Darkness wasn't new to Kael.
He had walked through the void between collapsing realms. He had watched stars die quietly and gods scream loudly. Darkness had always followed him.
But this darkness was different.
There was no pain.
No judgment.
No voice declaring his end.
Only silence.
For a moment that felt longer than eternity, Kael wondered if this was what true erasure felt like—existence stripped not by force, but by forgetfulness.
Then—
Cold.
His lungs burned.
Kael gasped, dragging air into his chest like it was the first breath he had ever taken. His body convulsed, nerves screaming as sensation rushed back all at once. He rolled onto cracked stone, coughing violently, fingers digging into ash and dust.
The sky above him was wrong.
Crimson clouds stretched across the horizon, split by jagged black fractures like scars carved directly into the heavens. Lightning crawled sideways through the clouds, silent but alive.
Kael pushed himself up slowly.
His hands were smaller. Weaker.
He froze.
That alone told him everything.
"No..." he whispered.
The voice that left his mouth was young—rough, unrefined, mortal.
He pressed a hand to his chest. His core—once an endless abyss of mana, authority, and dominion—was empty. Not sealed.
Gone.
His senses, once capable of mapping galaxies in a breath, barely reached past the ruined street around him. Buildings lay shattered, warped as if crushed by something enormous. Burn marks crawled across the ground in circular patterns—rituals, spells, system constructs.
This wasn't the world he ruled.
This wasn't any world he had destroyed.
Kael laughed quietly, the sound sharp and broken.
"So you didn't kill me," he murmured. "You reset me."
Memory flooded back in fragments.
The coalition.
The gods who feared his growth.
The systems that couldn't predict him anymore.
They had called him many things.
Destroyer.
Anomaly.
Tyrant.
His true title echoed in the back of his mind—heavy, ancient, and deliberately suppressed.
The One Who Broke the Final Rule.
Kael clenched his fists.
If this world had a system...
If it believed in levels, classes, and balance...
Then it had already made a mistake.
A sharp pain stabbed behind his eyes.
Suddenly, translucent symbols flickered into existence before him—jagged, unstable, and wrong.
⟦KØDEX BOOTING...⟧
⊘ ERROR
⊘ SUBJECT ID: INVALID
⊘ EXISTENCE STATUS: UNAUTHORIZED
Kael stared at the floating text.
Then he smiled.
"A broken system," he said softly. "You really are desperate."
The symbols glitched violently, rearranging themselves as if reacting to his awareness.
FORCED INITIALIZATION...
TEMPORARY DESIGNATION: KAEL
LEVEL: 0
CLASS: —
WARNING: MEMORY INTEGRITY TOO HIGH
Kael felt it then—the faintest spark deep within him.
Not power.
Knowledge.
They had stripped him of strength... but not understanding. He still remembered how systems lied. How gods cheated. How reality bent under pressure long enough for someone ruthless enough to reshape it.
Footsteps echoed in the distance.
Kael turned.
Figures moved through the ruins—armored, armed, their movements cautious but confident. Hunters. Survivors. Players in a world that pretended chaos could be managed.
Their eyes locked onto him.
"A civilian?" one of them said. "No—wait. He's unregistered."
Another raised their weapon. "Doesn't matter. Rifts spawn anything these days."
Kael straightened, dust falling from his torn clothes.
He felt weak. Fragile.
And yet—
Fear did not touch him.
Because Kael finally understood.
This world hadn't summoned him.
It had misfiled him.
And systems always paid for their errors.
Kael looked at the broken sky, at the fractured rules humming faintly around him.
"Very well," he whispered.
"Let's begin again."