Xayne sighed, flexed his fingers once, then placed his palm on the Tome.
Silence.
One second. Two.
People began to snicker.
"Ha! It's broken."
"Maybe he's too much of an omen for the gods to even acknowledge."
Even Xayne let himself imagine it.
Now wouldn't that be a gift? No spark, no fate, no leash… just a quiet fuck-off into the ruins and I'm done.
He was almost smiling.
And then—
BOOM.
A shockwave of prismatic light exploded from the Tome's surface, blasting a blinding pillar of radiance high into the sky. It was so sudden and violent, it silenced even the gasps. The air rippled with raw energy, throwing dust and petals into spirals around the stage.
The crowd recoiled in unison.
Mayor Donvar stepped back, arm raised to shield his face.
The VIPs were on their feet.
The Tome shone with a wild, untamed brilliance, its glyphs twisting, writhing, reacting—not gently like with the others, but chaotically, as though something inside it had been wrenched open.
The beacon of light that had erupted from the Tome still blazed furiously, shooting toward the heavens like the gods themselves had cast down a lightning strike. Its radiant pillar shimmered in every color imaginable—blue, violet, gold, and then beyond even that—as if the sky itself was being torn open.
People across the plaza stared upward, mouths agape, shielding their eyes with trembling hands. The crowd was utterly still. The mayor's booming voice had long gone silent. Even the breeze that had been weaving through the decorated banners stilled, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
"What… in the name of the Eight…" Mayor Halzen muttered, barely loud enough to hear.
He looked from the beacon to the Tome, back to Xayne, and then back to the sky, as though trying to force it all into some kind of logical sense. But it wasn't working.
Nothing made sense.
Not this light.
Not the boy.
In the VIP box, the elderly woman sat forward, her knuckles white on her cane. Her eyes, sharp as glass, reflected the rainbow brilliance of the sky.
"This… This isn't just any Liberation. This is unfathomable."
Behind her, murmurs broke out among the other distinguished guests.
"It's not possible."
"He's a Zenith!"
"They do not possess anything worthy of such providence!"
Even among the high-born elites, fear was palpable.
The beacon in the sky then began to narrow, the swirling lights tightening into a thin thread of brilliance, like a blade of sunlight. Then, in a blink, it vanished—leaving nothing but a faint pulse in the air and the silence of a world too stunned to breathe.
As eyes slowly turned back to the stage, the shock only deepened.
Xayne stood bathed in a pristine white aura.
Not pale. Not silver. But blinding white, so pure and overwhelming that it seemed to erase the shadow around him. His entire body was enveloped in the ethereal aura, like he'd been dipped in starlight and reemerged superior.
"...No… It can't be…" the mayor whispered.
The crowd erupted in hushed gasps, disbelief crackling like fire between them.
"White?"
"Did we all go mad?"
"This is a trick—some kind of cruel joke!"
"He's a Zenith—he can't have a white destiny!"
White.
The color of a Legendary Fate.
A destiny so rare that it was treated like a myth.
It meant that the threads of the universe had woven this person into something unmatched—someone who could shift nations, challenge the world and remake history.
The destiny of a chosen one.
And it had chosen Xayne Axiar.
The mayor's mind reeled, logic collapsing under disbelief.
No… This is wrong. He is one of them. A Zenith. Not just any Zenith at that!
Their blood brings ruin—chaos—plagues! This must be a misreading, a mistake!
But the Tome never lied.
It was an artifact sanctioned by the Eight Pillars after all.
And in his heart, he knew.
Meanwhile, at the center of it all, Xayne was burning.
Not literally.
Not from the aura.
But from rage.
No. No. No. No no no no! Fucking hell, why me?!
His fists trembled at his sides.
Wasn't this cursed life enough already? Haven't I been beaten down enough?! And now this? This joke of a blessing?!
He looked down at the white glow wrapping his skin.
It made his stomach churn.
Give this shit to a fucking pebble for all I care. To one of those little empire puppies. Not me. I didn't ask for this.
I didn't want this. I don't want their eyes on me.
The only thing that could make it worse… would be—
A pulse rippled from the Tome.
And then it began again.
The light started coalescing, gathering around his chest like a funnel of divine fire. His eyes snapped wide.
"Don't you fucking dare."
He turned to run, tried to step away, anything that would stop this all—but the light was faster.
A streak of radiant white shot from the Tome straight into his chest.
CRACK.
Chains. He could feel them—inside him—breaking.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The sound of shattered bindings echoed not just across the plaza but throughout the entire city. Windows trembled. Birds scattered. Even those not present in the square would stop what they were doing as the noise reverberated like the collapse of a prison forged by the divine.
Silence. Absolute, unnatural silence.
All eyes returned to Xayne.
And there, hovering in front of him, was a tome of his own.
It spun lazily, shimmering gold, shaped like ancient knowledge made manifest. Upon its surface was a sigil no one in the crowd recognized: a blinding glow of a golden sun.
Even the mayor's mouth moved but no words came.
In that moment, Xayne looked down at his chest.
He could feel it.
Power.
Real.
Tangible.
Living.
Deep within.
Moving like a second heartbeat.
And he hated it.
This should make anyone else weep with joy. But all I feel… is fury.
The mayor stepped up to the podium again, sweat glistening on his brow. He tried to speak, clearing his throat as the mic crackled.
"T-The final candidate… has also…"
His voice cracked.
"...has also become Unchained."
Another silence followed.
Not a celebratory one.
A fearful one.
Then suddenly—
CRRRK.
A sound—high, sharp, unreal.
People began looking upward.
The sky was cracking.
Faint at first. Like hairline fractures across a pane of glass. But then pieces began to fall—crystalline shards dissolving before they hit the ground.
And beyond the sky, where the blue once stretched, something else watched.
A massive, singular eye. Ancient. Alien. With a pupil like a spiral of worlds, watching through the rift in the firmament.
Gasps turned to screams.
The children began crying.
People scrambled out of their seats.
One clergywoman collapsed to her knees, chanting prayers in tongues of all the religions she knew.
Even the regal elderly woman in the VIP section rose fully now, her cane forgotten, lips tight with dread.
"That eye," she said. "It can't be... It mustn't be..."
A catastrophe had arrived.
The regal woman stood frozen in the VIP box, her elegant posture betraying the violent storm within. Her grip tightened on the balustrade, the polished wood creaking under her trembling fingers.
The sky above had shattered. Not metaphorically—literally. The cerulean veil that separated the realms from the horrors beyond now bore a fissure, jagged and malicious. And through it, that eye had looked.
She knew this terror. She had seen it once before.
"Five centuries," she whispered, voice like the last breath of a dying star. "It hasn't happened in five hundred years... not since the seal was placed... not even from the fractures."
This was not a mere rupture in space. No. This was the start to an Advent.
And at the center of the chaos, Xayne stared up at the eye.
He blinked up at the crack in the sky with narrowed eyes, confusion painted across his face.
"What in the actual hell am I looking at...?"
The eye—massive beyond comprehension—loomed like a god's judgment. And even as it seemed to oversee the entire plaza, Xayne felt its gaze focus.
On him.
His fingers tightened unconsciously around the book still glowing golden in his hand. It pulsed with a faint warmth, like a warning or maybe—a plea.
"Nope. Nope. Nope. I'm not dealing with cosmic bullshit today. I'm out."
But before he could even move—
The eye blinked.
And then it was gone, leaving behind a gaping void in the sky, a perfect circle of endless blackness. For the briefest moment, there was silence.
Then a roar came.
It was no single sound. It was a cacophony. Like glass grinding against bone. Like steel howling through water. Like the death rattle of a thousand entities.
Everyone screamed. Everyone bled.
Ears, eyes, noses—every orifice poured red. Men collapsed, women fell to their knees, and children wailed in blind terror. Even Xayne was not free from this.
Only the regal woman remained upright, her aura flaring like a shield against the sonic onslaught.
And then it descended.
From the wound in the sky, something dropped. A colossal shadow, tearing through the air like an anchor hurled from the heavens. It smashed into the plaza's stage like divine judgment, sending an eruption of debris and force that hurled Xayne, the mayor, and the Liberation Tome like toys in a storm.
Xayne collided with a nearby statue, stone cracking beneath his spine. Pain exploded through him. He landed hard, vision doubled, the breath knocked out of his lungs. And yet—he still held the book.
Dust swallowed the world in a choking cloud. Panic flooded the air. People screamed, ran, or stood paralyzed in mindless terror. The primal fear of a sentient being confronted with the unknowable.
And then the dust settled.
And the abomination was revealed.
It stood at almost twenty feet, its limbs bestial yet twisted, a conflicting mix between shapes too odd to explain.
Its skin—if it could be called that—was a smooth carapace of contradictory textures: one side like polished obsidian, the other like raw flesh sculpted by nightmare.
Edges ran along its shoulders and spine, smoothly cut, like precision blades crafted from silence and madness. Its head resembled a malformed jackal, jaw unhinged, revealing teeth that did not belong in three-dimensional space. Eyes—hundreds of them—opened and closed at random within its maw, blinking with no rhythm, no sanity.
From its back, tendrils writhed, not like tentacles but like malformed wings trying to recall what flying meant. Its scent, even at a distance, was like a memory of burning books, screams, and winter.
And from its presence—
—Despair.
The regal woman nearly fell to one knee, a rare crack in her immortal poise. Her eyes wide.
"A Conflict... One of those abominations has broken through... Gods help us all."
Mayor Donvar groaned, body broken, mind trying to stitch itself back together. He crawled across the shattered stage, blood pooling around his knees.
His eyes lifted to the creature—and his heart shattered.
There was no misunderstanding it.
He had never seen a Conflict in his life. His father and his father and his father's father had never seen one as well.
And yet, some deep truth in his soul screamed the name.
"It is the end," he whispered. "It's the end of all things."
His thoughts scrambled for a way out. Anything that could prolong his existence.
Only an Unchained could face such an abomination. That was their duty since ancient times, after all, but as his thoughts ran through the available ones.
The Victor boy. He has just Liberated. He has not even assimilated the Codex yet. He is no different from a mundane like me in this situation.
The Unchained who were supposed to be in the city by had been sent on an expedition a month prior and thus none were there.
If I had known, I would have never sent them away.
Then—
The VIPs. The High Solicitor. She is an Unchained. She can fight. She must fight.
She must!
He turned.
And saw the shadow.
The Conflict stood over him.
No...
There was no chance to scream.
There was no moment of resistance.
Just a sickening thud.
The mayor of the city was reduced to paste. Flattened by the mere force of the Conflict's brutal paw strike. Blood and bone scattered like sand. Nothing remained but a smudge and an echo.
The world had changed.
And even more death descended.