternal.
It was suffering refined by cosmic laws, sculpted to target the soul directly. Not even the gods would dare imagine such torment for themselves.
The Black Colossus—once divine—shattered. Not physically, but mentally, forever broken.
No salvation came. Not even from its god.
It had been abandoned.
Even the God of Death had given up on its own creation.
Forgotten by all.
The Void Creature reached out, plucking the broken horror from the battlefield, and placed it into a cage of void—a prison of nothingness, where it would suffer until the stars died.
Then, it turned.
And walked toward Ariel.
The Void Creature stood tall, proud of its execution, basking in silence.
Ariel looked up at it, his eyes hollow, yet commanding.
His voice cut through dimensions.
"I will erase some memories of myself."
"I awakened too early. I am not yet powerful enough to bend the world to protect my existence every time I use my Origin Ability. Let me suffer. For what I did."
The Void Creature tilted Its head, questioning.
Its gaze seemed to ask:
"That was merely an illusion, my Lord?"
Ariel's voice cracked.
But his will did not.
"It doesn't matter. What is reality, if not a god's illusion? They can unmake it with a thought, recreate it at whim.
So that illusion… was real enough."
"And for that, I deserve to suffer."
Tears slipped from Ariel's eyes—each drop heavy with guilt.
The Void Creature stared deeper, its form flickering with uncertainty.
Its gaze asked:
"But… are these not mortal emotions?"
Ariel smiled bitterly.
"Void is not emptiness. It's the infinite container. The womb of all things.
Its emotions are infinite. They bleed into every existence.
And that is why even Void can weep."
The Creature bowed its head.
Ariel turned away from the world and whispered:
"Erase the knowledge of what I truly am.
My identity. My omniscience.
Let only my Origin Ability remain.
Let only the echoes of my past self exist."
"But do not forget me. Not you."
"Guard this world from me… until I awaken.
Protect Ilya. Protect those I'm tethered to.
I know you cannot stop me once I fall.
But you can shield those I love."
A pause.
A final order.
"If even a single hair on their heads is harmed…
Let the Void remind this world what it is truly capable of."
Ariel breathed in.
"Now let me suffer, too."
The memory of Ilya's blood on his hands had carved itself into his soul.
He would never forget.
The Void Creature understood.
With grim reverence, it began.
Each bone in Ariel's body was broken—one by one—for every innocent life taken. Each soul screamed through his nerves. The pain did not kill. It transcended death. It kept him alive to experience the full weight of what he had done.
He screamed.
Again and again.
The battlefield watched.
The gods watched.
And they feared.
Somewhere far above, a divine command echoed through the realms:
"Retreat.
Forget what you saw.
Erase this day from memory."
And the world obeyed.
All, except for the one who suffered.
Days passed.
Then months.
Then years.
Then decades.
And the agony only grew.
It did not fade.
It did not dull.
Because guilt doesn't age.
And then—
On a day where no birds sang and the sun dared not shine—
He opened his eyes.
The suffering had ended.
His first seal had broken.
Ariel's eyes fluttered open.
The air was heavy, soaked in rot and stale desperation. The ceiling above him was cracked, the walls thin, papered in peeling mold and silence. Dust floated in shafts of light that cut through boarded windows, casting the room in a funeral glow.
His head throbbed. His heart ached. But it was the memories that hit harder than any pain.
They came rushing in — not like a gentle tide, but like a dam shattered.
He was back in that room. That same damned room.
He remembered the smell. He remembered the sound of rats gnawing on wood in the walls. He remembered the way the wind crept through the broken glass, whispering like death just outside.
A memory before he went into the trial came rushing in.
He sat on the cold, dirty floor — knees pulled in, arms trembling, tears running down his face in bitter rivulets. His hands were calloused, blackened from days spent in soot-choked factories and steel-grinding warehouses. His breath hitched with every sob, not from physical pain — he was used to that — but from something far worse.
Failure.
"I'm sorry…" he whispered, voice cracking like brittle glass. "I'm so sorry, Ilya."
Beside him sat a girl too small for the weight she carried.
Ilya — his light, his soul, his one fragile thread keeping him human — looked up at him, tears quietly falling from her wide eyes. But her sorrow was different. It wasn't for herself. It was for him.
"I'm sorry I haven't… even been able to give you a proper roof," Ariel muttered, each word a knife carved into his throat. "No food. No warmth. No toys. No… childhood. I'm your big brother, dammit, and I couldn't even give you a life worth living."
He looked away, ashamed. The guilt dripped off him like poison.
"And now… that damned call… from the Quiet Witnesss. I—I'm going to be dragged into some godforsaken trial. Probably to die. And if I live—" He paused, choking on the lump in his throat. "If I live, I'll give you everything, Ilya. I swear it. Everything I can. I just need to come back."
Her tiny fingers wrapped around his soot-covered hand.
"No, Brother," Ilya said, voice trembling, but not breaking. "You already gave me everything."
Ariel stared at her.
"You gave me dreams… and books. You fixed my shoes with thread and string. You taught me how to read when no one else would've even looked at us. You carried me on your back in the rain. You gave me your share of food and said you weren't hungry. You protected me… always. So don't say you didn't give me anything."
He looked at her — this small, fragile flame burning in a world so cold. And something inside him shattered and healed at the same time.
But he still couldn't forgive himself.
Because no matter how much he gave, it was never enough.
And now… he was going to leave her.
Alone.
He couldn't speak. His throat had closed.
All he could do was cry. Quiet, soul-crushing sobs that cracked the silence in that tiny, forgotten room.
--
Back in the present, Ariel blinked as the past slipped away. The shadows of memory bled back into the cracked walls around him.
He sat there In silence.