The mirrored sword was back in the Appraiser's hand. It did not pause or hesitate.
It lunged—the same perfect, lethal strike that had ended Kaisen tens of thousands of times. But the boy who met it was not the same one who had first entered this chamber.
Kaisen moved with the strike, his battered training sword meeting chrome with a shriek of metal. He deflected by a hair's breadth, his body flowing into the opening he had created.
His counter came clean, inevitable—no luck this time, only mastery.
His blade slipped through the Appraiser's guard and pierced its core.
The Appraiser froze, cracked, and fell.
[ You Have Slain Entity: Appraiser ]
The lesson was over. The student had surpassed the master.
From the throne, a voice that had been silent for what felt like eternity finally spoke.
"Your desperation," Karihad said, the grinding stone of his voice softer now, "burns as bright as mine once did."
With a faint motion of his hand, the luminous chamber dissolved. The milky stone, the air itself—it all bled away into ruin.
They stood on a cracked plain beneath a bruised, dying sky. The sun above was a swollen ember, its fading light painting the wasteland in sickly gold.
The air smelled of ash and endings.
"I was born here," Karihad began, his voice the only living thing in this dead world. As he spoke, the air shimmered—visions forming like ghosts around them.
"Before your rifts, before your 'Awakened,' when the universe was younger and crueler. The gods ruled openly, demanding worship and blood. Every family owed a sacrifice. Every village had its altar."
A vision appeared: a young boy with wild, dark hair clutching his mother's hand as temple guards dragged her away.
"My mother was taken when I was seven. My father died resisting."
The boy fell to his knees, praying to a sky that did not listen. "I begged for mercy. It never came."
Plague spread. The temples stayed golden. The gods stayed silent. The child grew into a teenager, eyes gone hard, prayers curdled into venom.
"By sixteen, my prayers had rotted into hatred."
The scene shifted again. A young man—Karihad—fighting in the wars of the gods. Mortal armies clashing for the amusement of immortals.
"I fought as their pawn, until one man whispered to me: 'There is no heaven. Only those strong enough to build it for themselves.'"
Kaisen watched the story unfold—Karihad seeking forbidden relics, delving into forgotten tombs, wielding weapons forged from celestial bone.
"I was branded a heretic," Karihad continued. "So I killed my first god."
A storm split the heavens, the rain falling for seven days. "Mortals called me the One Who Struck the Heavens."
He built an army. Temples burned. Spires fell. In his hands, two black daggers drank light itself.
"My weapon, Nirvhal—a blade that devoured divinity."
Ten gods descended in wrath. Their war shattered continents. When it ended, only Karihad stood.
"I had slain them all. And in killing them, I destroyed everything worth saving."
He wandered the ruin for eons—a godless king in a graveyard of his own making.
"The Primordials came then," he said, as the stars in the vision reignited one by one. "They birthed new gods to fill the silence."
"But these gods repeated the same sins. They built their heavens atop old altars. Offered power for worship." His form seemed to fray, ancient and exhausted. "I could not kill them all. My time ran out."
He looked at Kaisen, eyes glowing faintly with dying light.
"But I swore—they are not safe."
The dying world faded. The luminous chamber returned. Karihad's form looked faded now, like smoke clinging to shape.
"You remain," he said softly.
He reached out and pressed a single, cold finger to Kaisen's forehead.
Light exploded.
A white-hot beam of power burned through Kaisen's skull and straight into his soul, lighting the cosmos behind his eyes. His body convulsed, veins lit like molten veins of silver. Visions of dying suns and screaming gods tore through him.
Karihad's voice thundered through his mind:
"You will inherit my will. My pain. My hatred. My strength. And my blade."
The torrent grew unbearable. Kaisen felt himself being peeled apart, cell by cell, until there was nothing left but the echo of a command.
"The gods are not meant to rule the universe…"
The light crescendoed, devouring everything.
"…You are."
Then—silence.
When Kaisen opened his eyes, he was on his knees, gasping. The visions were gone. The weight had vanished. But something inside him was no longer human.
Floating before him were system messages:
[ You have been granted an Unranked Will: The Godslayer's Will. ]
[ Ding! Potential Limit Reached. ]
[ Potential Cap… Broken. ]
[ Exclusive Authority Unlocked: Infinite Growth. ]
[ Congratulations! You are no longer bound by ceilings. ]
[ Your Level Potential: ∞ ]
Kaisen raised a trembling hand and stared at it.
He could feel it—an ocean of dormant power resting beneath his skin, vast and silent, waiting for his command. His body felt alien, reforged to hold cataclysm, yet utterly, undeniably his own.
Karihad had returned to his throne, but his form was translucent, ghostlike.
"Iris. Eros," he called, voice fading. "You may return. Iris, brief him once he stabilizes."
The two bowed deeply, their faces lined with grief.
"It was an honor to serve you, master," they said together, their voices breaking. And then they were gone.
Karihad sighed—a sound like the last ember dying in a forge.
"You'll leave here," he murmured to Kaisen, "with both good news and bad news for the universe."
Kaisen's voice was hoarse, almost a whisper. "What's the good news?"
A faint smile touched Karihad's fading lips. "Karihad the Godslayer… is dead."
The words hung heavy between them.
Kaisen's heart stuttered once. "…And the bad news?"
Karihad's form began to unravel, scattering into motes of light. His last words came from everywhere at once, a curse and a coronation:
"It's you."
The world twisted.
Kaisen was pulled through the void, the chamber vanishing behind him. He landed hard on corrupted ground, the air thick with blight and decay. The sky was a dark bruise.
He was outside the temple again—alone, alive, and remade.
He rose slowly, feeling the shift of infinity in his veins.
And far above, in the golden halls of heaven, a thousand gods he had never met felt a sudden, inexplicable chill.