The fall of the Aurelian Sanctum was not a silent descent. It was the sound of a thousand glass bells shattering at once, a discordant symphony of dying light that echoed across the Fourth Ocean. As Vane Varkas drained the last of the Starlight Ward, the anti-gravity arrays—the very "Logic" that kept the city-cathedral afloat—vanished.
The massive structure, a marvel of celestial architecture that had stood for six hundred years, tilted violently. Towers of solid luminescence snapped like dry twigs. The "Luminaries" who had spent their lives looking down at the world were now falling into the very abyss they feared.
But in the center of the collapsing ward, gravity had ceased to exist.
Vane Varkas floated in a sphere of absolute vacuum. His body was a battlefield. The stolen energy of a million neon souls was trying to tear him apart from the inside out, while his "Obsidian Sovereign" system fought to compress that energy into a new, forbidden form. White light leaked from his eyes, his mouth, and the cracks in his skin, making him look like a shattered statue held together by black ink.
[Ding!]
[WARNING: SATURATION OVERLOAD!] [Host Body Integrity: 42% and falling.] [The 'Void' is reaching its limit. You are becoming the very thing you hate: Light.] [Emergency Protocol: Do you wish to 'Purge' the excess energy? (Y/N)]
"Purge?" Vane's voice was a distorted, multi-tonal roar. "No. I'm not throwing it away. I'm digesting it."
Crunch.
Vane bit into the air itself. He forced the white light back into his veins, crushing it with the sheer weight of his hatred. He didn't want to be purified. He wanted to be the Black Hole that consumed the Sun.
"Unacceptable."
The voice was like a diamond scraping across silk.
From the wreckage above, Lord Solari descended. The Guild Master of the Radiant Wing did not fall; he walked down a staircase of invisible light. His armor, the [Prismatic Plate], reflected every color in the spectrum, creating a halo so bright it was painful to behold. In his right hand, he held the Scepter of the Morning Star, a weapon that was said to contain a piece of the First Ocean's sun.
"A Static who learned to eat," Solari said, his face a mask of divine boredom. "You think because you destroyed my battery, you have won? Vane Varkas, you are nothing but a hungry shadow. And shadows exist only because the Light allows them to."
Solari raised his scepter.
"[Art-Physics: THE FIRST REVELATION]!"
A wave of pure, concentrated "Truth" erupted from the scepter. In the Fourth Ocean's system, "Truth" was the ultimate weapon. It was a frequency that forced every object to return to its "Natural State." For a sword, it meant becoming raw iron. For a human, it meant becoming a pile of carbon.
For Vane, it meant becoming a Static.
The white wave hit Vane's black shroud. The ink began to evaporate. His wings, his horns, his obsidian skin—it all started to peel away, revealing the malnourished, grey boy underneath.
"See?" Solari mocked, his voice echoing through the ruins. "Without your stolen pigments, you are just a smudge. A mistake that needs to be erased."
Vane felt his power slipping away. He felt the cold touch of the Zero Depth returning. His system was screaming, the notifications flickering red.
[ALERT: REVERTING TO BASE FORM...] [Saturation Level: 0.01%...] [Host Status: Deleted...]
No, Vane thought, his fingers clawing at the empty air. I didn't crawl out of the abyss to be turned back into a ghost.
He looked at Solari—the perfect, glowing "God" of the heavens. He saw the arrogance. He saw the same look Caelum had given him on the Abyssal Shelf.
"You... you talk about 'Natural States'?" Vane gasped, his body shivering as the white light burned his soul.
He reached deep, past the system, past the stolen energy, into the very core of his existence. He didn't look for power. He looked for the Emptiness.
"The natural state of the universe... isn't light, Solari," Vane whispered, his voice sounding like a dying breath.
Suddenly, the white wave of "Truth" stopped. It didn't just stop; it began to turn Grey.
"The natural state of the universe," Vane roared, his grey eyes turning into pits of violet fire, "IS THE DARK!"
"[SOVEREIGN AWAKENING: THE ABSOLUTE ZERO]!"
The System didn't chime this time. It shattered.
[SYSTEM REWRITE INITIATED...] [Deleting 'Art-Physics'...] [Installing 'Abyssal-Logic'...] [NEW CLASS UNLOCKED: THE END-OF-ALL-THINGS.]
Vane's body didn't turn back into a Static. It turned into something else entirely. He became a Silhouette of the End. He was no longer made of ink or flesh; he was made of the Gap between Stars.
The white light of Solari's scepter didn't burn him anymore. It was simply... gone. Every photon that touched Vane's new form was deleted from reality.
"What... what is this?!" Solari's divine mask finally cracked. He fired again and again, beams of prismatic energy that could melt continents, but they all vanished into Vane's chest like pebbles thrown into a bottomless well. "My Truth! Why doesn't it work?!"
"Because your truth is a lie," Vane said.
He moved. He didn't use speed. He used [Distance-Erasure]. He simply removed the space between himself and Solari. One moment he was fifty meters away; the next, his hand was wrapped around Solari's prismatic throat.
"Your light is just a thin coat of paint on a cold, dead world," Vane hissed.
He squeezed.
"[PIGMENT DRAIN: THE GREAT CANCELLATION]!"
The Rank 10 armor—the invincible Prismatic Plate—began to lose its color. The red faded to grey. The gold turned to lead. The scepter in Solari's hand cracked and went dark.
Solari screamed, a sound of pure, mortal terror. He wasn't just losing his power; he was losing his Definition. His memories, his name, his very history as a Guild Master were being sucked into Vane's throat.
"Stop! Please! I will give you the Fifth Ocean! I will make you a King!"
"I don't want to be a King," Vane said, his hand glowing with a terrifying, violet-black light. "I want to be the Silence."
CRUNCH.
Vane crushed Solari's neck. But he didn't stop there. He opened his mouth and inhaled the Rank 10 soul.
The sky of the Fourth Ocean—the neon clouds, the artificial suns, the holographic heavens—all of it began to spiral toward Vane. He was a black hole in the center of the world, eating the very concept of "The Radiant Wing."
[LEVEL UP! LEVEL 50... 60... 75... 90!] [LIMITER BROKEN!] [LEVEL: ???] [You have consumed a Prismatic God.] [Acquired Title: THE SUN-EATER.]
The Aurelian Sanctum finally hit the sea.
The impact created a tsunami of grey, colorless water that wiped out every neon city for a thousand miles. The Fourth Ocean was no longer the "Neon Heavens." It was now the Grey Graveyard.
Vane stood in the center of the ruins, breathing heavily. His body was no longer leaking light. He was a solid, matte-black monolith. He looked at his hands and saw that the "System" windows were now flickering in a deep, blood-red violet.
"Master..."
A small, familiar voice reached him through the silence.
Vane turned. Lyra was there, standing on the deck of a smaller, faster ship she had scavenged. In her arms, she held the Void-Cradle.
Vane walked over the water, his footsteps creating ripples of black ink. He reached the ship and looked down at Mía.
She was sleeping. Her white hair was slowly turning back to its original brown. Her skin was no longer translucent. The energy Vane had stolen from Solari was being funneled through the cradle, "Repainting" her life-force with the stolen divinity of a God.
"She's stable," Lyra whispered, her eyes full of tears. "You did it, Sovereign. You actually did it."
Vane touched the side of the cradle. For the first time since he woke up in the Zero Depth, the coldness in his chest softened.
"No," Vane said, looking up at the sky.
Above them, the barrier between the Fourth and Fifth Oceans was beginning to crack. The Celestial Surface—the final world, where the True Creators lived—was now visible through the holes in the neon clouds.
"I've only just started the first sketch," Vane said.
He looked at the ruins of the Fourth Ocean. The Great Guilds were in chaos. The "Luminaries" were in hiding. The news of the "Static God" would be reaching the ears of the Fifth Ocean within the hour.
"The Five Oceans think they own the light," Vane said, his wings unfurling to their full, terrifying span. "But the light is just a guest in my house."
He turned to Lyra. "Set a course for the Fifth Ocean: The Prismatic Origin. We're going to find the person who wrote this world... and we're going to make them use a different color."
The ship shot upward, leaving the grey ruins of the Fourth Ocean behind.
Vane Varkas sat on the prow, his violet eyes fixed on the distant, shimmering peaks of the Celestial Surface. He was Level 90. He had a sister to protect. And he had a universe to erase.
[END OF VOLUME 1: THE ABYSSAL REAWAKENING]
Volume 1 Epilogue: The Letter from the Surface
In the highest spire of the Fifth Ocean, a man sat in a room filled with white canvas. He held a brush made of star-matter. Suddenly, the brush snapped.
He looked down at his palette. The "Black" pigment, which had been empty for ten thousand years, was suddenly overflowing.
The man smiled, a terrifying, beautiful expression.
"Finally," he whispered. "A worthy antagonist for my masterpiece."
He picked up a new brush and began to draw a single, matte-black eye in the center of the world.
"Welcome to the Surface, Vane Varkas. Let's see if you can survive the True Colors."