The sterile, minimalist grandeur of Derrick's mansion felt charged with an alien tension. Irene stood in the foyer, her crimson dress a violent splash against the monochrome decor, her predatory grace momentarily stalled by the vision before her.
Sariel stood poised near the staircase, her divine radiance seeming to warm the very air. She regarded the vampire not with hostility, but with the mild, detached curiosity one might afford a strangely ornate weapon.
"Who are you?" Irene's voice was smooth, but the edge was there, a honed scalpel hidden in silk.
Sariel's serene expression didn't flicker. "My Lord is currently absent. If your business is with him, I suggest you wait." Her tone was warmly polite.
I asked who, not where. How deliberately obtuse. Irene's eyes narrowed a fraction. She moved past the angel, claiming one of the dining chairs with a proprietary air. "So, he's out. Any idea when my… close acquaintance will be back?"
Such audacity?! To assume a seat without invitation! Sariel's internal voice was a chorus of affronted celestial harmony. She glided to a chair opposite, her movements unnervingly fluid. "And what relation do you bear to my Master, that you would claim such familiarity?"
"A very close one," Irene purred, crossing her legs. "The kind that doesn't involve needing an appointment."
A 'close acquaintance' of the Ruler of the Night Sky? Given his nature, such a thing implies she is not human. Not mortal. Sariel's gaze intensified, becoming analytical. The pale, flawless skin, the eyes that held the deep, reflective red of old blood under moonlight… A vampire. Not a fledgling, either. The power is….
A silent standoff stretched between them, the air growing heavy. Irene's smile grew strained. Why is she looking at me like I'm a specimen? Derrick, you have explaining to do. Who is this porcelain doll?
"Let's try again," Irene said, her voice losing its playful lilt, becoming as cold as her skin. "Who are you, and how did you get in here? The Derrick I know values his solitude above all else."
Sariel responded only with that infuriatingly beatific smile.
That smile is a weapon. Is that why he brought her here? Because she's… aesthetically pleasing? A corrosive thought, unbidden, wormed its way in. Irene's assessment grew sharper, more critical. Unblemished porcelain. Hair like spun moonlight. And that scent… She inhaled subtly. Ozone. Sanctified air. The aftermath of a divine revelation. Her own ancient knowledge, passed down from the Mother Progenitor, clicked into place. Her breath hitched, just once.
"You're an Angel," Irene stated, the word leaving her lips like a condemned verdict.
Perceptive. Sharp. Sariel's eyes drifted shut in acknowledgement, then opened just slightly, golden light spilling from the slits. "And you are a Progenitor's get, are you not?"
Irene's composure cracked for a microsecond—a minute gasp, swiftly suppressed beneath a mask of icy displeasure. She knows. What manner of angel has such insight?
"I am Irene," she said, her name a low vow. "Daughter of the Mother Progenitor."
The First Vampire is female. Interesting. Sariel gave a slight, regal nod. "I am Sariel. The Archangel of Heavenly Order and Judgement."
"Heavenly Order and Judgement?" Irene's eyebrow arched. "What kind of Archangel finds herself playing house-sitter for a mortal hunter?"
The audacity! To question my station! Sariel's radiance pulsed, a silent warning. "The kind who recognizes her Sovereign, regardless of the form he wears. My presence here is a matter of fealty, not mortal convenience."
The unspoken challenge hung between them: And your presence? What is it to him?
Outside, the world was unraveling.
Kate and Jane burst from their family home, the supposed 'dark sky' above not merely an absence of light, but an oppressive, starless void that seemed to swallow sound itself.
"What in God's name is happening?" Kate whispered, her medical mind frantically searching for a rational, atmospheric explanation and finding none.
Jane pointed a trembling finger down the street. "Forget the sky, look! Who… what is that?"
A woman stood calmly amidst the panicking crowd, her features ethereally sharp, her ears elongated and elegantly pointed. She held a staff of living wood, from which a soft moss-light glowed.
"She's beautiful," Jane breathed, a stark contrast to the horror around them.
"She's not human." Kate's grip on Jane's arm tightened. "We need to get to a shelter. Now."
Jane's phone buzzed with a emergency alert. The screen cast a pale blue light on her horrified face as she read aloud, her voice trembling. "'Threat Level: Cataclysmic. Dimensional Integration Event in progress. Civilian safety zones: fortified gymnasiums, major shopping malls, religious centers. Avoid contact with non-terrestrial entities. Hunter mobilization is underway.'"
"Otherworlders?" Jane echoed, the word tasting of ash and impossibility. "It's real. The gates… they didn't just lead to dungeons. They were doors. And now the doors are blown wide open."
"Will the Hunters be enough for this?" Kate asked, the question hollow. The scale was too vast.
Together, they ran, two sisters against a tide of primordial change.
Holik awoke not to an alarm, but to a profound, cellular silence that felt louder than any noise. The memory of the serum's fire was gone, replaced by a terrifying, crystalline clarity.
Reckless. Idiotic. Glorious. He sat up, his body responding with a fluid, effortless strength that felt alien. He strode to the mirror, methodically removing his clothes.
The reflection was, and wasn't, his own. The features were sharper, the eyes held a depth that hadn't been there before, and the physique… I have never lifted a weight in my life. Yet defined muscle, perfect and efficient, lay beneath his skin. It wasn't the bulk of a brawler, but the lethal, streamlined architecture of a predator—or a supremely tuned instrument.
He dressed and stepped outside. The void-sky was real. The chaos was real.
"So, I wasn't hallucinating," he murmured, a smirk touching his lips despite the global panic. "Fascinating."
"It is the Integration," a melodic, alien voice stated behind him. "All layered realities are converging upon this Central Earth."
He turned. Myra, the High Elf, stood there. Her beauty was of another world—sharp, intelligent, and utterly unconcerned with the screaming humans around her.
"Who are you?"
"Myra. A Grand High Elf of the Silverwood."
"Elf." Holik processed the word clinically, as if diagnosing a new species. "Explain the hierarchy. And the purpose of this… convergence."
She did, her explanation cool and precise. Portals becoming permanent dungeons, a buffer against invasions from even further universes. A desperate, cosmic filtration system.
She's telling me this because I appear 'calm amidst chaos.' A flawed heuristic. My calm is analytical detachment, not bravery. He eyed her. "Aren't you concerned I'll disseminate this information?"
"You are not the 'blabbering' type," she stated, as if reading a simple equation. "You assess. You calculate. You keep secrets that serve a purpose."
Dangerous. She perceives too much. Annoyance, a rare emotion for him, flickered. "Nevertheless, discretion is advised."
"Your concern is noted, human. But we Elves do not trust lightly. You are… unique among your kind here. Different from the humans of my world."
Unique. Different. The words resonated with his new, silent biology. She's a variable I didn't account for. He turned to leave, irritation winning over curiosity.
"Wait. You are leaving?" She sounded almost perplexed.
"I have work to do."
"Then I shall accompany you.You are a stable datum in this chaotic integration."
A datum. How flattering. Holik didn't reply, simply walking faster, the elegant, pointed-eared shadow falling into step beside him.
Daemon exited the Raid Guild, his usual swagger tempered by the apocalyptic backdrop. "Scarlet black skies. Nice touch. Very dramatic."
Then he saw the true chaos—creatures of myth and nightmare clashing in the streets, buildings burning with unnatural flames. He gulped, the smirk finally dying. "Okay. Time to go."
Minutes later, he pushed open the door to his own spacious apartment. And froze.
A being of light stood in his living room. Nariel, her golden wings faintly luminous even folded, her gaze like twin suns boring into him. The air smelled of incense and thunderstorms.
"Who are you," he demanded, anger overriding shock, "and how did you get into my locked house?!"
She tilted her head, the motion regal and slow. "I… arrived. The connection between this locus and my prison frayed. I do not know why it led here." Her voice was music, but music played on instruments of judgment. "I am Nariel. Archangel of… Heavenly Wisdom." A flicker of profound contempt crossed her features, directed inward.
Archangel. Right. Of course. Because why not. Daemon ran a hand through his hair, his fighter's instincts warring with sheer bewilderment. She was nearly six feet tall, radiating an aura that made his B-rank hunter senses scream 'DANGER: CATASTROPHIC.'
"Well," he said, forcing his trademark grin, "welcome to Casa da Demon. I'm Daemon. Daemon Alternate, if we're being formal." He pointed to a guest room. "Make yourself at home. That's your room, for as long as you… need it."
Nariel turned, her wings brushing his furniture without displacing a single dust mote. She entered the room, surveying it. "It is… small. Compared to the infinite prison." A pause. "But ordered. Clean."
Daemon slumped against the closed door, exhaling shakily. An archangel. In my guest room. Did I pay my cosmic karma this month? I don't think so.
Alexis, the God-Slayer, retreated from the hospital, the scent of the Life-Binder too sharp, too alert. She emerged into the city's underbelly, a garage thick with oil and shadows, and looked up.
The Integration sky confirmed her theories. But more pressing was a new, overwhelming sensation—a scent that made her ancient soul tremble. It was the fragrance of primordial clay, of the Source before all things.
The Progenitor… The Fountainhead Himself. HERE! Dread and exhilaration warred within her. But it was wrong. It was… layered. Intertwined with that world-birthing scent was another, colder one—a familiar, regal chill that spoke of silent sovereignty and eternal night.
The Ruler of the Night Sky? His scent is here too? But that's… Her mind, a library of cosmic vendettas, raced. The Progenitor's essence, absolute and untainted… yet woven through with the specific, sovereign signature of the Night's domain. They shouldn't blend. One is the foundation; the other is a palace built upon it. This isn't a fading echo... it's a convergence.
The conclusion was more terrifying than finding a full Primordial. This was a fusion, a being carrying the absolute essence of the Origin intertwined with the definitive authority of one of its greatest sovereign manifestations. A living paradox and the ultimate key.
Impossible, she thought, not of his existence, but of the staggering implications. The essence doesn't fade… it transforms. He has carried it forward, weaving it with a new mantle. If he ever unravels the knot…
She activated her perfected stealth and became nothing, a vacuum in the shape of a woman, and began to hunt the impossibly composite scent to its source.
In a quiet, unaffected café that seemed existing in a bubble of unnatural calm, Chaos held Derrick's hand across a small table. He pulled away, his usual icy composure fractured by her intimate, knowing touch.
"My name is Derrick. Not 'Void'."
Even nameless, even in this new skin, you are still so perfectly you. She smiled, a universe being born and dying in the curve of her lips. "You have walked this path before. First, as the living will of the Primordial 'Void'. Then, that essence took a new shape as the sovereign 'Ruler of the Night Sky'."
She leaned forward, her eyes holding the light of dead stars. "And now... here you are again. Derrick. A third melody, woven from the echoes of the first two. You carry his silence, and you wear a shadow of that crown... but you are also something entirely new."
The words did not bring memory, but a form of resonance. Not images, but fleeting sensations that brushed against the edges of his consciousness like shadows passing a window: a profound, gravitational silence that felt older than time, and a distinct, regal chill that spoke of dominion over realms of endless twilight. They were not his experiences, yet they felt inextricably tied to the core of what he was—like finding unfamiliar initials carved into the foundation of your own home.
Lived before? Not once… but twice? A shame it wasn't a clean Isekai story. The thought was vertigo, not revelation. It wasn't the tidy narrative of a simple rebirth. It was a messier, deeper truth: he was not a new page, but a palimpsest, with the faint, indelible ghosts of two previous texts still visible beneath the current one. He was Derrick. Yet, somehow, he was also built upon the eroded foundations of something called 'Void' and something titled 'Ruler of the Night Sky'.
"What is 'isekai'?" Chaos asked, playing with a strand of her dark, universe-strewn hair.
Derrick's blood went cold. She read my thoughts. Not my surface thoughts… the silent, internal language. He stared at her, true terror and profound caution dawning in his glacial eyes.
"How did you—"
The plate-glass window of the café exploded inward in a shower of diamond dust.
Standing in the frame, silhouetted against the chaotic void-sky, was Alexis. Her eyes, pits of voracious nothingness, locked onto Chaos with murderous delight.
"Look what the cataclysm dragged in," Alexis purred, her voice the sound of breaking worlds. "If it isn't dear, sweet, meddlesome Chaos. Interrupting a reunion, are we?"
The air in the café solidified. The final, fragile pretense of a normal world shattered completely.
The past, in the form of Chaos—a Primordial who knew his true name—had found him.
And the future, in the form of Alexis—a God-Slayer hellbent on destroying every trace of him—had just kicked down the door.
The "safety" of the shopping mall was a sick joke. The automatic doors slid open not to sanctuary, but to a new circle of hell.
Kate and Jane stood frozen on the threshold. The vast atrium was a cacophony of panic, but it was the centerpiece that stole their breath. Where the decorative fountain had been, a pulsating, organic portal now churned, its edges dripping ethereal light. From it emerged not monsters, but bewildered, elegant humanoids with skin of bark and hair of woven vines, staring at the screaming humans with equal parts curiosity and alarm.
"This… this is a designated safe zone?" Jane's voice was a dry rasp, all dread.
"It's a holding pen," Kate whispered, her clinical mind assessing the triage nightmare unfolding. Humans huddled against storefront grates, hyperventilating. A man with the lower body of a satyr clopped past, arguing with a security drone. "It's not keeping the chaos out. It's just… containing the collision."
Their world wasn't ending. It was being violently introduced to its new neighbors.
On the ruined plaza, Holik stared up, up, up at the structure that defied physics. The Tower wasn't just tall; it was a brutalist spike of obsidian and shimmering energy, piercing the void-black sky like a middle finger to reality.
"The scale is… statistically improbable," he murmured, his new senses calculating its staggering dimensions.
"It's magnificent!" Myra breathed beside him, her elven eyes wide with a warrior's awe. "Such power concentrated in a single edifice!"
Must you narrate every obvious observation? Holik's internal sigh was a masterpiece of annoyance. "Its purpose is unknown. The risk variables are incalculable. We should observe from a distance and gather data."
"Observe?" Myra blinked, then grinned, a flash of sharp canines. "Or we could participate."
Before his razor-sharp, newly enhanced reflexes could engage, her hand—deceptively slender—closed around his wrist with the force of a hydraulic press.
"The hell—!" he managed, before she yanked him forward. The world dissolved into a vortex of light and pressure.
Ridiculous strength! A complete disregard for the scientific method!
They stumbled out not into a lobby, but onto a vast, impossibly green meadow under a sunlit sky. The air hummed with latent energy.
"This… is inside?" Myra spun, her awe deepening. "It's another dimension!"
Not a tower. A nested universe. Fascinating and terrifying. Holik immediately turned to retrace their steps. A shimmering, translucent wall met him. Before his eyes, elegant, glowing text materialized:
[ Welcome, Challenger. Floor 1: The Verdant Crypt. ]
[ Objective: Locate and slay the Grove Warden. ]
[ Failure Condition: Death. ]
[ Reward upon Clearance: Exit granted. Attribute Points. ]
A similar, private screen hovered before Myra. "Hmm? What is this strange magic script?" she asked, peering at the empty air beside him.
Individual interfaces. We cannot see each other's systems. A test, then. A locked-room experiment with lethally high stakes. A cold, thrilling clarity washed over him. The serum, the new world, this trial—it was all data. Dangerous, exhilarating data.
"It seems," Holik said, his voice dropping to a calm, focused monotone, "we have been voluntold for a feasibility study. One with a mandatory participation clause."
He sighed,
"Follow my lead. And try not to trigger any more 'unexpected variables'."
He began walking into the artificial forest, Myra falling into step beside him, her earlier excitement tempered by his chilling pragmatism.
Back at the mansion, the silence was a taut wire. Irene rose from the chair, the elegant lines of her body tense.
Third time's the charm, or so they say. The first time —during our university days, I brought him notes after the Dean's lecture. The second, I found him staring at the stars, looking so… alone. And now this. She smoothed her dress, a gesture of composed finality. "The sky is the reason I came. It seems he's busy playing knight-errant elsewhere. Do relay my… concern."
Sariel merely inclined her head, her gaze drifting back to the window. "The darkness is not of night. It is of consumption. Of unraveling." Her divine senses, attuned to cosmic order, itched with wrongness. "It lacks the poetry of true night. It is merely… absence."
The moment the door clicked shut behind Irene, Sariel's serene mask fractured into a frown of deep, celestial unease. "What force craves such absolute void?"
The café was a snow globe of shattered glass and frozen time. Alexis stood amid the wreckage, her presence a sinkhole of lethal intent.
"Alexis." Chaos's smile was a dark, beautiful thing, the smile of a supernova greeting a black hole. "Still playing errand girl for a concept? How… dutiful."
So the faint scent was her cloaking field. Of course. She's always been the interference, the static in the grand design —Primodial Being of Infinite Possibilities. Alexis's focus was absolute, a scalpel aimed at the heart of the anomaly. "Mask his resonance, weave a thousand probabilities. It changes nothing. The incarnation must be unmade. This is for balance. This is the will of Axiom."
She spoke the name not as a person, but as a cosmic principle—the Supreme Celestial of Absolute Law, the highest authority beneath the Primordials themselves.
"Axiom?" Chaos let out a laugh like shattering crystal. "That dormant relic? She hasn't opened her eyes since she depleted her energy. She doesn't give orders; she is an order—an ossified dogma, and a boring one at that."
"Her will echoes in the stillness. And the stillness demands the Void's incarnation is an impossibility. The other Primordials—may have their incarnations. Their incarnations are within the equation. But his existence… is a flaw in the equation." Alexis's gaze shifted to Derrick, pure annihilation in her eyes. "You are the flaw. The Void's will is the end and the source—an absolute, impersonal force. To cage it in a face, in a single perspective… that is the paradox. That is what unbalances everything."
"You think killing him over and over fixes anything? You're not a goddess-slayer, Alexis. You're a cosmic janitress, mopping up a leak you don't understand." Chaos's grip on Derrick's arm tightened possessively. That sanctimonious bitch, Destiny, is probably laughing in her sleep.
Derrick watched, a silent storm of confusion and dawning, terrible recognition. The titles, the history—they felt true, in the way a forgotten dream feels upon waking.
"There is no negotiation with entropy," Alexis stated. Mana, raw and violent, ripped from the atmosphere, coalescing in her hand into a blade of crystallized annihilation. It hummed with the frequency of dead gods.
"Then we're done talking." Chaos yanked Derrick backward. A maw of swirling, chaotic energy erupted behind them—a portal not to a place, but to a possibility.
Alexis moved. A blur of murderous intent. The mana sword left her hand, not flying, but teleporting, appearing instantly point-first in the space where Derrick's heart had been a nanosecond earlier.
But the portal swallowed them. The sword clattered to the floor, carving a molten trench in the concrete.
Silence, heavier than the void outside, reclaimed the café. Alexis stood. With a whispered thought, her blade tore free from the far wall and slapped back into her waiting palm, its energy dying to a dull, obedient glow.
Alexis stood amidst the ruin. Her composure, usually an unbreakable mantle, did not crack—it vaporized.
"CHAOS!!!"
Her roar was not a word but a dimensional fault line. The sound cracked the remaining windows, splintered the café's doorframe, and forced the very air into a visible, shuddering ring. It was the primal scream of order itself, betrayed.
The echo didn't fade—it was swallowed by the silence that followed, a silence now warped and heavy with what came next. Her fury didn't cool; it underwent gravitational collapse. The supernova of her rage inverted into a singularity—a point of absolute, glacial hate.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were not pits, but event horizons, swallowing all light, all mercy. When she spoke again, her voice was a zero-degree whisper, a sound that leached the warmth from the stones and stilled the settling dust mid-fall.
"You have chosen your side." The words didn't echo; they inscribed themselves, etching a cold, silent rune into the floorboards, the air, the skin of reality. "The third life… shall be the last."
She vanished. Not with a sound, but with the sudden, deafening absence of her presence. She left behind not just the scar of her fury, but the chilling certainty of an oath that had already been written into the future—a final term, awaiting its solution.
Viola stumbled back onto Ruby's manicured lawn, her violet eyes wide. Above her, the impossible sky confirmed it—realities were merging.
"The merging of dimensions…?" she gasped, the words barely a breath. "But why? How?"
This was no natural celestial event. The causality was all wrong—a violent, surgical grafting of one reality onto another. A forced integration of entire planes of existence.
Alarm spiked into urgency. She turned and hurried back inside, the need for strategy already overriding the shock.
Daemon lay on his bed, staring at the familiar cracks in his ceiling, a desperate anchor to normalcy. Freaking out over the details is useless now. Just gotta adapt. Survive. Protect the idiots who can't...
Wait. Why should I?
A soft chime echoed not in the room, but directly in his neural cortex.
Before his eyes, blocking his view of the ceiling, glowing blue text scrolled into existence:
[ System Initialization Complete. ]
[ User: Daemon Alternate. Race: Anomalous Hybrid- Veiled Human]
[Age: 25. Class: None]
[ The Tower is now active. ]
[ Survival is recommended. Glory is optional. ]
[ Welcome to the Integration. ]
Daemon shot upright, the blood draining from his face. "What. The. Actual. Hell."
The words hung in the air, glowing faintly. They didn't feel like magic. They felt like rules. The new, irrevocable rules of a world that had just finished shattering.
The world, it seemed, had just been drafted.