Chapter 4 – Abyss Rebirth
There was no up.
No down.
No time.
Prince Aariv drifted in an endless black expanse, his consciousness scattered like ash. He could not feel his body. He could not remember his breath.
Only pain remained.
Not physical pain.
Existential pain.
Fragments of his life replayed without order—
mockery in the court,
Kael's smile,
Ren's trembling blade.
Each memory tore another piece from his soul.
Then… silence.
Absolute silence.
And within that silence, something moved.
🕳️ The Abyss
The darkness was not empty.
It was aware.
A pressure wrapped around Aariv's fractured soul, not crushing it—testing it.
You were broken,
but you did not scatter.
The thought was not spoken.
It was imprinted directly into what remained of him.
Heaven abandoned you.
Fate erased you.
Do you wish to return?
Return?
Aariv's awareness trembled.
Return to what?
A throne that rejected him?
A family that killed him?
A Heaven that marked him for erasure?
If this was death—
Then he would not beg for life.
No, he answered.
The pressure deepened.
For a moment, Aariv thought he would dissolve completely.
Then—
Something ignited.
⚫ The Void Seed
At the core of his shattered soul, a point of nothingness formed.
Not energy.
Not matter.
Not light.
Absence.
The Abyss reacted instantly.
Endless darkness poured into that point, compressing, folding, refining.
Pain beyond pain followed.
Aariv's consciousness screamed without sound as his soul was reforged—layer by layer—around the Void Seed.
This was not healing.
This was reconstruction.
You will not cultivate like mortals,
nor ascend like immortals.
You will devour loss.
You will grow through erasure.
🩸 First Transformation
A phantom body began to take shape.
Bone by bone.
Vein by vein.
Each formed from condensed nothingness.
There was no warmth.
No heartbeat.
Yet he existed.
For the first time since his execution—
Aariv felt whole.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Unrecorded.
👁️ Beyond Heaven's Reach
Far above, in the Heavenly Archives, a jade tablet cracked.
A name faded.
The scribes frowned.
"Strange," one murmured.
"A soul vanished without reincarnation."
"He was erased," another replied.
"Do not waste thought on a defect."
The tablet shattered completely.
Heaven closed the record.
And in doing so—
Lost him forever.
🕯️ Awakening
Aariv opened eyes that were not eyes.
He stood within the Abyss, surrounded by infinite darkness.
No chains.
No fate threads.
No divine marks.
Only silence… and freedom.
From this moment,
you no longer belong to the Three Realms.
Rise, Void-Born.
Aariv clenched his hand.
The darkness responded.
Not with power—
But with obedience.
Chapter 5 – Void Cultivation Begins
The Abyss did not welcome progress.
It demanded proof.
Aariv stood alone in the endless dark, his newly formed body unstable, flickering between existence and nothingness. Each movement sent fractures through him—silent, invisible, but real.
There was no spiritual energy here.
No heaven-and-earth qi.
No laws to borrow from.
If he wished to grow stronger, there was only one option.
Consume absence.
⚫ The First Lesson
The Void Seed within his soul pulsed—slow, irregular.
With each pulse, memories surfaced.
Painful ones.
Kael's contempt.
Ren's apology.
The Emperor's indifferent gaze.
The Abyss reacted instantly.
Those memories were pulled from him.
Not suppressed.
Devoured.
Aariv convulsed as the emotions vanished, leaving behind a cold clarity. The Void Seed grew heavier, denser.
He understood then.
Loss is nourishment.
🩸 Cultivation Without Mercy
There was no manual.
No elder.
No guidance beyond instinct.
Aariv reached outward with his consciousness and felt fractured remnants drifting in the Abyss—souls that had failed to pass on, broken by Heaven and forgotten by fate.
He hesitated.
Then remembered the blade.
The hesitation vanished.
He pulled.
The remnants dissolved as they touched the Void Seed, stripped of identity, reduced to raw absence.
Pain followed.
His soul burned as if scraped by countless invisible edges.
But the Void Seed stabilized.
His form solidified.
For the first time, Aariv felt something close to strength.
Not explosive.
Enduring.
🕳️ Abyss Trial: Fragmentation
The darkness shifted.
Space folded inward.
Aariv was suddenly surrounded by reflections of himself—dozens, hundreds—each representing a different moment of his life.
A weak child.
A kneeling prince.
A dying body.
Choose one, the Abyss conveyed.
Or be torn apart by all.
Aariv stepped forward.
He reached toward the dying reflection—the one on the ground, blood pooling beneath him.
"I accept this," he said.
The reflection shattered and merged with him.
Agony surged.
His soul fractured—then reformed, denser than before.
Void Stage One: Fragmented Soul — Complete
👁️ The Price
When the pain faded, Aariv realized something terrifying.
He could no longer remember his mother's face.
Not clearly.
The Void had taken it.
Not as punishment—
But as fuel.
Aariv closed his eyes.
"If this is the cost," he whispered,
"then I will pay it."
The Abyss remained silent.
That silence was approval.
⚫ A Path Without Return
Time had no meaning here.
But Aariv knew this was only the first step.
Countless losses awaited him.
Each would make him stronger.
Each would make him less human.
And somewhere beyond the Abyss—
Heaven continued to breathe comfortably,
unaware that it had created
its own executioner.
Chapter 6 – Devouring Silence
Silence in the Abyss was never empty.
It watched.
Aariv stood motionless, his presence barely anchoring him to existence. The Void Seed within his soul pulsed once… then stopped.
For the first time since his rebirth—
It felt hungry.
The Arrival
The darkness ahead folded inward.
A region of absolute silence expanded, swallowing everything in its path—light, shadow, even thought. Fragments that drifted too close vanished without resistance.
This was not an entity.
It was a phenomenon.
Devouring Silence, the Abyss conveyed.
The end of discarded things.
Aariv understood instantly.
If it touched him, there would be no pain.
No death.
No rebirth.
He would simply never have existed.
🕳️ Flight Is Meaningless
He stepped back.
Space collapsed.
Forward, backward, direction itself dissolved.
The Silence expanded regardless.
Instinct screamed at him to resist—but with what?
There was no power to unleash.
No technique to activate.
Only the Void Seed.
Only absence.
⚔️ The Choice
A memory surfaced—unbidden.
The moment he knelt in the ancestral hall.
The laughter.
The judgment.
The certainty that he was nothing.
The Void Seed trembled.
Aariv clenched his awareness around it.
"If you devour everything," he whispered into the nothingness,
"then devour me."
He stepped forward.
⚫ Collision of Nothings
The Devouring Silence touched him.
For an instant, Aariv ceased to be.
Then—
The Void Seed collapsed inward.
Not expanding.
Not attacking.
But compressing all absence into a single, impossible point.
The Silence reacted.
It slowed.
Then began to thin.
Aariv felt himself tearing apart—his newly formed soul cracking, fragments peeling away, memories dissolving.
Pain was irrelevant.
Only will remained.
I endured Heaven,
I endured death,
I will endure you.
The Void Seed stabilized.
The Silence recoiled.
For the first time—
Nothing retreated from something.
🩸 Aftermath
When awareness returned, the Abyss was still.
The Devouring Silence had vanished, leaving behind a scar in reality—a region that no longer existed.
Aariv floated at its edge, shattered.
More than half of his soul was gone.
His body flickered, barely coherent.
But the Void Seed burned steadily, denser than before.
Void Stage Two: Abyss Heart — Initiated
He had survived.
Not by overpowering—
But by outlasting annihilation.
👁️ The Abyss Watches
For the first time, the Abyss responded with something akin to recognition.
You do not resist erasure,
you become heavier than it.
Aariv drifted into unconsciousness.
Before he faded, a final realization struck him—
Every step forward on this path
would erase something precious.
And one day—
There would be nothing left to erase
but Heaven itself.