Chapter 15
Silence.
A silence so deep that even light forgot to move.
Nyxen walked through the endless void beyond creation, where neither star nor law dared to exist. Behind him lay the shattered remains of heaven—a new cosmos born, fought for, and abandoned in the same breath. His sword dragged faintly against the unseen ground, leaving behind a trail of golden scars in the void.
Each step echoed with a sound that wasn't sound at all—it was memory, trembling, fading.
He no longer carried the weight of gods. He had cut that burden apart.
Yet something followed him still.
A pulse. A heartbeat.
The Heaven-Sealing Sword in his hand was changing.
He stopped walking.
The blade was no longer calm; it trembled violently, its surface alive with light. Rivers of gold and shadow ran across it, like veins filled with living flame. And from its core came a voice—not foreign, not divine, but his own.
"You have no heaven to stand beneath."
The voice was calm, cold.
"So you will become heaven itself."
The sword rose, pulling him upward. Around Nyxen, fragments of his defeated realm gathered, swirling like dust in a dying star. Each shard pulsed with the power of creation he had destroyed—the tears of gods, the prayers of mortals, the ashes of his own will.
And then the sword began to feed.
One by one, those fragments were devoured, absorbed into its blade. Stars folded, galaxies collapsed into strings of light, divine remnants melted into the ever-growing edge. The weapon was no longer a sword—it was everything.
A cosmos forged into a single edge.
Nyxen's hair whipped around him, long and black like the curtain of night, his eyes glowing crimson as he watched his creation vanish into the sword's hunger. There was no pity, no hesitation. Only understanding.
"I see," he whispered. "So this is the end of my unorthodox path."
He looked into the infinite. The void no longer frightened him; it was home.
He closed his eyes—and remembered.
The monk woman's serene smile.
The laughter in the rain before his first battle.
The faint warmth of a mortal hand brushing his once divine skin.
Every face, every sorrow, every joy—all became light drifting into the sword.
And when he opened his eyes again, he understood what he had created.
The Heaven-Sealing Sword was not meant to destroy heaven.
It was meant to replace it.
With a slow breath, he lifted the weapon high above his head. The sword pulsed once, resonating with his heart. The stars that had vanished now reappeared, forming not above him, but within him.
He was becoming the new firmament.
But something within him resisted.
The Art of Mara—his demonic core—howled against the divine light trying to consume it. The fusion of unorthodox paths created friction that tore his body apart from the inside.
Light burst from his chest.
Darkness coiled around his limbs.
Both demanded dominance.
He gritted his teeth, clutching the sword with both hands. "No. I am both. I am neither."
His scream tore through the void as his aura erupted, half gold, half violet-black.
In that instant, time fractured. The laws of creation bent.
And from that collision—a new law was born.
The Law of Paradox.
A law that allowed two opposites to exist in absolute unity.
A law that only he could wield.
His form stabilized, his wounds closed, and his eyes burned brighter than ever.
Now, when he looked at the sword, he no longer saw a weapon. He saw a reflection.
It was him. And he was it.
"Heaven and Hell," he said quietly. "Both are bound within my edge."
He swung the sword once.
The motion was small—gentle, even. But the entire void bent beneath it.
Space cracked. Time dissolved. And from the tip of his blade, a single droplet of light fell.
That droplet became a new world.
A world without divine laws.
A world without predetermined fate.
A world where mortals could reach the same heights as gods, through pain, defiance, and will.
He smiled faintly. "A world not sealed by heaven… but opened by it."
He sheathed his sword—though there was no sheath. The weapon simply dissolved into his body, becoming one with his soul.
The light around him dimmed. The void returned to silence.
He began to walk again, his steps no longer heavy, but light—almost weightless.
No one would remember the war he fought.
No one would remember the gods he destroyed.
But somewhere, in that newborn world he left behind, a single whisper echoed through every star:
> "He walked the unorthodox path,
And sealed heaven with his own heart."
Nyxen stopped one last time and looked back.
There was nothing behind him—no heaven, no hell, no creation.
Only the trace of a blade's light cutting across eternity.
He smiled. "Then let this be my domain."
And with that, he vanished into the void.
A sound followed—soft, distant, eternal.
The echo of a sword being drawn, somewhere beyond the edge of all things.