His expression remained unreadable, carved into an emotionless mask.
But inside,
Everything clicked.
It was the same energy signature.
Identical down to the finest nuance.
The same presence he had gazed back at a few days ago.
The same entity that had noticed him noticing it.
Silence stretched.
Then his thoughts sharpened, turning cold and lethal.
'So… you're choosing war, huh?
Then I'll answer in blood.
Pretty soon, you fucking bastard.'
His fingers curled slowly.
But something didn't sit right.
These weren't weak pawns. Not even close. Voidbound and above, beings that could erase galaxies if unleashed carelessly. Sending hundreds of thousands of them wasn't a casual move.
Which meant,
Why waste them?
His eyes narrowed as he stared into the crimson sky.
'Unless… they were never meant to succeed.'
The realization struck like a blade.
Disposables.
A bitter, furious smile tugged at the corner of his lips.
'That bastard.
He used us as a landfill.
A convenient dumping ground for his trash.'
His gaze bored into the heavens, as if daring something beyond reality to look back.
"Enjoy it while you can," he murmured softly. "Because I don't forget. And I don't forgive."
The air around him trembled, just slightly.
What Axiros did not realize was that the entity had already completed its task.
It had never intended to observe forever.
Somewhere between the moment he met its gaze and the moment reality resumed its flow, something had been done.
A mark, if it could even be called that, had been left behind.
Not a curse.
Not a seal.
Not a tracker in any conventional sense.
It was an imprint.
So faint that even absolute perception would have dismissed it as background noise. So subtle that it harmonized perfectly with his existence, masquerading as part of him rather than something imposed upon him.
No Noevar fluctuation.
No Fluxia resonance.
No existential disturbance.
It did not violate him.
It belonged.
Buried beneath layers of reincarnated souls, overwritten by countless lives, masked by his own unnatural nature, the imprint rested in silence, patient, dormant, and utterly undetectable by any conventional means.
Even Axiros, with all his caution, never noticed.
And that was precisely why it was dangerous.
---
Back to the present-
"I have made the necessary arrangements. I can start the construction of my new eyes. But, however I will wait, till I go through my rite of revelation. " He sighed, swinging his legs from the ledge.
They didn't stay there.
Fearing a repeat of what had happened, they relocated to a completely new area, far removed from the devastated region. This time, they didn't leave anything to chance.
They were prepared.
Extremely so.
Layers of protective formations were erected around their new residence, each one overlapping the next, interlocking into a complex defensive web. Some were meant to conceal, others to repel, and a few existed solely to annihilate anything that crossed the boundary uninvited.
The house itself became a fortress.
Hidden beneath it was a vast arsenal, weapons sealed away in pocket spaces and sub-dimensional vaults, each one capable of catastrophic destruction if unleashed. Some were ancient, others experimental, and a few were so dangerous they remained permanently suppressed.
If something came for them again,
It wouldn't leave alive.
It had been two years since the first, and last, attack.
Nothing followed.
No reprisals.
No probing strikes.
No divine gaze pressing down on him again.
Only silence.
They lived in a desolate region now, far removed from civilization. No cities. No trade routes. No wandering cultivators or explorers. There weren't any humans here except for them.
Just endless land, warped skies, and the distant cries of things that knew better than to come close.
Axiros waited.
Patiently.
His Rite of Revelation was approaching.
He had replayed the novel's events countless times in his mind during these two years. Every arc. Every so-called "hidden piece." Every dramatic twist the author thought was clever.
And honestly?
They were disappointing.
Plain. Bland. Predictable.
Pathetic, especially when compared to what he had already experienced.
This world thinks it has secrets, he mused.
But I've already bled for better ones.
Still, not everything was worthless.
There were a few abilities. A few concepts. A handful of mechanisms he wouldn't mind claiming when the time was right. Not because they were impressive, but because they were useful.
Tools, nothing more.
But that could wait.
For now, all that mattered was the Rite.
The moment where Noevar would acknowledge him.
The moment where this world would attempt to define him.
Axiros's lips curled faintly.
"I even reincarnated in the same timeline as the novel's. It is the year 2034 of the Celestial Records, just five years before the true story starts." He sighed.
The irony was suffocating.
Of all possibilities, he had landed here. Not before the chaos, not after the collapse, but right in the narrow calm before everything went to hell. A spectator's seat to a tragedy he already knew by heart.
The novel itself was a contradiction.
A walking plot hole.
The so-called protagonist was wrapped in so much plot armor that it bordered on parody. Fatal wounds meant nothing. Impossible odds bent conveniently. Enemies lost intelligence the moment they faced him.
It made readers groan.
It made critics scoff.
And yet, they stayed.
They stayed because the world was interesting. Because the mysteries hinted at something far greater beneath the author's clumsy execution. Because the stakes felt cosmic, even if the delivery was flawed.
Irony, indeed.
They endured the story despite the protagonist, Axiros thought.
I will endure the protagonist because of the story.
Five years.
Five years before fate began moving its pieces openly.
Five years before the "chosen one" stepped onto the stage.
Five years before history was hijacked by convenience and coincidence.
Axiros's gaze hardened.
Good.
That was more than enough time to prepare.
He would undergo his Rite of Revelation at ten.
A long-awaited event.
An inevitability.
Axiros knew exactly what awaited him, and that knowledge only made the anticipation worse. His heart beat wildly in his chest, each thud carrying a pressure that felt wrong, as if something vast was coiled within him, asleep but aware.
Dormant.
Unimaginable power, sealed beneath flesh and bone.
He had asked his mother about it once. Just once.
Where had the heart come from?
Her response had been cold. Final. A wall.
"I don't know," she said flatly. "I killed some nullspawn and acquired it."
Nothing more.
No elaboration. No hesitation. No lie he could confidently detect.
That was the part that unsettled him.
It was unclear whether the heart had belonged to the creature she killed, or whether the creature had merely been carrying it. A vessel. A courier. Or perhaps… a prison.
Axiros pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the rhythm beneath his ribs.
If it was carried, he thought, then that monster was a god.
If it was owned… then something terrifying once lived with this heart as its core.
Either answer was bad.
Yet his lips curved faintly.
Whatever the truth was, it would reveal itself during the Rite.
And when it did,
He would be ready.
Over the span of two years, he received three more gifts, one on his fifth birthday, one on his sixth, and one on his seventh.
Each was immaculate.
Each was invaluable.
The first was an amulet.
Its appearance was unassuming, but its function was absurdly powerful. When activated, it could teleport him quintillions of miles away from his current location, instantaneously. A contingency meant for absolute danger.
More importantly, it was reusable.
As long as it was fueled with Noevar, it would respond without fail.
The second was a defensive sigil, a totem carved with impossibly dense inscriptions. When activated, it could withstand direct blows from a peak Tier-Three Noesis without collapsing.
For most beings, such an artifact would be a lifetime safeguard.
But the third gift stood apart.
A stone.
Awkwardly shaped. Uneven. Ordinary.
It radiated no energy.
It emitted no aura.
It simply existed, plain, silent, unremarkable.
Axiros was puzzled the moment he saw it.
Driven by instinct, he activated his defective apertured eyes.
And froze.
The energy contained within the stone was exquisite.
Not because it overflowed, but because it didn't.
Every fragment of power was perfectly contained, folded inward with absolute precision. Not a single trace leaked into reality. No resonance. No pressure. No distortion.
As if existence itself was unaware of its presence.
The energy was potent.
Mysterious.
Alien.
And utterly terrifying.
He asked his mother where she had obtained it. The answer he received was… casual.
"I found it during one of my travels with your father, in an ancient ruin," she said lightly. "It was a fun date.... Sorry, love, I'll give you something better next year."
Better?
He nearly groaned aloud.
This is already perfect.
The energy within the stone did not belong to this world.
It was neither Noevar, whose patterns he had learned through his mother.
Nor was it Fluxia, the structured, authoritative force he had come to recognize through John.
John visited often, usually bringing news of his father. Over time, Axiros had memorized his energy signature with precision.
Fluxia, without question.
Which meant the stone contained something else entirely.
Something that did not originate from Xandrel or this world.
Axiros closed his hand around the stone, his expression unreadable.
Whatever this was, It was not meant to exist here.
His Sea of Consciousness trembled at the mere sight of the stone.
A silent disturbance rippled through its depths, subtle yet profound, like something ancient shifting in its sleep. But Axiros remained unaware of it.
He had not awakened it yet.
Without awakening, there was no perception.
Without perception, there was no understanding.
All he felt was a vague sense of wrongness.
A faint dissonance gnawing at the edges of his mind, impossible to grasp, impossible to explain. Something was out of place, fundamentally so.
Yet no matter how he searched inward, he couldn't pinpoint the source.
The stone lay quietly in his hand.
And the Sea of Consciousness continued to tremble in silence.
He didn't dwell on it for long.
There were far more pressing matters demanding his attention.
Axiros had options, many of them.
Techniques etched into his memory across countless lives, methods refined through blood, failure, and extinction.
He left the house and settled in a barren stretch of land nearby. The ground there was lifeless and cracked, devoid of anything worth damaging.
He couldn't risk an accident.
Some of the techniques he could employ were… volatile.
He sat down cross-legged, steadying his breath, his mind slipping into a state of ruthless focus.
What he was about to attempt wasn't simple cultivation.
It was a method to rewrite growth itself, to refine his potential, temper his physique, and lay a foundation so absurdly solid that future limits would become meaningless.
A technique meant to shape not just strength…
…but destiny.