SFX: SKRRRSH—
The blade was still warm when the world ended.
Not my world—the one I had already shattered.
This one died wrapped in azure scales the size of castle walls, coiling around me like divine judgment. Each plate shimmered with trapped starlight, veins of liquid moonlight pulsing beneath translucent armor. The serpent's body formed a cathedral of flesh and myth, its dying coils spiraling upward into infinity.
Its head alone dwarfed a war galley.
Twin eyes—eclipsed suns—stared down at the thing impaled between its fangs.
Me.
Levi.
Once Emperor of the Ashen Dominion.
Conqueror of seventeen nations.
Architect of an empire so absolute it terrified the gods themselves.
Betrayed on the eve of total victory.
Daggers in my back. Wine still on my lips. Generals I had raised from mud smiling as they carved me open in the throne room. I had laughed as blood pooled beneath the marble.
Laughed—because I had finally built something unbreakable.
And watched it rot from within.
My final breath had not been poetic.
Not noble.
Just hate—raw and unfiltered.
"If there are gods above," I had snarled at the ceiling, choking on my own blood,
"let them choke on their own light."
SFX: THUUUUM—
Apparently, something listened.
Now I hung suspended in the serpent's dying coils, a fang the length of a siege tower driven through my chest. No pain. Only a crushing cold, like drowning in winter-forged iron. The air tasted of ozone and ancient copper.
The serpent spoke.
Not with sound.
With pressure.
With color.
With memory.
You cursed them once.
Now curse them forever.
I tried to laugh again.
No lungs. Only a wet rasp escaped.
SFX: DRIIIP—
The serpent's massive eye blinked—slow, deliberate. A tear the size of a war drum fell, striking my face like warm rain.
Where it touched, my skin burned.
Not with heat.
With recognition.
Something ancient—older than empires, older than gods—stirred inside my blood.
Take it, the voice whispered.
Take what remains.
Become the eclipse they feared.
Then—
The world inverted.
SFX: KRRRRSH—BOOM—
Pain arrived all at once.
White-hot. Infinite.
My spine arched as if struck by divine lightning. Black veins raced across my arms, my neck, my vision fracturing into shards of shadow and light. The serpent's blood—thick, star-flecked, impossibly alive—flooded the wound in my chest.
It did not heal me.
It rewrote me.
SFX: CRACK—SNAP—GRIND—
Bones shattered and regrew denser.
Muscle tore and stitched itself together at obscene speed.
My heart stuttered—then resumed with a double rhythm.
One beat was mine.
The other was ancient. Serpentine.
Fangs forced their way through my gums.
My pupils split—vertical, predatory.
I screamed.
But the scream did not leave my throat.
It tore itself from the sky.
SFX: WOOOOOM—
The black sun overhead cracked wider, leaking ribbons of violet star-blood that rained upward, defying gravity itself.
When the merging ended—
The serpent was dead.
Its colossal body collapsed, scales dulling from radiant azure to lifeless slate. I fell free, landing in a crouch atop fractured obsidian.
The fang remained lodged in my sternum like a dark key.
I gripped it.
Pulled.
SFX: SHHHH—
It dissolved into black mist, spiraling back into my chest.
I stood.
Taller.
Stronger.
Wrong.
My reflection stared back from a pool of serpent blood.
Black hair, longer now—silver streaking my temples.
Eyes no longer brown—molten gold ringed in abyssal black.
Fangs visible even when I smiled.
Skin pale, faintly luminescent, etched with shifting eclipse sigils that moved with each breath.
I flexed my hand.
Shadows clung to my fingers like obedient smoke.
Eclipse Aether, the serpent's final gift whispered in memory.
Devourer of light.
Rewriter of fate.
Consumer of divinity.
Price: your humanity—piece by piece.
I smiled.
Worth it.
The ruins surrounding me were ancient even by godly standards—pillars carved with forgotten wars, statues of winged beings whose faces had been deliberately erased.
At the chamber's heart stood a throne.
Obsidian. Massive.
Wrapped in chains of solidified starlight.
The Eclipse Throne.
Legends claimed it commanded reality itself.
I took one step toward it—
And felt them.
Three presences.
Sharp. Dangerous. Drawn by the serpent's death-cry like predators to a funeral pyre.
First—Light.
A woman stepped through the shattered eastern archway. Silver hair cascaded like molten moonlight. Elven armor etched with constellation runes glowed faintly. In her hand rested a longsword forged from captured moonbeams.
Emerald eyes locked onto me.
No fear.
Only recognition.
Sylvara Veyne.
Heir to Lumora's forbidden Blade Saints.
Her soul knew me—even if her mind did not.
"You… you're not supposed to exist," she whispered.
I tilted my head.
"Neither are you, princess."
Second—Shadow.
From the western breach slithered darkness given form. Raven-black hair. Pale skin. Midnight robes threaded with violet flame. Twin curved daggers wept shadow at her hips.
Amethyst eyes gleamed with hunger.
Nyxara Thorne.
Shadow Sovereign of Nocturne.
She smiled like I was the only interesting thing left in the universe.
Third—Fire.
SFX: BOOOOM—
The northern wall exploded inward.
A woman charged through smoke and flame—ashen-white hair, draconic scales along her skin, horns curving back from her temples. Crimson fire wrapped her massive greataxes.
Elara Drakonis.
Last princess of the Dragon Marches.
"MONSTER!" she roared.
I didn't move.
Time bent.
Not stopped.
Bent.
I raised my hand.
SFX: WHUUUUM—
Elara's flames reversed—ripping free from her axes, devoured by my palm. My veins flared violet-black.
"What… are you?" she gasped.
I lowered my hand.
"Opportunity."
Moonlight struck.
I caught Sylvara's blade between two fingers.
SFX: CLANG—KRRRSH—
Starlight shattered.
Nyxara vanished—reappeared behind me.
I exhaled.
SFX: FWOOSH—
Black mist exploded outward, freezing her mid-strike.
Her eyes burned with delight.
"Interesting."
I released her.
Elara charged again.
I met her.
Stone shattered.
I twisted. Redirected. Dropped her to one knee.
I lifted her chin.
"Still want to kill me?"
"Always."
"Good."
I turned to them all.
They didn't know it yet.
They were bound to me now.
Eclipse Vessels.
Keys to the Throne.
I was no longer the man who lost an empire.
I was worse.
I looked at the cracked black sun.
Then back at them.
"Welcome to the end of the world," I said softly.
"Try not to die too quickly."
The throne waited.
Empty.
Patient.
Hungry.
And for the first time in two lifetimes—
Levi felt truly alive.