Prologue: The Ambush at the Edge of Divinity
The atmosphere splintered as Asterius, the God of Destruction, collapsed onto the shattered summit of Mount Thaire.
His frame shuddered under the violent tremors of a cultivation backlash.
Golden fractures spiderwebbed across his flesh, bleeding raw divine energy into the wind.
He had been mere heartbeats away from an epiphany—a transcendental breakthrough that would have elevated him past the very constraints of reality and into true, absolute Godhood.
But fate proved to be a cruel master.
Three figures materialized from the tempestuous sky, their oppressive auras suffocating the land below.
First was Cyrus, the Overlord of Blood.
His crimson armor pulsed like a living heart, while his scythe, Blood Requiem, rasped the names of a thousand slaughtered foes.
Beside him stood Altinius Reaves, the Child of Thunder, with arcs of lightning coiling tightly around his gauntlets and eyes burning like twin storms of azure fury.
Finally, Tian Shen, the Martial God, whose clenched fists radiated the crushing density of collapsing stars, his mere stance warping the fabric of space.
“Brother,” Cyrus sneered, his voice dripping with venomous mockery.
“Did you truly believe I would permit your ascension?”
Asterius offered no reply.
“Come now, where is that legendary arrogance?
Where is that haughty countenance?” Cyrus demanded, his tone sharp with derision.
“Tch.
Even brought to your knees, you maintain that insufferable, nonchalant stare!”
Asterius coughed a spray of crimson, but his grip tightened around his—
…natal weapon, Oblivion’s Maw—a pitch-black blade vibrating with the absolute laws of destruction.
“You’ve always been a coward, Cyrus,” Asterius spat, his voice a seismic growl.
“That is why greatness will always remain beyond your reach.”
Cyrus’s crimson eyes flared with malice.
His scythe, Blood Requiem, wept cursed blood.
“Brother, you were never destined to ascend.
This is where your journey ends.”
“Then come,” Asterius roared.
“And witness for yourself why the realms feared me!”
BOOM!
The confrontation erupted with a cataclysmic blast that instantly vaporized the mountaintop.
Altinius struck first, his thunderclap fist colliding with Asterius’s blade.
BOOM!
The impact unleashed a tyrannical shockwave, leveling forests for miles around.
Arcs of lightning danced across Asterius’s flesh, searing it to the bone, yet he countered instantly—a savage backhanded slash that tore a canyon into the bedrock.
Tian Shen blurred into motion.
His God-Shattering Palm slammed directly into Asterius’s ribs, splintering bone.
Asterius merely grinned through teeth stained crimson, driving a brutal elbow straight into Tian Shen’s throat and sending the Martial God skidding backward through the dirt.
Cyrus bided his time, his scythe drinking deeply from the spilled lifeblood of both his brother and the shattered earth.
With a flick of his wrist, he commanded rivers of cursed blood to rise.
The dark torrents coiled around Asterius like hungry serpents, dragging him down into the crimson depths.
You’re outmatched!” Cyrus taunted, his voice dripping with condescension.
“Is this truly all you—”
Asterius snapped back, his eyes igniting like twin crimson lanterns.
A grim smirk cut across his face.
“Eclipse Protocol.”
Cyrus’s pupils instantly constricted.
A sudden, suffocating dread seized him, forcing him to retreat.
Before he could leap back, Asterius’s body erupted into a torrent of devouring darkness.
The volatile backlash of energy he had been suppressing for so long now surged through his veins, transmuting his agonizing wounds into pure, unadulterated power.
Oblivion’s Maw thrummed with a heavy, ominous resonance.
“Celestial Severance!”
Asterius swung his blade, anchoring his strike upon Cyrus—who had already blinked across the battlefield, teleporting miles away in a desperate bid for safety.
Far across the horizon, a panicked Cyrus roared, “BLOOD FIELD: BLOOD ASYLUM!”
An immense sea of blood materialized out of thin air, swirling into a violent vortex.
It hardened into a colossal, protective cocoon around him.
At least, that was the intention.
But Asterius’s sword had already moved.
There was no blinding flash.
No cataclysmic explosion.
There was only a single, mathematically perfect line carved directly into reality itself—utterly defying the constraints of distance and space.
The blackened sky above split in two, the clouds parting as if severed by a cosmic blade.
Space fractured, shattered not by mere physical momentum, but by the sheer, absolute concept of the strike.
Shiiiing!
The impenetrable blood cocoon was cleaved cleanly down the middle.
It burst outward, collapsing into harmless puddles to reveal a utterly paralyzed Cyrus.
“Im-impossible…” Cyrus stammered, his voice trembling as his mind fractured.
“H-how are you wielding your Laws?
It should be impossible in your condition!”
A crimson fracture split his forehead, slicing down his torso before his entire body detonated into a gory mist.
BOOM!
Yet, no triumph touched Asterius’s features—only a chilling, unnatural stillness.
“How long do you intend to stand there, Altinius?
Tian Shen?” Asterius’s voice cut through the ringing silence.
He spoke the names of his assailants—once his brothers-in-arms, now his bitter archenemies—shattering their stunned paralysis.
“Let us finish what we began,” Asterius commanded.
The truce shattered as a fresh cataclysm erupted.
Altinius conjured a violent tempest, weaving a localized cage of crackling electricity before raining jagged lightning spears directly onto Asterius.
Darting through the blinding barrage, Asterius raised his blade, drinking in the raw electrical surge.
With a ferocious counter-swing, he unleashed the stolen energy in a blackened wave, tearing through Altinius’s guard with terrifying speed and surgical precision.
His blade sought to cleave Altinius’s primordial heart in two.
Though Altinius jerked back to evade the lethal bisection, he could not outrun the arc’s trailing edge.
SPLASH!
A torrent of golden blood erupted as Altinius was blasted clean through the sky, colliding violently into a distant peak.
BOOM!
Before the dust could settle, Tian Shen materialized from the ether.
“Celestial Annihilation Fist!” he roared, driving his ultimate strike forward.
Asterius threw up a desperate parry, but the concussive shockwave pulverized his left arm into a fine red vapor.
Ignoring the agony, Asterius lunged through the spray of his own blood, driving his forehead directly into Tian Shen’s face with such savage force that the Martial God’s nose exploded in a burst of divine, golden gore.
gurgle…
gurgle…”
A pool of blood spread behind Asterius, rapidly coalescing into a humanoid shape: Cyrus.
The blade Blood Requiem flashed in his grip, carving a savage gash across Asterius’s spine.
Crimson spray erupted like a geyser.
Before the blood could hit the ground, Asterius whirled.
He seized Cyrus by the throat and slammed him into the earth, the impact triggering a localized earthquake.
BOOM!
Without breaking his grip, Asterius hoisted Cyrus aloft and stared into his eyes with a burning, crimson glare.
“GAZE OF DESTRUCTION!”
At the invocation, Cyrus’s writhing form detonated into a cloud of ash.
Yet, the trio’s synergy was seamless.
Flanking the behemoth, Altinius channeled the raw fury of a tempest into a single, devastating punch.
Simultaneously, Tian Shen struck with his God Suppressing Pressure Points, paralyzing Asterius where he stood.
Suddenly, Cyrus—seemingly destroyed moments prior—reanimated in the distance.
He tore open a bleeding, crimson rift, unleashing a tide of a thousand blood-born specters upon Asterius.
Graahh!
Squeee!
Kiarrhh!
The abominations loosed disjointed, unnatural screeches as they swarmed Asterius, burying him beneath a mass of thrashing limbs.
“WRATH OF OBLIVION!”
Oblivion’s Mau hummed in violent retaliation.
A blinding flash of crimson light detonated outward, vaporizing everything in its path.
PUFF!
The specter horde dissolved into nothingness, leaving Asterius standing alone, battered and bleeding.
Then, his knees buckled, and Asterius collapsed.
Asterius fell to his knees, Oblivion’s Maw slipping from his numb grasp.
Cyrus and the others closed in, looming over him like vultures.
“Any last words?” Cyrus sneered, raising Blood Requiem.
The blade hovered inches from Asterius, ready for the final blow.
Asterius looked up, his voice tight.
“Selene…
she wouldn’t betray me so easily.
What did you do to her?”
Cyrus’s lips twisted into a hideous, mocking grin.
“Oh, Selene?
That bitch you always kept trailing behind you?” He threw his head back, letting out a sharp, mocking bark.
“Hahaha…
Ha!” The chuckle warped into manic, unrestrained laughter.
“That pitiful soul always had a soft spot for you.
She waited so desperately for you to acknowledge her pathetic feelings.
But you!
My dear brother!
Hahaha—you completely ignored her, entirely consumed by your cultivation!
So, being the good brother I am, I took it upon myself to ‘mend’ her broken heart.
Can you believe it?
She actually thinks I love her!
How utterly revolting!
Hahahahaha!”
He dissolved into another fit of wild, echoing laughter.
“…Oh, I see,” Asterius replied.
His tone was deadpan, completely devoid of emotion.
The laughter died instantly in Cyrus’s throat.
“‘Oh, I see’?!
That’s all you have to say?!” He stared down, starved for a reaction.
He wanted rage, weeping, or despair—anything but this freezing indifference.
The calm response only stoked his fury.
“Since those are your LAST WORDS, THEN DIE!!”
Cyrus swung his scythe, bringing it rushing down for the kill.
But mid-arc, he abruptly froze.
Every instinct in his body screamed in terror: Danger!
Danger!
Out of thin air, ethereal purple-gold chains materialized.
They whipped through the space, coiling tightly around him and instantly sealing off every possible escape route.
A suffocating, malevolent pressure bled from the chains, forcing Altinius and Tian Shen backward in sheer terror.
“How…
impossible…” Tian Shen stammered.
“The Chains of Order?!”
The ultimate executioner of the cosmos.
These chains were deployed by the universe itself to erase anyone foolish enough to defy reality and ascend to godhood.
Their power was so absolute that a mere brush could obliterate a demigod from existence—a localized cataclysm feared by every mortal who ever reached for divinity.
It was an authority meant for the universe alone.
Yet here it was, bound to the will of Asterius.
Trapped in his own shock, Altinius didn’t feel the phantom warmth of a mysterious rune flaring to life across his back.
Suddenly—shwew!
A column of ethereal light swallowed Altinius whole, erasing him from existence in a heartbeat.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Tian Shen roared, stumbling backward as panic took hold.
Crack!
Cra-crack!
The fabric of space fractured.
Jagged lines of energy carved a glowing rune directly into the air, splitting the dimension open before collapsing inward to construct a humanoid silhouette.
The blinding radiance shattered, revealing Cyrus standing in the clearing.
Asterius and Tian Shen froze, utterly paralyzed by the impossibility of his return.
“Hahaha!” Cyrus’s laughter cut through the silence, dripping with mockery.
“Who knew the Great Asterius was reduced to launching insidious sneak attacks?
Surprised?
You should be.
Behold the ultimate authority of my weapon—Absolute FATE REVERSAL!”
So, you traded places with Altinius?” Asterius’s eyes narrowed, sharp and calculating.
“Yes—always quick to catch on, aren’t you?” Cyrus replied.
His voice dropped, cutting through the air with an icy chill.
“But it cost me my weapon.
How do you intend to compensate me for that, brother?”
Asterius met the demand with absolute silence.
“Then tell me this,” Cyrus snarled, his gaze locking onto the ethereal bindings floating nearby.
“How are you able to wield the Chains of Order?” He stared at the hovering links, caught in a volatile trance of desperate greed and rising fear.
Asterius’s vision began to fracture into darkness.
He nearly buckled to one knee, his body broken beyond repair.
Ruptured by bone-deep lacerations, his flesh clung to him, charred black by the devastating strike of lightning.
One of his arms was completely gone.
Beneath the physical carnage, his very soul was splintering apart, and his sea of consciousness lay shattered from the violent magical backlash.
Yet, bound together by nothing but raw, indomitable willpower, he refused to fall.
Suddenly, Asterius drew a mysterious, glowing scroll from his robes.
The sudden radiance forced Cyrus and Tian Shen to instantly recoil, bracing themselves with caution.
Asterius’s failing fingers brushed the ancient artifact—a relic older than the gods themselves, known only as the Sanskrit of Samsara.
As his skin broke its surface, a chorus of timeless whispers flooded his mind:
“To live is to cycle.
To die is to begin.”
In a flash of desperation, Cyrus manifested a pair of spears forged from crimson blood and hurled them forward.
But mid-flight, the weapons abruptly froze, vibrating violently in the air as if slamming into an invisible wall.
The fabric of reality inverted.
“We will meet again if Fate permits,” Asterius whispered, his voice rising with sudden, fierce conviction.
“No—we will definitely meet again.
And you had best be prepared to die when that hour comes!”
With those final words, Asterius’s physical form dissolved into a brilliant cloud of golden motes.
Left with nothing but empty air, Cyrus’s scream of unbridled fury echoed across the dimensions.