The world greeted him with the smell of rotting mana and ash. The air was heavy, viscous, as if it had to be forced into the lungs rather than breathed. The sky hung low, torn into black slabs, between which a dull crimson light seeped slowly, like blood that had forgotten it was supposed to be warm. The ground beneath his feet was littered with bones, shards of spiritual artifacts, and the frozen corpses of cultivators who had never understood their epoch was over. Somewhere in the distance, the wind howled, and in that howl were the voices of the dead, trapped between worlds.
He woke in a crater, scorched by divine flame. His body was foreign, weak, mortal, unnaturally heavy. His heart beat slowly and unevenly, as if unwilling to accept it had to work again. His bones ached, his muscles trembled, and his skin was covered in a web of dark cracks from which murky spiritual energy seeped. He sat up, leaning on his palms, and slowly lifted his head. Before him lay a city. Or what remained of one. Towers that once stretched for the heavens were now broken fangs. Streets were choked with black vines, saturated with cursed mana. Among the ruins, figures that resembled people shuffled, but they were too slow, too jerky, too empty inside.
"So, I've returned," he thought, and there was no surprise, no joy in the thought.
Memory came in waves. In shards. He saw a throne made from the bones of gods. He saw heavens falling into fire. He saw his own hands tearing out the hearts of those called eternal. He remembered the screams. Remembered the prayers. Remembered the world breaking beneath his footsteps. And he remembered how, in the final moment, his name had been burned from the very fabric of reality.
He rose to his feet. His knees buckled, but he held. He had fallen too many times to allow himself to lie down now.
In the air before his eyes, ancient symbols flared. They did not glow; they smoldered, like embers arranged in the form of seals.
The Celestial Registry had activated.
The words did not sound. They were stamped directly into his consciousness.
Subject detected
Status: Prohibited
Soul origin: Unverified
Karmic weight: Exceeds measurement limits
He smiled. His lips were dry, and blood immediately welled on them.
"Even after death, you still want to tally my sins."
The next line appeared with a delay, as if the system itself was uncertain.
Class confirmed.
Fallen Epoch Sovereign.
Something tightened in his chest. Not pain. Not fear. More an echo of who he had been.
Title active.
Godslayer.
A long, drawn-out roar echoed in the distance. From behind a ruined wall emerged a creature that had once been human. Its skin was grey and cracked, its eyes burned with a murky green fire, and from its chest protruded a shattered sword fragment covered in the runes of an ancient sect. It moved unevenly, but in every step there was the force of a cultivator unwilling to die even after death.
A zombie cultivator. Judging by its aura, it had once been at the Core Formation stage.
The creature stopped, lifted its head, and inhaled the air. Its pupils dilated as it sensed his soul.
The roar turned into a shriek.
From the ruins, others began to emerge. One. Two. Five. Dozens. They shambled toward him, stumbling, falling, rising again. Their bodies were different, but inside each burned the same hunger.
He closed his eyes.
"Even the dead want my blood."
His body was weak. His core empty. His soul damaged. But it didn't matter. Strength was not always born in muscles. Sometimes it lived in memory.
He stepped forward.
The first zombie lunged at him, swinging a spear fragment. He dodged, barely looking, grabbed the shaft, and drove his palm into the creature's chest. Bones cracked like rotten wood. He tore out its core, still warm, still pulsing with remnants of spiritual energy.
The system responded instantly.
Target eliminated.
Memory fragment acquired.
A foreign life flashed in his mind. A youth from the Cloud Peak Sect. Dreams of ascension. First love. An oath of loyalty to the heavens. And the fear in the final moment when the sky began to fall.
He clenched the core in his hand, and it crumbled to dust.
"You were all the same. You prayed to those who devoured you."
He moved forward.
Zombies surrounded him from all sides. He struck without technique, without style, without mercy. His blows were simple but precise. Throat. Heart. Core. Soul. He tore them apart with his hands, broke them with his feet, used weapon fragments as extensions of his own bones. Blood soaked the earth. Mana swirled into the air like smoke.
Each kill brought him memories. Each death added another voice to the choir of the cursed now residing in his head.
When the last zombie fell, the city grew quiet once more.
He stood amidst the corpses, drenched in blood, breathing heavily, his eyes empty.
The system manifested again.
Body stabilized.
Experience acquired.
Cultivation path unlocked.
He laughed. The laugh was hoarse and alien.
"You think I'll become part of your cycle again."
He raised his head to the dead sky.
"I am not a hero. I am not a savior. I am not redemption."
The wind picked up ash and whirled it around him like black snow.
"I am what comes when a world no longer deserves salvation."
Somewhere far away, beyond the rifts in the continents and the layers of time, something ancient and divine shuddered.
It remembered a name that should not exist.
And he took the first step on the road leading to a new end of an epoch.