"Some people enter a city. Others end up being the reason it stops existing."
The sky was black.
Not like night — black like a throat. Like something up there had swallowed the stars and started chewing.
The ground beneath Ren's boots was cracked obsidian, smoking from heat that hadn't come from fire, but from rage. Glyph-scars pulsed under the soil like veins. Air shimmered with broken mana.
Welcome to Threxil.
A planet that ran on violence and only respected strength.
And today?
It respected the fuck out of Ren.
He didn't even land gently.
The portal dumped him straight through someone's half-collapsed roof.
He stepped out of the debris brushing off a piece of rebar like dandruff.
Two Threxil civilians saw him.
Paused.
Then immediately screamed and ran in opposite directions, shouting warnings that translated roughly to:
"IT'S HIM. THE PLANET-SPLITTER. RUN."
REN (blinking):
"…Okay, that's a new one."
TIME (floating above him, posing like a model on a collapsing billboard):
"Word spreads fast when you one-shot four apex predators and turn their memories into soup."
BLAZE (flaring overhead):
"Let 'em run. If they're scared, they live. If they're stupid…"
he made a sizzling noise.
Ren walked down the broken street like it owed him answers.
Shattered storefronts.
Ash drifting like snow.
And silence.
Deep, respectful silence.
Even the beasts that ruled Threxil — the Huskraath, the Spindle Vyx, the massive sky-scarring Grivuun stalkers — were already gone.
The scent of his glyphs had cleared the whole sector.
He held up the paper. Still intact. Still showing:
Name: Azrin Keth
Location: Sector 13-D, Hollow Spine Alley
Program Tag: Override Soul — Dimensional Stability Tier Alpha
REN (grumbling):
"This better not be a trap or a coffee shop."
SNARKSTEEL (whispering from his arm):
"If they turn out to be cute, can I stab them just a little?"
SPACE (materializing upside-down from a lamppost):
"You're being watched."
REN:
"No shit. By who?"
SPACE (vanishing):
"Not a who. A what."
He turned the corner.
There it was.
A single stone house in the middle of a cratered block.
No monsters. No patrols. No traps. Just… a door.
Clean.
Untouched.
Waiting.
The address on the paper matched the one carved into the frame.
And just like that —
He'd found the next soul.
The one the Core had whispered about.
The one Kaelreth had left the code for.
REN (standing at the door, breathing in ash and memory):
"…Okay, Azrin Keth. Let's see if you're ready to save the fucking universe."