Chapter 14
The newborn cosmos shuddered as two existences—one of light, one of shadow—stood upon the same plane.
Nyxen floated in the center of the infinite realm he had created, surrounded by the pulse of galaxies that obeyed his heartbeat. Opposite him, descending from the wound in the heavens, came the Celestial Authority—an embodiment of all divine order, the collective consciousness of the ancient gods.
Its wings stretched beyond sight, woven from laws of time, causality, and faith. Every motion rewrote existence. Every breath carried weight enough to crush worlds.
And yet, Nyxen did not flinch.
He stood tall—his long black hair rippling in the storm of creation, red eyes gleaming like twin stars on the verge of collapse. His golden mark pulsed, veins glowing with sacred blasphemy.
"So this is what remains of divinity?" he said quietly. "A light that fears the dark it left behind."
The Authority's voice was both thunder and silence.
"We are balance. You are deviation. You forged a heaven that denies judgment. That cannot exist."
Nyxen smirked. "You're right. It cannot exist… under your rules."
With that, he lifted his hand.
The Heaven-Sealing Sword manifested—no longer a weapon of steel but an entire dimension condensed into form. Its blade shone with an ever-shifting hue, one side gold, the other black, the tip dripping threads of eternity.
As the sword sang, every star in the newborn cosmos aligned.
"Then let us redefine heaven."
The Authority moved first.
Light cascaded like rain, each droplet a self-contained universe crashing toward him.
Nyxen swung once. His sword cut through the falling galaxies, shattering them into golden storms. The blade didn't simply destroy—it reordered the fragments, reshaping chaos into structure. He didn't resist divinity—he rewrote it.
The Authority's voice trembled with fury.
"Impossible. You manipulate divine laws without obedience."
"Obedience?" Nyxen laughed, twisting midair as a lance of holy fire shot past him. "I've already consumed obedience. It tasted like dust."
He dashed forward, vanishing into a blur of distortion.
When he reappeared, he was behind the being of light, his sword already thrust through one of its wings. Golden ichor spilled, dissolving into constellations that screamed as they were born and died within seconds.
"You're bleeding time itself," Nyxen whispered.
The Authority countered—its shattered wing exploding into billions of shards that encircled him like mirrors. Each reflected a different Nyxen, a different timeline, a different outcome. In one, he was victorious. In another, annihilated. The mirrors pulsed, threatening to consume him.
But he grinned. "I made this mistake once."
The Heaven-Sealing Sword vibrated.
Its edge released the power of Silenced Infinity—a technique born from the remnants of the True Art of Mara and the Unorthodox Scripture combined. The mirrors shattered into motes of gold, collapsing every possibility into one singular truth.
Only his existence remained.
He sliced through the Authority's core light.
A scream—beautiful, infinite—ripped through creation.
The Authority's form faltered, thousands of divine faces flickering within its collapsing body. Each face represented a god that once ruled, a faith that once burned, a law that once dictated reality.
And Nyxen saw within them his own reflection.
The gods were never above him—they were remnants of what he could have been if he chose to submit. They were the future he had already rejected.
He raised his sword high, light swirling around him like an ocean of golden flame.
But the Authority was not finished.
"You misunderstand," it said, voice trembling yet vast. "We are not a being—you are fighting your own creation."
And then Nyxen felt it—every atom of his realm trembled.
The new heaven, his masterpiece, began to revolt. Stars turned into eyes. Galaxies pulsed with judgment. Every world he had made—the living heaven itself—was rejecting him.
It saw him as the intruder.
The realization was cold.
He hadn't just forged a new heaven; he had given life to a consciousness born from balance itself. The Authority wasn't descending—it was awakening from within.
The voice echoed again.
"You gave us existence. Now, we reclaim it."
The newborn cosmos folded upon itself.
A storm of divine judgment poured down, merging with the remnants of the Celestial Authority. The fusion birthed a new being—neither divine nor demonic, but something far beyond both. Its form shimmered, a constant flux between gold and shadow.
It looked at him with a gaze both familiar and foreign.
Nyxen's grip tightened. "So you're the next one, huh? My own heaven turning against me."
"You created us in your image," it replied. "Therefore, we will end you in your image."
The world screamed.
Heaven and Hell intertwined as creation devoured itself. Nyxen's power surged, his sword blazing brighter than ever before. Every motion tore open the sky, every strike distorted the eternal fabric.
This wasn't a battle between good and evil anymore.
This was existence fighting its own reflection—creator against creation.
He could feel himself fracturing—his body dissolving into motes of light, his consciousness splintering into a thousand versions across reality. But he refused to yield.
He thrust the Heaven-Sealing Sword into his own chest.
The universe froze.
Light exploded outward, golden and crimson.
His blood turned into stars, each one singing his name. The newborn cosmos halted mid-collapse, trembling as his will replaced every law that dared to defy him.
"I gave you life," Nyxen whispered, voice echoing across creation. "Now I take it back."
The golden and shadowed being screamed—a sound that fractured space-time—and vanished. The Authority's remnants burned away into dust. The galaxies stopped spinning, waiting for their master's next breath.
When silence returned, Nyxen was alone again.
His sword dimmed, the glow fading to a faint pulse.
He looked at the void where the Celestial Authority had stood.
There was no triumph in his eyes—only exhaustion, and a hint of something deeper.
Regret.
He had won. But every victory made him less human, less mortal, less real.
He whispered to the empty sky, "If heaven rejects me, then I'll walk without one."
He turned away from the light and stepped into the darkness beyond his creation, leaving the newborn universe trembling in his wake.