PROLOGUE
The Crown Was Never Meant to Exist
The gods of Erebos believed in balance.
Life was borrowed.
Death was repayment.
Reincarnation was profit.
Souls arrived, were weighed, and placed where they would yield the most suffering before breaking.
That was the system.
It had never failed.
Until one soul refused to stay broken.
CHAPTER 1
Rebirth as a Defect
Kael Verdan died without dignity.
No final words.
No loved ones at his bedside.
Just the steady beep of a machine and the quiet relief that the pain was finally ending.
Then the pain came back.
He gasped and sucked in air that burned his lungs like ash. His eyes snapped open to a blood-red sky, pulsing as if the heavens themselves were alive.
He lay on cracked black stone.
Not a hospital.
Not Earth.
[Initiating Reincarnation Protocol]
[Soul Integrity… Failing]
A cold, emotionless voice echoed inside his skull.
Kael tried to move. His body responded sluggishly, unfamiliar and light, like it hadn't fully decided to exist yet.
"What… is this?" he whispered.
The sky darkened.
Something vast shifted behind the clouds.
[Error Detected]
[Soul Classification: Hollowborn]
The word struck him harder than death.
Hollow.
Empty.
Defective.
[Estimated Survival Time: 3 Days]
Kael laughed weakly.
"So I don't even get a chance," he muttered.
The ground trembled.
From the horizon, shapes crawled toward him—twisted silhouettes dragging malformed limbs across the stone. Monsters born from rot and despair.
Above them all, a colossal figure emerged from the clouds.
A god.
Its form shifted endlessly—wings of gold folding into bone, faces blooming and rotting across its surface.
Thousands of eyes locked onto Kael.
"Another failed vessel," it said.
"Dispose of it."
The pressure crushed him instantly.
Bones shattered.
Organs ruptured.
Pain erased thought.
Darkness swallowed him whole