The fine crimson mist that had been Thalen Vire hung in the blighted air—a grotesque perfume of arrogance torn apart.
It hadn't even settled on the rocks before the creature that had birthed it took a ground-shaking step forward, fully revealing itself.
This was no Gutter Imp.
It looked like a walking blasphemy against nature—built to maim and destroy. It stood on two reverse-jointed legs, thick with muscle and wrapped in obsidian-black hide.
Beneath the cracks in that dark carapace pulsed veins of molten red, like lava trapped under cooled rock. Serrated bone spines jutted from its forearms, shoulders, and spine—each one the length of a short sword.
Its head was a nightmare of tusks and rage. But its eyes—those molten embers—were worse than the rest.
Drool, thick and acidic, dripped from its maw, hissing as it burned through the ground. It moved in bursts—jerky, feral lunges, as if its body couldn't decide between fury and hunger.
Batch Seven froze.
The same C-Ranks who'd been boasting minutes ago now stood like statues, their weapons hanging loose. One had pissed himself, the acrid smell cutting through the metallic sting of blood.
Their entire worldview—everything the Institute's safe walls had sheltered them from—had been obliterated in a single heartbeat.
This wasn't a low-level rift.
Lyra Kess was the first to move. A tremor ran through her—fear—but she crushed it fast, replaced it with instinct.
"Form a defensive circle! Now!" she shouted, voice cutting like a blade through fog. "Rikard, shield on the left! Elara, heal anyone who gets grazed! Don't let it close on you!"
She commanded and she acted. Her hands traced glowing sigils in the air, and a spectral bow of pure silver light shimmered into existence.
Her Will.
She pulled back an arrow of condensed energy and loosed it in one fluid motion. It screamed through the air and slammed into the creature's shoulder, carving a molten gouge.
The beast roared—sound so sharp it felt like it stabbed the brain—and its burning gaze locked on her.
'So that's an A-Rank Will,' Kaisen thought, ducking behind a fractured rock. 'Spectral Archery… or maybe pure force manifestation?'
His mind clung to analysis as a lifeline. Order, logic, structure—anything to drown out the fear.
Every Awakened inherits a God's Will, he reminded himself. A relic of divine war, a fragment of godhood left behind. The Will defines your ability—offense, defense, support.
Its rank, from F to SSS, marks your ceiling. Your Level just measures how close you've climbed to it.
He peeked out just as a boy with a Stone-Skin Will raised a barrier of earth.
The Berserker shattered it like glass.
Low rank. Low level. Doesn't matter how strong the Will is—control is everything.
Thalen's death made sense now. A-Rank Will, Level 14. Raw power, no discipline. He'd faced something far beyond him and paid the price for his pride.
Lyra, on the other hand, was A-Rank and Level 19. She had control—and she was keeping them alive by sheer force of skill.
The fight descended into chaos. Lyra's arrows carved trails of silver through the air, always striking joints, eyes, veins.
The C-Ranks tried to hold the line—shields flickering, fire and lightning sputtering uselessly. A healer scrambled from one broken body to another, hands glowing weakly.
And Kaisen?
He was a ghost in the crossfire.
His Will felt like a curse, a dead weight in his chest.
Flicker Spark.
His so-called divine gift. A spark of static between his fingertips. Enough to light a bulb. Maybe.
The evaluators had laughed. "Worthless," they'd said. "Useless in combat."
Level cap: ten. His current level: two.
He could barely call himself alive.
'If the monster doesn't kill me, the others' stray fire will,' he thought, ducking as a wild blast of flame singed the air where his head had been.
He didn't belong here. Not among warriors or heroes. Just cannon fodder wearing a uniform.
But Lyra was magnificent—cruelly efficient. She saw an opening as the Berserker lunged, overextending to crush a shield.
"Now! Hit its right leg with everything you've got!" she roared.
The group responded instantly. Rock and ice struck the creature's knee, freezing and fracturing it. Lyra's last arrow—a solid beam of light—followed, blasting clean through.
The Berserker bellowed in agony, collapsed to the ground, and she was already moving—leaping high, two glowing arrows drawn and ready.
They struck its open maw.
The resulting explosion lit the crimson sky like dawn.
Then—silence.
The Berserker twitched once, then dissolved into black dust carried away by a wind that didn't exist.
For a few seconds, nobody moved. Then relief hit like a wave.
The survivors dropped to their knees, laughing and sobbing in disbelief. They'd done it. Against a Berserker.
They'd lived.
But Lyra didn't relax.
She landed lightly, her bow fading from existence, and scanned the blood-red horizon.
"This is wrong," she said, her voice flat, controlled. "A Berserker can't appear in a Low Rank rift. It's impossible. The classification's off. Something corrupted this place."
The C-Ranks fell silent again. Their laughter curdled.
"We move," Lyra continued. "No recovery, no rest. The Guardian Temple is east. We reach it, find the Guardian, collapse this rift, and get out before something worse wakes up."
No one argued. Her voice had become law.
They moved through the warped terrain. The silence pressed in, thicker with every step. The rocks pulsed faintly, like veins in a slumbering giant. Even the air seemed to hum with tension.
"This is… too quiet," Jax whispered.
"Shut up and move," Lyra hissed, but her eyes flicked warily at the horizon.
Kaisen felt it before anyone else—a static thrum under his skin, resonating with his useless Flicker Spark. The air tasted wrong. The rift wasn't dead. It seemed like it was watching.
Then they saw it.
The Guardian Temple.
Not a temple, really—a tumor of black stone shaped into ancient ruin, half-devoured by the land around it. At its heart stood an altar carved from the same obsidian rock, glowing with faint runes.
"Alright," Lyra said, her voice tight but hopeful. "We follow protocol. Hands or weapons on the altar together. It'll channel our energy to summon us to the Guardian. Be ready."
They formed a semi-circle. The air buzzed faintly.
They reached out—hesitant, trembling—toward the altar.
An inch before contact, the runes flared blood-red.
The air split with a screech, and glowing crimson script appeared, written in the language of doom.
It was far different from the system messages Awakened knew.
[ The Guardian demands a single Sacrifice.
Let the blood of the chosen drip upon the altar,
and the Rift shall be cleared. ]
Silence. Utter, paralyzing silence.
Then panic.
"What?"
"A sacrifice?"
"That's not in the manuals!"
"Has this ever—has anyone—?"
Jax stammered, "Do… do we draw straws?"
The question hung in the air like poison.
Lyra's answer was ice.
"We don't need to draw straws."
Her gaze swept past the terrified C-Ranks and landed on Kaisen.
"We all know who it should be."
The world tilted. Kaisen felt his blood turn to frost.
"His Will is F-Rank," Lyra continued, her tone surgical, precise. "He contributed nothing against the Berserker. He survived because we protected him. Sacrificing him preserves the ones who can actually make a difference. It's the only logical choice."
Her words broke the last fragile thread of civility.
"Yeah—the F-Rank!"
"He's useless anyway!"
"It's him or all of us!"
"Should've been him instead of Thalen!"
Their fear twisted into violence. They surrounded him like hyenas circling a dying deer.
"Come on, Kaisen," Jax said, blade trembling in his grip. "Be a hero for once."
"Don't make this harder than it has to be," a girl hissed, lightning sparking across her fingers.
Kaisen met Lyra's gaze, hoping—desperately—for even a flicker of remorse. Something that made them different from the monsters they fought.
He found none.
Only cold arithmetic.
He took a step back. A knife touched his throat. Drew blood.
The message was clear.
Comply—or die screaming.
Something hollowed out inside him then. All the hope, all the anger, gone. Just emptiness.
He let out a breath. "Fine," he said quietly.
They shoved him toward the altar. His hips hit the cold stone. Jax grabbed his wrist and dragged it across the edge. Pain bloomed white-hot, then red.
Blood spilled, dark and slow, dripping onto the runes.
The altar hissed.
Not like the Berserker's drool—but with a whispering sound, as though thousands of unseen voices were murmuring in approval.
The others stepped back, eager to be free of him.
The red light swirled around Kaisen alone, cocooning him in a vortex of heat and shadow.
The world—the temple, the betrayers, the rift—dissolved.
The last thing he heard wasn't their voices. It was a chant. Ancient. Endless.
It spoke of cycles, judgment, and a debt unpaid.
Then, darkness.
When sensation returned, it wasn't death.
Just solid ground. Clean air. Silence.
He stood in a vast, circular chamber. White stone walls glowed softly with age and power.
No monster awaited him. No Guardian.
Only a throne.
And above it, words of crimson light floated in the still air:
[ You now stand before an Ascendant:
Karihad, the Godslayer. ]