Emptiness.
Again.
Orion's eyes blink open to the same colorless cold. The same stillness. The same damn veil.
Only now he's standing — not floating — on a platform of dark stone suspended in nothing. Black and blue, veined with faint pulses of light. The surface shimmers beneath his boots, anchored to nowhere.
He looks around.
No walls. No sky. No edge. Just a yawning, infinite void stretching out in all directions. And the silence… it's not peaceful. It's suffocating. Mocking.
"This again?" he mutters.
He remembers dying. He remembers that mattered — the fight, the blood, the last look in her eyes. The prophecy. The burden. The cold steel through his chest.
And yet here he is.
Still in the Veil. Still not free.
It's not relief he feels. It's annoyance. The kind that grows teeth.
What was the point of all that pain if I never left this place?
His breath fogs out into the nothing. His hands ball into fists.
That's when the air hums.
A faint sound — crystalline and hollow — like glass resonating in water. Then, without warning, a translucent screen flickers into being before him. Midnight-blue. Gentle curves of light tracing across it like veins in glass.
[Tutorial Complete.]
He stares at the words.
They don't make sense. Can't make sense.
[Congratulations, Orion Myrelis.]
You have successfully completed the Tutorial Stage.]
He just… stares. His body doesn't move. His mind can't process this.
[Calculating final result…]
Another line. Another glow. Another gentle, celebratory chime that feels like a blade to the ribs.
And then:
[Final Rating: Ethereal Rank.]
[You're performance made even the gods feel sorrow.]
That's when it breaks. When he breaks.
His legs give out. He drops to his knees, the sound of his armor scraping the platform swallowed by the void.
"…No," he says, softly.
The screen stays.
[Reward: Unique Trait has been granted.]
[You may inspect your reward from the System Menu at any time.]
[Proceeding to World Initialization in 60 seconds.]
Orion doesn't even look. Doesn't move.
His breath quickens, chest rising and falling like a drowning man who's just realized the surface was an illusion.
"Tutorial?" His voice cracks. "You're telling me… that was just the beginning?"
He stares up into the void, hoping for something — an explanation, a lie, anything. But nothing answers. His life — all of it — was a setup. A trial. A simulation. Every blade he clashed, every friend he buried, every oath he swore… part of someone's idea of a test.
A fucking tutorial.
His fists hit the stone.
Hard, again and again.
He punches until the skin splits, until his knuckles bloom red, until even that isn't enough to feel real.
"You bastards," he whispers. "You used me. You used all of us."
And somewhere, in the back of his mind, he wonders — was that prophecy real? Did someone write it? Or was that, too, planted? Fed into their world like bait on a hook?
"Was she just… part of the script?"
The question tastes like ash.
He doesn't cry. He can't. There's no moisture in this place, no warmth, no part of him left soft enough for tears. Just a dry ache behind his eyes and a scream that doesn't want to come out.
He leans forward, pressing his forehead to the cold stone.
It's all been meaningless. Worse than meaningless — it was entertainment.
They watched him struggle. They watched her die. But the screen above him doesn't care for his crisis.
[World Initialization in 30 seconds.]
The countdown continues like a guillotine winding up.
"That was my life. It couldn't have been some dumb game. I don't want it to be a prologue."
Then — the light changes, the platform flickers. A sharp crack echoes through the space — not of stone or wind, but of reality straining at the edges.
The blue screen spasms, glitching. Symbols scatter. Then:
[Error.]
[External Interference Detected.]
And everything freezes. The entirety of the void ceases its perpetual humming and churning. Even the pulse of the platform stops. The glow vanishes and in its place, something darker rises.
An overwhelming presence.
The light goes wrong. The air thickens, as if the void itself has been drowned in ink. The cold becomes deeper. More ancient. Like this place was never meant to house what's now arriving.
Orion staggered. His pulse quickened so violently he thought his heart might seize. Every instinct screamed at him to move, to run, to flee in any direction, but his legs had already begun to buckle. He didn't fall out of submission—he collapsed because his body simply couldn't stand under the weight of what had just entered the Veil.
This was not a monster. Not a creature. Not some ancient ghost whispering from the edge of reality. No, those he could stand and face.
This was presence given form. Authority made fleshless. And Orion could feel—no, he could understand, in some unspoken way—that whatever had arrived did not operate under the laws of this game. It was not from here.
And the system knew it.
The Veil itself went still. The platform beneath his knees stopped pulsing. Even the air forgot how to breathe.
A figure began to take shape in the air ahead—slowly, deliberately—as though the void had been waiting for it all along. It didn't glow. It consumed. A humanoid outline, immense in stature yet impossible to focus on, formed from tendrils of shadow and threads of faint starlight. It had no face. No features. Only depth. Depth so profound that looking into it made Orion feel like his soul was tipping toward a bottomless sea.
He tried to speak, to demand answers, but no sound came out. Not because his voice failed him—but because he somehow knew that speech was meaningless here. This being didn't hear words. It heard essence.
And it had come for his.
The pressure built with every heartbeat, like an invisible hand pressing against his spine, demanding submission. Orion gritted his teeth, dug his fingers into the platform, and refused to look away. His body trembled, his mind screamed, but his gaze held.
Then a new screen appeared.
Not blue. Not warm.
It shimmered in black and violet, its edges rippling like fabric dipped in oil, the letters etched in harsh silver light that felt carved rather than displayed.
[A Certain ??? Takes Pity on You.]
You Have Been Granted a Trait.
[ ??? ] – "Sovereign of the Hollow Crown"
Orion read the words, chest heaving. He felt like he should be grateful. Maybe honored. But all he felt was fury—and awe. Not the awe of a miracle, but the kind that made mortals build temples just to survive the encounter.
The presence before him didn't speak. It didn't need to.
And still, he understood what it wanted.
It had seen his final moments. Seen the desperation, the collapse, the way his spirit cracked under the realization that everything he lived for had been nothing more than a prelude. This wasn't mercy. It was investment.
He clenched his fists until his knuckles ached, then slowly, deliberately, rose to his feet—shaking, yes, but standing.
"You watched me suffer," he said, voice hoarse, each word torn from the back of his throat. "You watched us all suffer. Is this pity… or penance?"
There was no reply. Just the slow, steady hum of power leaking off the figure in waves, rolling over him like the pull of a distant tide.
Orion's jaw tightened.
"I don't want your pity," he growls. "I want those damn watchers to be erased." He stares up into the pulsing dark, into the diety he can't make out.
"I'll take everything from those damn watchers."
The screen pulses one last time:
[Do you accept this Trait?]
Orion doesn't hesitate.
"I accept."
The void collapses.
A rush of violet-blue light surges through the platform. Symbols race across Orion's skin, then vanish. The black and blue fracture. Light splits the realm apart like a broken mirror.
Time had started moving again. And it had decided it was time to go.
[System Update Complete.]
[Initializing Awakening…]
[Welcome to the Tower of Ascension.]