The Absolute Chair
Omnipotence Is Not Freedom
Chapter 1 — When the Clock Rang
The clock rang at 3:17 a.m.
It was not loud.
It was not violent.
It was not even real.
Yet every living thing on Earth heard it.
Karl-Jay woke up with his heart pounding, breath caught halfway in his chest. The sound still echoed in his skull—not in his ears, but deeper, like something had tapped directly against his soul.
Tick.
His bedroom was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the city outside his window. Everything looked normal. Too normal.
Then the second sound came.
Tock.
The floor beneath his feet shuddered.
At first, Karl-Jay thought it was an earthquake. He had lived through small ones before. This felt different—wrong. The air itself vibrated, thick and heavy, pressing against his skin like invisible hands.
His phone slid off the nightstand and shattered on the floor.
Outside, alarms screamed. Car horns blared in endless panic. Somewhere nearby, glass exploded.
Karl-Jay stumbled out of bed, heart racing.
"What the hell…?"
Before he could reach the door, the third sound rang.
Dong.
The world broke.
The ceiling above him split open, not cracking like concrete but tearing like flesh. A deep crimson light poured through the裂, bathing the room in a hellish glow. Gravity twisted. The walls bent inward. The air screamed.
Karl-Jay was thrown to the floor as the ground collapsed beneath him.
He fell.
Not down.
Away.
When he opened his eyes, the sky was wrong.
There were no stars.
No moon.
Only a vast, bleeding red expanse layered with black cracks, as if reality itself had been stitched together poorly.
The city was gone.
In its place stood ruins—twisted steel, broken roads floating at impossible angles, buildings fused with organic matter that pulsed faintly like living veins. Fires burned without smoke. The air smelled of iron and rot.
Karl-Jay pushed himself up, hands trembling.
"…This isn't real," he whispered.
Then he heard the screaming.
A woman ran past him, face soaked in blood, her arm ending in a jagged stump. Behind her, something crawled from the shadow of a collapsed bus—its body thin and stretched, limbs bending the wrong way, its mouth split vertically from chin to chest.
It shrieked.
The woman tripped.
The thing was on her in an instant.
Karl-Jay watched, frozen, as her scream was cut short.
Blood sprayed across the cracked road.
Something inside him snapped.
He ran.
People were everywhere—and nowhere.
Some were crushed beneath debris, still alive, begging for help that never came. Others turned on each other instantly, fists and knives flying over bags of food, bottles of water, anything that could be used to live one more minute.
"Move!"
"That's mine!"
"Don't touch me—!"
A man was stabbed in the neck over a loaf of bread.
He died choking, eyes wide with disbelief.
Karl-Jay didn't stop. He couldn't. His legs burned, lungs screaming, but fear drove him forward like a whip.
That's when the voice came.
Not from the sky.
Not from the ground.
From everywhere.
"Welcome, humans."
The voice was calm. Cold. Amused.
"Your world has ended."
The air shimmered, and words burned themselves into the sky like scars:
ASCENSION HAS BEGUN
Panic erupted.
"What is this?!"
"Is this a joke?!"
"Send us back!"
The voice continued, indifferent.
"This realm is the Supreme Path. Survival is optional. Ascension is earned."
A distant mountain appeared on the horizon—impossibly tall, its peak piercing the red sky. At its summit sat something that didn't belong in reality.
A chair.
Black. Vast. Absolute.
Even from this distance, Karl-Jay felt it.
It was watching.
"Those who reach the top may sit upon the Absolute Chair."
A pause.
"Those who fail will feed the world."
The voice vanished.
Silence followed—then chaos exploded.
Something metallic clattered near Karl-Jay's feet.
A sword.
Broken.
Its blade was cracked down the middle, rusted, barely sharp. No explanation. No system window. No blessing.
Just steel.
Karl-Jay stared at it, hands shaking, then slowly picked it up.
Around him, monsters roared. Humans screamed. Fires spread across a world that was never meant to exist.
His old life—his home, his friends, his future—was gone.
He tightened his grip.
"…Fine," he whispered, eyes hardening as he looked toward the distant mountain.
"If this is hell…"
A monster lunged from the shadows.
Karl-Jay raised the broken sword.
"…then I'll climb it."