Darkness stretched endlessly.Adrian floated within it — weightless, formless, silent.Somewhere beyond this void, the echoes of reality still screamed. The Chamber of Truth was gone. The Queen, Carmila, the Seer — all reduced to whispers across dimensions.
Then came the voice.Not sound. Not words. A resonance.The kind of vibration that shapes worlds.
You wish to understand what you are, child of flesh.Then listen, and remember.
Before him, the void rippled. Stars were born and died in seconds, painting creation itself like a breath on glass.Each flicker became a sigil — and each sigil became a Rank.
"Mortal Ranks," the voice said.Its tone was neither kind nor cruel — merely inevitable.
From G to SSS… the measure of fragile existence.The spark, the climb, the fall. A ladder mortals built to give meaning to struggle.
Images formed — soldiers, magi, kings, heroes — fighting, dying, ascending.
G through B, the realm of mortality. A through S, the realm of greatness. SS and SSS — the illusion of divinity.
A soft laugh followed — ancient, echoing.
They believe SSS is the end. The "Cosmic Tier," where worlds bend to their will. But I tell you — it is only the edge of my shadow.
The void quaked. Each word pulled the fabric of reality taut.
"Divine and Godlike Ranks," the voice continued.Stars flared, forming vast figures — gods, titans, and beings made of light and law.
Divine. Divine Lord. Supreme. Supreme Lord. God. Omnipotent. Creator.Seventeen layers of existence — each one born from the echo of my pulse.
The visions unfolded before him — entire universes kneeling to luminous deities, galaxies swirling around colossal beings that whispered creation into being.
They rule worlds and shape laws. They command time and forge life. But they are nothing more than the dust that settled when I exhaled.
The voice grew distant, vast beyond imagination.
When they forged the Ranks, they sought to comprehend me — to cage infinity within numbers. But tell me, vessel… how do you rank what existed before reality itself?
Adrian's breath hitched. "Then… what am I?"
For a moment, silence. Then the cosmos itself seemed to draw in a breath.
You are the gate through which I dream.The seal that binds what cannot be born nor die.Your flesh holds the pulse that birthed mana — the first heartbeat the universe ever felt.
And then — the seal stirred.
Across infinite planes, the stars screamed.In the deepest pits of the Demon Realms, the Overlord, the Lord of Demon Lords — an entity of SS+ rank — rose from his throne of bone, his eyes widening in horror.
"This pressure… it cannot be…"
In the Heavenly Realms, seraphs of light fell to their knees, wings folding as divine halos cracked.The gods of countless worlds — those of Divine and Supreme Rank — turned their gaze toward a single point in the mortal plane, their minds trembling on the brink of madness.
The void between universes twisted.Beings of Omnipotent essence — who had not moved since the dawn of time — stirred, if only for an instant.
And for the briefest moment…everything that existed remembered fear.
Adrian clutched his chest, agony flooding through him as his veins glowed like rivers of starlight.
"Why… me?"
Because your soul is a fragment of my core. Because your birth was the recoil of creation itself.And because the seal is breaking.
The stars flickered — and in their reflection, he saw something vast and unspeakable moving behind them.A silhouette that stretched beyond galaxies, wrapped in chains of light and darkness intertwined.
When the last chain breaks, all seventeen ranks will fall into one truth — mine.
Adrian's heartbeat thundered, merging with the cosmic pulse.
Now, tell me, vessel… will you ascend? Or will you remember what you truly are?
The voice faded, leaving only silence — and the lingering echo of something awakening in every corner of existence.