The white door did not lead to a realm, but to a truth. Lin Chen stepped across the threshold and found himself in a place of absolute, silent perfection. True Heaven was not a kingdom of spires and choirs, but an infinite, serene plane of soft light, where the very air was peace and the ground was solidified tranquility. There was no up or down, no past or future—only a single, eternal present.
And at its heart, a flame.
It was the Eternal Flame, the source from which his own spark had been kindled. It was not a blaze of fury or power, but a quiet, white, almost sorrowful light. And it was dying. Its light flickered weakly, its rhythm slow and faltering, like the last heartbeat of a universe.
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Kneeling before the fading flame was a figure that stole the breath from Lin Chen's lungs. It was himself. Not a reflection or a sin, but a future echo. This Lin Chen was ancient, his face a roadmap of infinite sorrow, his eyes hollowed-out galaxies that had witnessed the end of all things. His armor was scarred beyond recognition, not by blades, but by the relentless erosion of eternity.
This was the Last Guardian.
His voice, when it came, was the sound of dust settling on the graves of stars.
"I have waited…through the birth and death of countless cycles. I have fought wars beyond your comprehension. And I have failed. The Flame dies, as it always does. You are the final iteration. Your only choice is the one I never had the strength to make. Kill me and take my burden… or turn away, and become me, waiting here for an end that will never come."
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The plane of light dissolved, replaced by a single, looping memory from the Origin. Lin Chen saw it all. He saw himself—the primordial Heir—ignite the Eternal Flame in a glorious burst of hope. He saw it burn brightly, sustaining all of creation. And then, inevitably, he saw it begin to fade, its energy spent, its purpose fulfilled. He watched himself, cycle after cycle, eon after eon, try to stoke it, to save it, to find a new fuel source. And he watched himself fail. Every. Single. Time.
He was not looking at a trial, but at a prison sentence. The ultimate fate of the First Flame was not to rule, but to preside over its own endless, slow funeral.
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The dying flame itself spoke, its voice a whisper that was both his and something infinitely older and more tired.
"To save me…is to lose yourself. You must become the vessel. You must pour your consciousness, your memories, your very 'Lin Chen-ness' into my core to rekindle me. You will not die. You will become… this. This silence. This vigil. You will lose your name. You will forget your wars. You will become the peace you fought for, and in doing so, forget you ever fought at all."
It was the ultimate sacrifice. Not death, but erasure of the self for the sake of the whole.
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Lin Chen looked from the dying flame, to his own broken future self, and back to the flame. He saw the entire, beautiful, terrible tapestry of existence—the Fleshlands, the Nine Realms, the Fallen Stars, the Crimson War—all of it depending on this one, flickering light.
He raised Heavenslayer, its obsidian length now humming with the complete song of creation. But he did not point it at the Guardian or the Flame.
He understood the final, ultimate stage of his path. It was beyond defiance, beyond acceptance. It was absolute, selfless love.
True First Flame Mantra: Ultimate Stage — Flame of Selfless Origin
"I will not lose myself," he said, his voice calm and certain, filling the silent heaven. "And I will not let you die. I will not become the silent guardian in the garden. I will become the garden itself. I will not lose my war; I will become the peace that follows."
He reversed Heavenslayer and, with a motion of infinite grace and finality, plunged it into his own chest.
But it was not an act of suicide. It was an act of fusion. He did not pour his consciousness into the Flame; he opened his own True First Flame and invited the Eternal Flame in.
The two flames—the heir and the origin—merged. Not as conqueror and conquered, but as two halves of a single, eternal truth. The white flame blazed with newfound vitality, now tinged with the gold of hard-won experience and the grey of enduring ash.
Eternal Origin God Realm — Achieved.
He was no longer the guardian of the flame. He was the Flame, and the Flame was him, eternally sustained by the endless, self-renewing cycle of his own will and experience.
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The moment the fusion completed, True Heaven breathed. The plane of light expanded in a wave of gentle, irresistible power, washing through all layers of reality. In the Mortal Realms, the Fleshlands bloomed with life for the first time. In the Immortal Realm, the Fallen felt their wounds heal not just physically, but spiritually. The False Gods, their purpose of maintaining a flawed order now obsolete, dissolved into motes of light, their energy returning to the cosmic flow. Every war, every conflict born from the initial flaw of the First Sin, simply… ended. A profound, deep peace settled over all of creation.
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In the newfound, perfect silence of a healed cosmos, a new voice spoke. It was the voice of the merged Flame, now whole and complete, and it held a note of grim warning.
"You have saved me. You have saved all that Is. But Existence is not the final state. I am the light within the house. But outside the house… there is the Outer Void. It is not the peaceful nothing of the Origin. It is the active, hungry Nothing that was never born, that resents the very concept of Is. And it has felt our light. It knows we are here."
As the voice faded, a tear appeared in the fabric of True Heaven. It was not black, but a colour that did not exist, a non-color that hurt to perceive. The Outer Void. And from it, a pressure of absolute, alien negation began to seep in.
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Lin Chen, now the living, conscious heart of a complete and peaceful universe, stood before the tear into the Outer Void. He had won every war, healed every wound, and absolved every sin. He had become the very peace he sought.
And now, a new war was here. A war not for a throne, or for freedom, or for redemption, but for the very right of existence to be.
He took a step forward, towards the nothingness.
Volume 4: Eternal Flame, Eternal War — Ends.
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